CSS News

German security and defense policy faces considerable challenges. The armed forces are confronted with serious recruitment and financial issues, in addition to conflicts between political and military priorities, write Alexander Feltes and Niklas Masuhr in this edition of the CSS Analyses in Security Policy series.

The war in Ukraine has raised expectations about the deployment of fully autonomous weapons on the battlefield. While autonomy in weapon systems is increasing thanks to advances in Artificial Intelligence, the parameters of meaningful human control remain unclear, argues Dominika Kunertova in this CSS Analysis.

The war in Ukraine is the first large-scale, high-intensity military conflict in which both sides deploy different types of drones extensively and to different military effects. European countries should take note to adopt a holistic approach on drones and anti-drone defenses, argues Dominika Kunertova in this CSS Policy Perspective.

According to Niklas Masuhr in this new CSS Analysis, intense and protracted combat in towns and cities seems to confirm predictions that urban areas will increasingly become the primary battlefields of wars and conflicts.

Nuclear arms control faces an existential crisis. The INF Treaty is about to end and the future of New START is also uncertain. But how should nuclear arms control be conceptualized to be effective today? In this article, Oliver Thränert argues that in the future it would have to be multilateral rather than bilateral. In addition, future negotiations should no longer focus solely on nuclear weapons, but should include other strategically important technologies.

This new journal article by Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli argues that an increase in the complexity of military technology has made the imitation and replication of state-of-the-art weapon systems harder—so much so as to offset the diffusing effects of globalization and advances in communications. As a result, China will not easily imitate the United States' advanced weapon systems and thus erode its military-technological superiority.

According to a growing consensus, globalization and advances in communication are promoting the diffusion of defense-industrial capabilities, thus eroding the established position of Western countries. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that even with newly available opportunities, including cyber espionage, the most advanced weapon systems remain very difficult to copy and replicate

On 16 November 2018, the CSS held a conference on “Arms Procurement in Europe: Current Trends and Implications for Switzerland.” In three panels, the participants discussed the procurement of major military systems, key technologies and industrial policy, and the upcoming arms procurements in Switzerland.

Despite moderate increases in their defense budgets, for most European states, the need to modernize main weapon systems and acquire future-proof high technology capabilities is a burden that continues to stretch their fiscal possibilities to the utmost. While forward-looking armaments policies cannot eliminate these deficits, they can lay the groundwork for tackling them successfully.

Over the past year the EU has made important steps to strengthen collective security and address its two more pressing challenges. European countries need a broader portfolio of capabilities to address the newer and wider set of threats they are confronted with. But different technological trends are undermining the leadership in weapons manufacturing European countries have long enjoyed.

Future European armaments projects will continue to be marked by high costs and decreasing unit numbers. While it is possible that new approaches in procurement will alleviate that situation, success is uncertain. This will also impact the next major project of the European armaments industry – the development of unmanned combat aircraft.