The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked outrage and economic reprisals from most of the international community and is bound to continue to drive the defence policy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)’s members for the foreseeable future.
Modernisation and innovation in the military are crucial for keeping up with technological advancements. Geopolitical and geo-economic shifts, such as the modernisation of Russia’s armed forces and China’s increasing international assertiveness, have turned defence modernisation into a competitive business. Meanwhile, the battlefield is shifting to cyberspace, so new and innovative solutions will be necessary to handle these contemporary threats. Western armies have no choice but to step up and to keep up with technological developments
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many European NATO Member States have announced their plans to significantly increase their defence spending. In line with this trend, on 1 March 2022, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis officially announced his government’s intention to increase the defence capacity of the Romanian State from the current 2% of the national GDP to 2.5%.
Servicemen and women in land forces around the world often confront a number of duty-related mental, emotional, and physical hardships. War can inflict many different manifestations of ethical and psychological distress, which fall under the umbrella of ‘moral injury’. Moral Injuries (MI) were first discussed in relation to military personnel transgressing moral beliefs and values during war, but it has since expanded to include equivalent emotional experience by healthcare professionals, first responders, rescue workers, and everyone facing similar complex emotions as a result of actions taken or observations made throughout traumatic circumstances. While moral injury and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been seen to share several symptoms, military, soldiers, clinical psychologists, as well as chaplains are concerned about PTSD’s incapability to account for the substance of moral and ethical distress that battlefields may generate. Modern warfare produces new challenges to the personnel. With the advent of new technologies and the use of drones, the author of a particular action does not directly see the consequences of what he/she has done. This may cause different types of moral injuries since the handler will take longer before realising the magnitude of his gesture.
A team at MIT can now build small drones that fly around with bug-like agility and elasticity because of a new type of artificial muscle. Kevin Chen, senior author of the paper, states that “This opens up a lot of opportunity in the future for us to transition to putting power electronics on the microrobot,".
