SUMMARY
The European Defence Agency aims to contribute to reinforcing the ability of the European Union and Member States to address hybrid-warfare threats. It achieves this goal through assessing hybrid threat implications for European defence capability development, as well as stress-testing current Priority Actions as defined in the Capability Development Plan (CDP).
Goals
- Provide an input to the High Representative report by the end of 2015 on a joint framework to help countering hybrid threats
- Provide an assessment of hybrid warfare implications and recommendations to ministerial Steering Board in May 2016
- Provide an expert level stress-test analysis of existing priority actions to Capability Directors in October 2016
- Provide a forum to exchange existing measures and best practices on a national basis
ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION
EDA’s objective in this work strand is to support Member States in their efforts to respond to the changed security environment, often described as “hybrid warfare”. The elements of this type of conflict are not unknown, but new is the combination of political will, intent, scale, speed, complexity and effective coordination across the full spectrum of levels.
The Agency contributes to countering hybrid warfare by conducting a broad study of the implications of hybrid threats and challenges on defence planning and by carrying out a comprehensive, war gaming type, gap analysis of current military capability development and existing priorities.
The objectives are two-fold: firstly to crosscheck the existing defence and security risks as well as current priority actions already articulated within the CDP, and secondly to provide proposals to Member States in 2016, specifically highlighting required capabilities that could be developed collaboratively in the EDA framework.
Further to the mandate of the FAC 2015, EDA will also contribute to the development of a “Joint Framework” led by the EEAS, with a view to its delivery by the end of 2015.