Charter of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic – Diana Program

Allied foreign ministers met in Brussels on 6 -7 April 2022 and approved the Charter of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic or DIANA.  DIANA will bring industry, start-up companies and academia together to research new dual-use technologies to solve critical defence and security challenges.  The alliance has also announced additions to the technology list DIANA will focus on what NATO has identified as priorities, including artificial intelligence, big-data processing, quantum-enabled technologies, autonomy, biotechnology, novel materials and space. (NATO website, 2022).

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The Re-Emergence of Unmanned Ground Vehicles in Army Modernisation Efforts

The dawn of the new century seemed to promise an impending revolution in modern warfare in which unmanned, weaponised systems could augment the capabilities or even replace human elements from the battlefield. The use of unmanned systems in parallel or in lieu of human units factors would not only diversify and augment current military capabilities but also reduce the human risks of operating in hostile environments, even allowing to act in otherwise inaccessible scenarios.

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The challenge of digital sovereignty

With the recognition of cyberspace as a domain of operation, conducting covert cyber espionage and cyber interference has become more accessible, threatening public institutions and global companies. Hence, cyberspace plays a part in modern warfare. It offers many opportunities but also brings great challenges for national security.

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Rethinking Military Service in Europe

From 2023 Latvia will rely again on conscription, after abandoning it in 2007, when the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The decision was taken to strengthen army forces, that now rely only on 7,500 active soldiers and national guardsmen (Euronews, 2022). The Russian invasion of Ukraine created the need to reinforce the army potential, and conscription – the mandatory enlistment of people in the national armed forces of their citizenship country – helps to reach this goal by increasing the number of reservists. The Latvian Ministry of Defence plans to recruit some 500 young men aged 18-27 twice a year; Riga hopes the quotas will initially be filled by volunteers, with the compulsoriness becoming effective only at a later stage (Balčiūnas, 2022).

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The new EU Support Hub for Internal Security and Border Management in Moldavia: Boosting EU Domestic Security Through Anti-Trafficking Framework

The war of aggression launched by the Federation of Russia against Ukraine has not only raised the risk of projected threats from less than 1000 km of EU’s external borders. It also raised concerns about threats projected on internal affairs, national security and interest within EU Member States nationals borders. The main concern is about the capacities of the EU block to face the consequences this war implies regarding domestic and regional security. Although this war set the conditions encouraging the increased emergence of national security risks, the EU quickly reacted to tackle issues stemming from it.

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