C2 in Emerging Warfare Seminar

The NATO Command and Control Centre of Excellence (C2COE), supported by the Combined Joint Operations from the Sea Centre of Excellence (CJOS COE), United States Navy, and by the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), is proud to present and welcome everybody to the 2016 seminar, "C2 in Emerging Warfare, the Challenges to the Alliance and Coalitions". A very special word of welcome is extended to the keynote speaker General Mercier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

The seminar is about the challenges of the future, as we believe that it is very actual in the today’s world with all the securities related challenges. It addresses the challenges of future warfare and takes a hard look at our possible enemies of the future. What would and/or will our challenges be to command and control, and about the valid question, are we prepared for the future? And if not, what should we change in our C2 to improve our readiness and responsiveness. Hence we have chosen a very up-to-date and current topic for the seminar.

Our world is absolutely not becoming more secure and safe, to the contrary, there is much instability, global and local threats, very diverse in nature and location and above all, people, even politicians, see very clearly that these evolving and emerging threats do approach our western worlds, our way of living. People begin to think very differently about their  security, and also about defence, about the military and about NATO.

Security is becoming a very serious issue again in our day to day lives. This was emphasized during the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales where the heads of states and governments agreed that these security challenges can all have long term consequences for peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic region and stability across the globe. They also stated clearly that NATO nations are united in their commitment  and they reaffirmed their commitment to fulfill all three core tasks set out in NATO’s Strategic Concept; collective defence, crisis management, and cooperative security. So the present security threats all need continuous attention by NATO, they all need a strong NATO, a NATO able to act and react if required. Therefore, NATO must be ready for the future and emerging types of future warfare. So actually and factually, this seminar was all about transformation, and I think that C2 is at the heart of this.

The combined NATO C2COE, CJOS COE, and ACT team responsible for arranging and preparing this seminar did everything they could to make it into a success. The perfect venue and an interesting program were presented. Excellent speakers were invited to present their concepts and bold statements, triggering new ideas and provided food for thought and discussion. The team worked hard to bring together a broad C2 community of interest. Looking at the list of attendees, with almost 150 participants from both military and civilian and over 20 different NATO partner nations expectations were met. The seminar will be a successful event where ideas will be shared.