North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
April 3, 2015
SACT participates to the International Conference on Air and Space Power
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), French Air Force General Jean-Paul Paloméros participated to the International Conference on Air and Space Power (ICAP) at Turkish Air War College, April 2nd 2015.
The ICAP 2015, an International Conference organized in Turkey for the second time, was hosted by Air War College with Turkish Air Force’s contribution. The subjects discussed during ICAP will ensure that today’s and future changing principles of Air and Space Power are clearly understood with the contributions of speakers from partner and allied nations from all over the world.
During his intervention, SACT highlighted that our Future Air and Space Power will be challenged both externally, by very adaptive competitors and adversaries, and internally, by corrosive effects of budget constraints. “Major powers outside NATO have been developing modern fleets of interceptors for some time. […] In fact, they are developing a mix of innovative concepts and technologies that can offset our military superiority” SACT said.
After having enumerate a number of threats, SACT affirmed that the key is Innovation: “this new environment offers indeed a great potential to increase our operational agility. In the future security environment, I believe that we must focus less and less on developing dedicated specific means, equipment for a single purpose. […] Through Innovation, we need to unleash the creativity of all stakeholders, taking into consideration lot of very constructive inputs from industry, innovative companies, and end user. […] We must adopt a pragmatic approach in our equipment design and acquisition. We must find the right balance between quantity and quality”, he added.
In addition, training and exercises “will remain the capstone for ensuring the desired level of preparedness of our air capabilities”. He explained that “exercising helps to bring together Allies and Partners to test their interoperability from doctrine to equipment, find solutions to problems identified in operations, define how to react and continue the mission with degraded capabilities”. SACT also referred to “the biggest exercise NATO has conducted for a very long time”, Exercise Trident Juncture 15, which will consist of about 36.000 troops from Italy, Portugal and Spain.
SACT concluded thanking the Turkish Air Force for “providing us this unique opportunity to share new ideas, to candidly exchange our points of view on how to continue transforming our Alliance’s Air Power and honing our cutting edge for the foreseeable future”.
Source