In the new issue of the magazine "Russia in Global Politics" published interesting material [...] by Dmitry Stefanovich and Alexander Ermakov "A U-turn through solid. Lessons of the armed conflict in Ukraine 2022-2023: first assessments". We present this publication with some abbreviations due to the LJ format.
T-62M tank of the Russian Armed Forces in the zone of a special military operation in Ukraine, September 2022 (c) Telegram channel "Sith Corner"Events of 2022-2023 in Ukraine (and partly in Russia)
They have become the largest armed conflict on the European continent since the Second World War. Significant masses of troops and almost the entire range of modern (and, it would seem, obsolete) weapons are involved in an unprecedented volume. The pattern of military operations of the last decades of the XX and the first decades of the XXI century, during which technologically more developed powers conducted operations against a much weaker enemy, has virtually disappeared.
Of course, even earlier such superiority did not always lead to success, as the experience of the Afghan campaigns of the USSR and the USA clearly showed, but the practice of military operations itself was clearly asymmetric. After the end of the last cold war, the armed forces in different countries considered scenarios of large-scale land operations in clashes with an equal or superior enemy, but such plans remained a theory for a long time.
The fighting in Ukraine puts such theories to the test of practice. The Russian forces are opposed by an enemy with similar weapons systems and military equipment (both obsolete post-Soviet analogues and Western models), as well as receiving Western weapons and modern means of destruction. The impact of the conflict on approaches to the combat use of weapons and military equipment (VIV), on strategy, operational art and tactics can be fully assessed only by the results of the conflict. However, a number of realities of a political and economic nature are already being seen, which will determine the development of the military-industrial complexes of the countries of the world, the structure of their defense expenditures, the directions of further development, the distribution of priorities among them, and so on. In particular, the following observations can be distinguished:
Compact armed forces staffed exclusively by contractors have serious limitations. The lack of trained infantry hinders operations even by a relatively modern and well-equipped army. In the long term, this may lead to an increase in the number of armed forces of the countries of the world, partial restoration or expansion of the scale of conscription, as well as the development of intermediate forms of recruitment in the form of volunteer communities, various movements with state support, as well as private and conditionally private military companies.
The existing production volumes of conventional VIV, and in particular of various means of destruction, do not correspond to the conditions of the conflict of the observed scale. Arms supplies to Ukraine have already largely emptied the arsenals of Western countries. The pace of their replenishment, while maintaining current production capacities, would be extremely slow, respectively, actions are already being observed today to expand the industrial funds of the defense industry, increase the means of production and the actual volume of production of weapons and equipment. In conditions of a very rich and diverse air defense and traditional sensitivity to aviation losses (due to the cost of both the aircraft themselves and the complexity and, again, the high cost of pilot training), the importance of conventional weapons such as tanks, artillery, and armored fighting vehicles is again increasing. In the future, we will have to return to their mass production, which may require the unification of samples to reduce their cost. The search for a balance between mass character and technological excellence is relevant again.
Defense spending on the current scale is insufficient to prepare for a conflict like the Ukrainian one (and also, possibly, to prevent it). It is necessary to build them up. Structurally, investments will be required in the modernization of the defense industry, in the production of new volumes, in the maintenance and training of a larger army.
The role of high technology will remain at all levels - from reliable communications and intelligence to air supremacy and prevention of such domination by the enemy.
The high cost of developing the defense industry for new tasks will require ever wider international cooperation. In the conventional West, it has been worked out and will continue to develop within the framework of NATO, as well as relations between the United States and European countries with formal and informal allies in Asia. Russia's cooperation with China, Iran and other countries that are not part of Western alliances should probably be expected to deepen. But this has yet to be done.
These trends require deep and comprehensive research. This article offers a number of basic conclusions, as well as some ways to solve the revealed problems.
Identified problemsPeople.
One of the key problems revealed during the SVO was the need for a significant number of trained personnel, primarily in the infantry, especially the "light".
Most developed countries at the end of the XX - beginning of the XXI century abandoned the recruitment of the armed forces by conscription or made this practice auxiliary. Coupled with a decrease in the birth rate (fewer volunteers, higher sensitivity of losses) this led to a significant reduction in the size of the armed forces and a reorientation to the so-called professional armies, with a few exceptions (primarily in the United States) very compact.
However, in the context of an armed conflict of a significant scale (especially in the geographically vast land theater), even the qualitatively superior, but quantitatively inferior army experienced serious problems, primarily from the point of view of territory control. The most striking manifestation was the wars in Afghanistan, both the USSR and the American coalition - almost always defeating the rebels "in the field", the armies of the superpowers did not even have enough contingents at the peak of deployment to control the entire country, which eventually led to the failure of the campaign. In our time, the Western coalition managed to deploy a grouping close in number to the USSR involved only with the involvement of many countries, as well as private military companies.
In addition to creating conditions for the emergence of private military companies, one of the possible ways to increase the quantity (and in the future, the quality) of mobilization resources, primarily in developed countries, may and is already partly becoming the transformation of military service into an instrument for the integration of national and other minorities.
Russia in the Ukrainian campaign of 2022, after the initial stage of the rapid seizure of significant territories, faced a shortage of personnel, not only to continue the offensive, but also for a solid defense, which forced in some cases to withdraw troops and partially mobilize reservists.
It is impossible not to note such a measurement of human resources as their quality, which, when applied to military scenarios, means the ability to perform the assigned combat task at the level of both an ordinary and a general. It is a fair opinion that nothing like ITS scale and intensity has happened in Europe for a very long time, so there will certainly be shortcomings. However, studying the experience of SVO in the context of training personnel, including command personnel, is certainly one of the most important tasks.
Rockets and shells. SVO also revealed insufficient stocks of weapons, especially high-precision weapons of various types of basing, destination and range, and again in most countries of the world.
Contrary to media myths, the stocks of precision weapons even in the richest countries and military blocs are far from inexhaustible. For example, during the first war in Iraq in 1991, only a small proportion of aviation weapons of destruction (ASP) was controllable. This share has increased with the advent of conversion kits of conventional bombs into correctable JDAM. For comparison: during the Desert Storm, only about 6% of the TSA tonnage was manageable, in Operation Allied Force - about 42%, in the first month and a half of the intensive air campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 - about 60 percent. In the second half of the bombing of Yugoslavia (which lasted two and a half months) and in connection with the unplanned peak of ASP consumption at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan (Operation Anaconda in March 2002), even the United States experienced a noticeable shortage of precision-guided munitions. This was especially evident among the US allies in the Libyan campaign, when it turned out that the stocks of TSA of many small European countries were not enough even for a short low-intensity air war.
Based on the experience of these conflicts and thanks to the development of mass types of TSA in the United States with basic aviation precision weapons, the issue was apparently resolved to a certain extent, but, as it turned out, other types of weapons, in particular infantry, were ignored. According to the latest estimates of American experts, in the case of large-scale hostilities with a serious enemy, the cruise missiles of the JASSM family (including the extended-range JASSM-ER and anti-ship LRASMs) can end in about a week. And in general, for almost all major types of weapons and military equipment, stocks are estimated as low and medium.
With regard to the conflict in Ukraine, the rapid depletion of stocks of even simpler and more massive guided weapons is noticeable - for example, the United States very quickly used up the "comfortable" (for a number of types of nomenclature up to half or more) limit on the supply of anti-tank infantry missile systems and portable anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine. Replenishment of arsenals has been declared a strategic task in a number of Western countries, primarily in the United States. It is stated that it is necessary to move from the philosophy of "sufficient stocks of the most popular weapons" to "stocks just in case" (transition from just-in-time stocks of weapons and munitions to just-in-case stocks).
This requires the efforts of the military-industrial complex and opens up wide opportunities for earning money.
Thus, Lockheed Martin Corporation announced that in 2024 it plans to increase the production of GMLRS family guided missiles used in the HIMARS and MLRS MLRS complexes from 10 thousand to 14 thousand units per year, but further expansion will require much longer terms due to more serious restrictions (increasing the supply of components by subcontractors, hiring labor, purchases of machine tools and tools). It is noteworthy that in this case it is not so much about replenishing the American arsenal, as about the implementation of the corporation's export portfolio, which has swollen due to "advertising" - purchases for the domestic customer are still at the same level, since the consumption of these ammunition in the conflict is relatively tolerable, which is not surprising, given the small number of launchers supplied. However, Washington's NATO allies are the main customers, and we can say that we are witnessing the expansion and saturation of the NATO arsenal, indirectly subordinate to the United States.
One of the ways to increase stocks in the United States is the transition to the practice of package, multi-year contracts for the purchase of TSA (in particular, cruise missiles) and ammunition. This will allow the contractor to invest more in production and plan the purchase of components in advance. It is believed that such actions (of course, together with the expansion of production) will allow in a few years to double the annual production of aircraft cruise missiles of the JASSM / LRASM family - from five hundred and a little to more than a thousand.
Against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, "gold mines" have opened - at least for a short time - for a number of manufacturers in Eastern Europe, who have sharply increased the production of weapons that, for historical reasons, are relatively compatible/similar to Soviet standards.
The consumption of artillery shells of running calibers is huge - for two or three days of fighting in 2022, the APU spent the amount produced in the United States for a month of peacetime. According to the estimates given in the CSIS thematic report, even in the event of an increase in production rates, compensation for the transferred to Ukraine, for example, for 155 mm artillery shells, will take 4-5 years, for Javelin ATGM in an optimistic case 5 years, for MANPADS an indefinitely long time, since production actually needs to be restored. Of course, American industry and the defense industry have huge potential. However, the planned strategy of military construction focused on confrontation with China did not imply such partly "extraneous" efforts. In particular, the leadership of the US Navy is already openly expressing dissatisfaction or, at least, concern. In European countries, the problem manifests itself even more prominently. Already in the autumn of 2022, in some cases, they had to transfer their own "inviolable stock" to Ukraine, and the latest EU plans for the supply of a large number of shells imply an even greater cleaning of warehouses with the intention of replenishing them later, perhaps in many years.
Moreover, the increased intensity of the use of weapons, primarily missile troops and artillery, cannot but lead to a revision of the target characteristics of certain products. For example, it may be considered appropriate to increase reliability to the detriment of outstanding range characteristics, other exchanges are also acceptable.
Information support. In some areas, the Ukrainian side and its "support group" coped at a high level, namely in terms of providing communications (including using the commercial service "Starlink", largely ahead of its military counterparts), intelligence through operational aggregation of data from a full range of sources, logistical support, despite the difficulties with the variety of used weapons.
At the same time, of course, it is necessary to make an amendment to a rather specific approach to the military actions of the Russian side, according to which strikes on the logistics infrastructure are not of a systemic nature, and relatively massive strikes on the energy infrastructure are launched only closer to the end of 2022.
Despite regular statements by opponents about what has happened or the imminent depletion of stocks of high-precision long-range weapons in the Russian arsenal, in fact, the available consumption of cruise missiles of the corresponding classes seems to exceed the boldest estimates, and, apparently, there is both a proper stock of components and opportunities to increase the intensity of manufacturers' work. At the same time, the preservation of these stocks and, in general, the still rather limited nature of the use of the WTO database may be explained, among other things, by insufficient information and intelligence support for such strikes, as well as, possibly, the tactical and technical characteristics of the corresponding means of destruction.
Limitations in the possibility of correcting and relieving problems. After the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complexes of almost all the leading players were reoriented primarily to fulfill limited commercial, often export, orders. It was simply impossible to have capacities idle most of the time in such conditions - both in the United States and in Russia in the 1990s a large-scale "optimization" of the defense industry was carried out, more like a pogrom.
It is an illusion to believe that the United States as the winner in the Cold War was better in this regard. In a number of industries, the situation was even worse.
A striking example is the Stinger MANPADS. After the supply of about half of the arsenal of the American armed forces to Ukraine (it was enough, apparently, only for the first months of the conflict), it turned out that serial production could not be resumed, because some of the components were unavailable, and the contractors retired. It was decided to develop a new MANPADS, which is included in the draft budget for the 2024 fiscal year (with the start of production according to the plan from 2027), and before that, attempts will be made to somehow restore and extend the service life of the remaining stocks. A number of manufacturers of other types of WTO (for example, wearable ATGMS or guided missiles MLRS) have reported plans to increase production, but this will give results only in a year or two.
If, after the current crisis, a period of calm comes (at least for some of the players), it will again become unprofitable, almost impossible to maintain excess defense industry capacity. The constant production of huge volumes of weapons in reserve or for their regular disposal in local wars (including through proxies), as they did during the Soviet-American Cold War, looks like an unacceptable burden on the economy. However, such a scenario is possible in the event of a long-term deterioration of the international situation.
It can be concluded that the worst option for the defense capability of any state is a simultaneous shortage of people and a shortage of modern weapons, military equipment and intelligence and combat control services. States that do not have a significant number of combatants, stocks of modern weapons and military equipment, or a base for their production may be in the most vulnerable position. Accordingly, most countries of the world will strive to solve both of these problems in accordance with their own capabilities, as well as the architecture of their military-political relations.
Possible solutionsRevision of existing approaches.
Many countries have thought that it is not enough to buy advanced weapons. It will need really large reserves: even if American arsenals for a number of nomenclature items burn down in a modern war, if not in weeks, then in a matter of months, what can we say, for example, about European armies.
The growth of ammunition purchases, apparently, will be a general trend, unlike visual contracts for the purchase of military equipment, it is not so striking to the public and experts. The question remains whether governments will prefer to advertise such purchases in order to show taxpayers where the money is going, or, on the contrary, will not annoy the population against the background of economic problems in many countries. At least in the United States, they are still loudly talking about restoring the production of those types of weapons that have been transferred to Ukraine in significant volumes.
The increase in defense spending was announced in the spring by the leading militarily European countries and these plans are not being abandoned, although implementation does not go smoothly everywhere and in few places they have led to high-profile arms procurement deals. However, this is obviously due to the inertia of the budget process.
First of all, it is necessary to mention Germany. Back on February 27, 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that in the coming years a special fund of about 100 billion euros (that is, about two annual conventional defense budgets of Germany) will be formed "for defense needs". In June, the Bundestag approved the plan, since even amendments to the Constitution were required for such significant unscheduled spending. Scholz announced his intention to create the "largest army in Europe" in the future - however, real steps to radically increase the number of the Bundeswehr have not yet been taken and it may be more difficult to find human reserves than monetary ones. However, purchases have already begun in Germany with the expectation of additional funding, for example, a contract has been signed for the purchase of American F-35A stealth multi-purpose fighters, which has long been suggested, since they are practically the only available replacement for physically and morally obsolete Tornado bombers as carriers of nuclear bombs of "NATO Joint Nuclear Missions". In general, according to preliminary plans, almost half of the additional fund's funds (about 41 billion euros) will go to the purchase of aircraft, and only a fifth (about 18.5 billion euros) will go to equipment for the ground forces - this is not affected by the experience of the conflict in Ukraine, but by local specifics: the Bundeswehr is armed relatively well with armored vehicles, but with helicopters, UAVs and a number of other areas of long-standing problems.
Almost immediately after the start of the military conflict in Ukraine, a significant increase in defense spending was announced by such alliance countries as Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, France.
Not all of them have developed and approved roadmaps for the growth of defense budgets, but the prolongation of the conflict contributes to the fact that they will appear in one form or another.
It should be noted that there are rather cautious expert assessments, for example, in the UK, indicating the possibility of overcoming the trend towards depletion of ammunition only by 2025-2026, and again with an emphasis on the key role of maintaining the appropriate political will.
The record holder for the growth of defense spending in Europe, in relative terms, is definitely Warsaw (if you look at the near future and spending on the purchase of weapons and military equipment, then probably in absolute terms). Poland's defense spending, including spending from a specially formed Fund of the armed forces, will amount to about $27-29 billion in 2023. The defense budget for 2022 was $ 12.5 billion, that is, we are talking about an increase of more than twice, to a huge 4.5% of GDP. Poland, unlike Germany, probably, based on the experience of the conflict, focused mainly on the acquisition of equipment for the ground forces: tanks, barrel and rocket artillery, combat helicopters. This is argued, among other things, by the transfer of part of the weapons stocks (for example, the T-72 tanks that were in reserve) to Ukraine.
A rather striking episode was the rapid build-up of military-technical cooperation between Poland and South Korea. So, it was decided to purchase the main K2 Black Panther tanks (180 vehicles for $ 3.4 billion), K9PL Thunder self-propelled artillery units (212 vehicles for $ 2.4 billion), K239 Chunmoo multiple launch rocket systems (a framework agreement of up to 288 vehicles for $ 6 billion), combat training aircraft /FA-50 light fighters (48 cars for $3 billion). These are probably the largest defense deals of the European Union by the end of the year. Poles also continue to actively purchase American military equipment, in particular M1A2 Abrams tanks, contracts for F-35A Lightning II fighters and an air defense system have already been concluded/ABOUT the MIM-104 Patriot in a promising PAC-3+ configuration.
Military-technical cooperation with Asia causes understandable irritation in the EU countries - in fact, instead of stimulating the development of the European defense industry, the gates are opening for a new player in the European market of military products. On the other hand, this is a natural result of the current situation - in light of the sharp expansion of demand and the lack of opportunities for traditional suppliers to satisfy it (for example, Poland stated that it would like to buy American HIMARS, but orders are scheduled), new players receive unique opportunities: not only the Republic of Korea, but also Turkey, Iran, Israel (of course, Israel cannot be called a newcomer to the military-technical cooperation, but it significantly expands its competencies) and Japan. An example of the expansion of the presence of young players in the Old World market can also be the rather unexpected choice of Germany as a promising missile defense complex of the Israeli IAI Arrow 3. In April 2023, the Israeli David's Sling air defense system was acquired by Finland, which had just joined NATO.
Probably, additional efforts will be made to equip the armed forces with unmanned platforms of all kinds, as well as barrage ammunition, including long-range. It is possible that the activated (albeit, in fact, never disappeared) Japan's interest in the formation of a strike potential based on high-precision long-range weapons is to a certain extent connected with the Ukrainian (more precisely, Russian) experience in the framework of its own. In the security doctrinal documents adopted in December, the Japanese government officially proclaimed the need to acquire "weapons for counterattacks on bases and command posts," i.e. at the first stage, American Tomahawk cruise missiles, and later their own systems, including hypersonic ones. If measures are implemented to sharply increase defense spending, Japan will fight for the third place in terms of their absolute size in the world - with Germany, if it also implements its plans.
Special attention will be paid to air defense systems/ABOUT and their integration and integration.
SVO has once again (but now especially vividly) demonstrated both the need for defense separation from the entire range of means of aerospace attack, and the impossibility of creating impenetrable "umbrellas". Bombers now, of course, cannot always be guaranteed to break through to the target (not least due to the political sensitivity of the loss of such), but missiles and other means of destruction are guaranteed to overload any defensive systems.
Efforts in the right direction. As the experience of its own is analyzed, concrete decisions will be made in the coming months to strengthen the defense potential not only in the countries involved in the conflict (albeit indirectly). As soon as such decisions are formalized, we will be able to observe a sharp increase in the burden on the military-industrial complexes, logistics infrastructure, as well as attempts to make military service more attractive. Accordingly, competition is intensifying in different areas: from the struggle of "buyers" for this or that "product", the increase in the output of which will take time, to the competition for high-quality "personnel" between various branches of the armed forces, and the armed forces as a whole with commercial structures, including multinational corporations.
On the other hand, the military's partnership with the private sector will intensify, for example, interaction with commercial digital services, the use of civilian satellite communications and remote sensing groups, the process of defense procurement will accelerate and bureaucratic obstacles for innovations or large purchases of ammunition will be softened (which, of course, will not always cause legal, but often pleasant for interested parties (splices of "buyers" and "sellers").
Defense spending is starting to grow again, accordingly, more and more creative justifications in the genre of threats from both "rogue states" and in general in connection with the "confrontation of the great powers" will be brought under this.
For example, Japan causes an increase in spending, on the one hand, ITS own, and on the other, the aggravation of the missile threat from the DPRK, and most importantly, the increasing global ambitions of the PRC and their confrontation with the United States and its allies (even Russia worries Tokyo primarily as an ally of China). The Republic of Korea uses similar rhetoric, flavoring it with weakly concealed criticism of Japan. Poland and the Baltic countries have turned the volume of the usual song about the Russian threat to the limit. The countries of Western Europe, from the point of view of rhetoric, are still mostly not confident enough.
In the United States, there is a generally consensus position according to which the armed forces require rapid modernization to ensure superiority over China. Within this narrative, variations are already appearing on whether it is worth spending forces and resources on deterring Russia and supporting Ukraine. The opinion that this only distracts from the confrontation with Beijing, to put it mildly, is not marginal. The extent to which Washington will be involved in European security in the medium term is a matter of the vicissitudes of the American domestic political struggle, which will thus have (indirectly and without excessive reflection) a strong influence on the global situation, since the policy of the European allies of the United States directly depends on it.
Conclusion: a cruel new worldConversations about the rapid degradation of the system of international military-political relations both globally and regionally have become commonplace.
The fighting in Ukraine has forced most countries to think again about their own potential in the event of a high-intensity interstate military conflict with their participation in a national or coalition capacity. It cannot be said that February 24, 2022 came suddenly (even if the course of hostilities was hardly expected in the form and scale in which we have been observing this for more than a year), we should not hope for an unexpected change in the global situation.
In the medium term, in the event of a "crackdown" of the defense industry, primarily in Europe, we are rolling into an explosive situation of heavily armed opponents on the line of contact, and even less than during the last cold war, we can talk about the unity of goals and objectives of the countries on both sides of this line. Especially threatening can be the massive deployment of high-precision long-range weapons of all types of basing, with the help of which, with a minimum warning time, strikes to the entire depth of the territory of opponents are possible. Serious threats will arise for the Russian fleet, both military and civilian, due to the known geographical limitations of the waters of the Baltic and Black Seas. Russia, of course, will strengthen its potential, and as a result, we will probably come to a balanced, but very unstable situation.
It is advisable to think about new measures to reduce risks, and in the future, full-fledged arms control. Today it is difficult to talk, for example, about the return of Russia and the United States to the Open Skies Treaty, and it is generally indecent to talk about a new version of the CFE Treaty. But they haven't come up with anything better yet. Special attention should be paid to the so-called escalationally dangerous weapons, these should include weapons that by default are in a high degree of combat readiness in peacetime, capable of defeating operational and strategic depth, as well as being used for signaling and reconnaissance actions - including formally during combat training events (including the so-called "electronic launches") in the immediate vicinity of the contact lines of possible opponents.
And yet, I think, in Europe, including Russia, they remember all too well what happens when it is not possible to agree on pan-European security. Accordingly, we dare to hope that when the emotional heat around the Ukrainian situation cools down somewhat, some mutually acceptable solutions will be found.
In full growth, another question will arise: what to do with the accumulated military power? Directly for Europe, a promising direction may be to strengthen positions in Africa, while American allies will seek to attract European contingents to the "Pacific deterrence" of China. The latter task may well be successful - and then Russia will probably offer China support in deploying, for example, naval or air contingents in the immediate vicinity of the European continent.
The world is becoming fully multipolar, but no safer. The "security dilemma", apparently, has again defeated the seemingly documented principle of the indivisibility of security.
The course of hostilities in Ukraine in 2022-2023 has already led to tectonic shifts in the defense industry and military construction of most countries. Radical changes are taking place in military-technical cooperation, both in terms of joint developments and the import and export of products. The priority is once again becoming the formation of an effective potential of general-purpose forces, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The key tasks facing the defense and industrial departments of the countries of the world are the creation of stocks and increasing the production of weapons of destruction, ammunition of all kinds (both "smart", "high-precision", etc., and traditional) and the revision of the staffing and organizational structure of combat units. Practical experience is also being studied.
Perhaps only one of the key trends of recent decades remains unchanged: the informatization of all elements of military activity. The creation of unified contours for the collection and analysis of intelligence data (including using the space echelon), bringing analytical information to those planning combat use and making appropriate decisions, as well as directly to participants in battles, targeting and evaluation of the effectiveness of hitting targets - all this, relying on the most advanced computer technology (including and the so-called "elements of artificial intelligence"), communication tools, as well as a variety of sensors, sensors and locators, becomes the most important factor for success or failure on the battlefield. But this factor fully works only if there is a sufficient number of appropriate means of destruction and personnel.
The actual question is what changes the architecture of military-political unions and other similar formats will undergo, which countries will try to avoid direct involvement in conflict events, remaining suppliers of military products, and most importantly, how the socio-economic environment in certain states will react to the changes indicated in this article. It is difficult to call a special military operation a revolutionary event, but these changes in approaches to military construction will have a long-term impact on the development of at least those countries that consider the events taking place to be a key factor of national security today and in the future.
