Europe’s Role in the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force

Targeted interoperability may be understood through the ongoing development of NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. This brigade-size rapid response force is designed to deploy its lead elements within 48 hours, ensuring prompt response to conflict. This multinational unit is unique in its very tight deployment timeline, which implies functional interoperability between several alliance members to a degree so far unseen within NATO.

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Ethical and Legal Considerations for Biomedical Performance Enhancement in the Military

Since antiquity, exceeding the natural capacities of human beings has always been a concern for states and cities. With advancements in medicine and biotechnology, all major world powers are now exploring new ways to increase the psychological and physical capacities of their soldiers. The use of pharmacological products could, in theory, be used to improve soldier strength, mental capacity, recovery, and resistance to fatigue and trauma. However, the ethical and legal frameworks within which the use of pharmacological technology would be acceptable remains uncertain. Debates surrounding the use of performance enhancement drugs often revolve around concerns regarding safety and side effects. This paper seeks to go beyond those concerns and examine the ethical and legal considerations, assuming these products are safe and approved for military use.

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Anticipating Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict

Since the end of the Cold War, the amount of private military and security companies (PMSCs) involved in armed conflicts has increased rapidly. In armed conflicts, the PMSCs carry out tasks that used to be performed by governmentally armed forces. These include non-coercive as well as coercive activities, ranging from military training and intelligence analysis to offensive combat and interrogation of prisoners (Tonkin, 2012, 1). Meanwhile, it remains unclear to what extent PMSCs increase the severity of armed conflicts (Lees and Petersohn, 2021, 1). It is clear, however, that the activities of PMSCs in armed conflicts impact European land forces and their objectives. In Libya, for instance, Russia has backed the Libyan National Army (LNA) with PMSC forces, among other things. Allegedly, Russian leaders hoped this could help them gain control over oil reserves in Libya, on which several European countries depend. Besides, Libya is located strategically on NATO’s southern flank (Cragin and MacKenzie, 2020). This is just one example of a country where foreign PMSCs and European armed forces are involved in a conflict. The question is how European land forces can anticipate the presence of foreign PMSCs in armed conflicts in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Therefore, this article will focus on the operational rather than the legal and ethical aspects of the activities of PMSCs in armed conflict.

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Counterterrorism in the EU: The New Agenda 2020-2025 and its Impact on Armed Forces Interoperability

Following the wave of terrorist attacks that shook Europe in 2015, policymakers in the EU realised the necessity to outline a comprehensive strategy to trace the path to fight against political extremism. Whether fuelled by ethnonationalism, religious, or ideological reasons, everyone wants to avoid the hundreds of deaths that plagued that year, and the following ones.

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Germany Invests in New Military Space Command

Germany has recently announced the development of a military space command, and they are far from the first country to do so. Indeed, several countries have recently decided to allocate significant resources and funding for the exploration of space. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, gave a statement in response to the creation of the space command, claiming that the underlying causes for its creation were due to “the increasing dependence of the armed forces on space-supported data, services and products and for the overall prosperity of the German people” (Machi, 2021).

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