Press Briefing

Good afternoon to all of you and it's a pleasure to join you here at NATO Headquarters.

What I wanted to do is spend just a couple of moments opening up with a short statement to tell you a little bit about Allied Command Transformation and then I'll take questions.

I've had an extremely productive morning here, and as you no doubt are aware, I'm in Brussels, along with General Jones and the Chiefs of Defence, for a series of meetings and discussions with the Military Committee in Chiefs of Staff Session, hosted by General Kujat. Later in the week I will be in the Czech Republic for meetings with their general staff and then we will conclude our week in Europe with a visit to Turkey for meetings and a chance to visit military forces training and Exercise Allied Action in Istanbul.

Today I want to talk to you briefly about NATO's Transformation to include the most significant organizational change in NATO's history and in particular Allied Command Transformation and how we are structured to lead the change for NATO.

At the conclusion, as I said, I'll be happy to take some questions as time permits.

NATO is transforming for the future. It's a never-ending process that is crucial at this pivotal moment in history. We are undergoing change that will enable creative solutions to the operational challenges of coalition warfare operations and the complexities of the new threats in this new century.

We face the imperative of rapid action in our new and rapidly-changing security environment. NATO is meeting this imperative with imagination, innovation and energy. Changes that used to take NATO years to implement are now taking place in months. This is the NATO I think we need for the 21st Century.

Transformation means more than just purchasing new technologies and systems, new platforms. It also means changing our thinking, organization and culture by adopting new structures, improving training methods, adapting doctrine and educating leaders.

Keeping focus on delivering products today, not years from now, is how ACT, and that's the acronym that we call Allied Command Transformation, will assist NATO in meeting the challenges of a changing security environment.

NATO must possess capabilities across the full spectrum of military operations that are both agile and flexible enough to respond to a broad array of potential threats. The multispectral nature of modern operations poses new and difficult challenges. NATO forces may be involved in high intensity, high tempo warfare, peace support and security operations in the distribution of humanitarian aid, all at the same time and in the same area.

As part of the 2002 Prague Summit a new military command structure designed to be more efficient, effective and adapted to the operational requirements of Alliance missions was approved. The new military command structure will function effectively both in times of peace and of crisis being leaner and more efficient, containing rapidly deployable elements such as the new NATO Response Force.

To begin with, we have two strategic commands. One for transforming NATO's military commanders, and one to run and oversee all NATO's operations. ACT was created with Allied Command Atlantic was decommissioned on the 19th of June of this year.

And we are now a fully joint command with all NATO nations being represented. ACT is NATO's forcing agent for change, leading the continuous improvement of the Alliance capabilities to uphold NATO's global security interests.

Our NATO leaders recognize the importance of having one of the two strategic commands located in North America. Locating ACT in Norfolk alongside another command that I have, United States Joint Forces Command, guarantees a two-way transformational road map on the transatlantic bridge for NATO. Ensuring that U.S. concepts in both doctrine and capabilities are available to NATO, while at the same time providing a European context to U.S. efforts in joint interoperability and integration with our Alliance Forces.

Many of you have already heard great things about Allied Command Operations from General Jones, my very close friend, so I'm not going to go into Allied Command Operations today. What I'd like to focus, as I said, is on ACT and how we are organized and how we'll work to help transform NATO in the future.

Headquarters SACT, which is the acronym for Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, is to become... is supposed to become an intellectual centre for Transformation in the Alliance.

Key delivery activities are located in the heart of Europe. The recently-created Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway, which we officially stood up on the 23rd of October and the soon-to-be in the next year stood up Joint Forces Training Centre in Bydgoszcz, Poland, are jewels in our transformational crown. Training the NATO Response Force command elements with a global reach capability at an affordable cost, while incorporating innovative concepts from our experimentation efforts in the lessons learned from ongoing operations.

Upon this basis our NATO Joint Warfare Centre and the Joint Force Training Centre I just spoke of, can respond to crises with tailored rehearsals and training, in effect fighting the battle in practice several times before likely operations might begin.

The immediate focus of our Transformation's mandate is supporting Allied Command Operations and delivering the NATO Response Force. So that primary customer is Allied Command Operations and our first task is to work on the NATO Response Force. The NRF is both product of and the process by which Transformation, in my view, will be achieved in NATO. It will be a technologically advanced flexible, deployable, interoperability and a sustainable force, including land, sea and air elements.

It has two main purposes: To provide a high readiness force that can quickly carry out Alliance missions, and to provide an operational catalyst for focusing and promoting Alliance military capabilities, as well as continuing this Transformation process.

The NATO Response Force will demonstrate the Alliance's ability to meet threats wherever they may be and demonstrate NATO's military harnessing new equipment and doctrine that provide a flexible, hard-hitting force.

Finally, that is certainly a broad-brush view of this strategic command structure, and a little bit about the NATO Response Force from my perspective.

Now I'll be happy to take your questions. Thank you.

Questions and answers

Q: Klaus (inaudible)... Television Journal. Admiral, could you tell us a little bit about what has been done meanwhile, since the founding ceremony on the 19th of June? How many leading figures from NATO have been instructed there, for which periods, for months, for weeks, for only a few days? And could you elaborate a little bit on the program you tried to train them in the new fashion you want to go?

Admiral Giambastiani: Okay, three questions. Normally I like to do maybe two max, but three.

Let me start at your first question--how much has been done--and speak for a few moments, since the 19th of June.

In July probably... well, first of all, immediately after the change of command, if you will, the decommissioning of Allied Command Atlantic, and the stand-up of Allied Command Transformation... By the way, that was attended by the Secretary General, many Chiefs of Defence Staff, many of the senior NATO staff here. We had an immediate seminar called... it was a Transformation seminar, and we held that for a day and a half with all of the permanent representatives from NATO.

The purpose of it was to talk to them about the Transformation process being what we call an end-to-end process. In other words, it deals with all of those subjects I've already talked to you about. It's not just material and technology; it's doctrine, organization, training, personnel, leadership, facilities. And we went through a process to have a discussion with them.

So the immediate work was done in the first three days, with all of the permanent representatives, and the military representatives, present.

On June 23rd... July 23rd, excuse me, was our next significant event and we went to Stavanger, although not stood up as a Joint Warfare Centre as yet. We brought in lessons learned from four nations who have operated during Operation Iraqi Freedom: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland.

And as it turns out we spent day working on lessons learned from what we called at that time 'major combat operations'. It was important because it was a good exchange of views from all of the participants and it was a start for us changing the way we operate the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre which is located in Monsanto, Portugal, which is also under Allied Command Transformation.

The next major event was that this newly-formed Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre, which was supposed to originally be just a command that operated in Portugal, and did analysis looking at reports, information and other things, I immediately got a number of members prepared to deploy and when the commander of the International Security Assistance Force deployed with NATO Forces to Kabul, Afghanistan in August, we followed with members of this lessons learned team shortly thereafter.

The reason for this is that in my American hat I found that having an interactive lessons learned effort is very beneficial to military forces when they're operating. So we did the lessons learned effort next.

There's been numerous other things going on. We just finished a major exercise in the month of October called Northern Lights. It involved about 8000-plus military personnel and it was our first experimentation venue that we participate in as Allied Command Transformation.

So we've had a series of venues and then on October 23rd we officially stood up the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger and established it; its full operational capability is not supposed to occur for about another two and a half years, but we're going to try to accelerate that. But we have made that happen already.

In addition, we've had a site visit at Bydgoszcz. I have gone there myself to speak with the Chief of Defence of Poland, to look at how we're going to stand up this Joint Force Training Centre, which will be involved in NATO tactical training, to support the NATO Response Force.

So as you can see there's been quite a bit that's gone on over a period of time. And as to the level of officials, interspersed in this I've had a number of informal CHOD(?) sessions, back in September, and of course, I'm here for the formal Chiefs of Staff Military Committee meeting.

So that kind of explains what we've done. Thank you for that question. I hope I've gotten about all of it.

Q: Nick Furens, Defence News and Armed Forces Journal. Could... Admiral, could you please explain the relationship between ACT...sorry, and the agencies and maybe that will help me also understand the roles of your command and the NC3A and the NATO... the network-centric warfare study, and then I just want to ask clarification. Someone at NC3A told me that you distinguish between C2 and C2 ISR. Maybe you could explain what you mean by that.

Admiral Giambastiani: Good news travels quickly.

First of all, Allied Command Transformation's relationship with agencies. Officially, we have no relationship with the agencies today. However, negotiations and discussions are going on inside the Military Committee, and I won't go into more detail than that, on an official linkage and relationship that Allied Command Transformation should have with these agencies in the future.

However, in order to move out smartly here within our NATO Alliance, we in ACT have been working with the agencies already and we started that back even before the stand up of ACT in June. For example, Major General Peter Dicks from NC3A just visited me two and a half weeks ago specifically so we could work out some details of our forthcoming relationship. In particular it's very important for us to get these relationships with the agencies correct and it's a good question you're asking, because there are a lot of things that we work on in defence planning and in transformation of forces that are directly impacted by and will directly impact on the agencies.

With regard to my definition, if I could, NATO and inside the United States has described command control, computers, if you will, "and communications, plus intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in one of those crazy acronyms we come up with, C4 ISR. Okay? That's what we call it. The problem with that definition is that command and control is a human function. People command and control forces and therefore that is a human function, whereas the computers, the communications, the networks, the net-centricity and the rest of that are more, if you will, more technical terms, and have a more technical bent.

And one of our lessons learned, that we briefed back in July, at Stavanger, was this distinction between the human functions of military command and control and the rest of the networking, if you will, the infrastructure and the technical sides. And that's why I described that and we describe that, if we use an acronym today as C2 for command and control, plus C2I or C2 ISR, so that we make a distinction between the two of them. I hope that's understandable, but that's why we do that, because command and control is a human function.

And that's the art of command.

Q: And then my question about the study? I mean, how... what is the role of ACT and the NATO on network-centric... or warfare study on...

Admiral Giambastiani: Ah, I think what you'll find is that formally ACT will be a part of this study. It is not the lead agency in it. However, because of the command and control functions that are required you'll find that we will spend quite a bit of time working on net-centric operations.

Q: Peter Muller(?) from European Security and Defence. Sir, as a commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, as well as ACT, what is your lessons learned from Iraq, which you can bring in after six months now into this topic?

Admiral Giambastiani: What I would say to you is, is that not surprisingly all of you may have heard potentially some of the discussions with regard to lessons learned, but I would tell you the following.

Number one, jointness. Or as the Brits would say, Jointery. My aunt caused this an arthritic condition. She says it's not a good English word, but in the military we call jointness the ability to bring together the services, special operations forces in a way that exceeds the sum of their parts.

That is, jointness. And the importance of this is the ability to be able to bring army, navy, air force, marine corps and special operations forces, plus potentially those in an inter-agency and non-governmental way together so that you create effects in the operations that you're doing that are larger and more directed than they would be if you operated with a single service, if that hopefully is sensible to you.

It is a way we integrate forces in a coherent manner. So when you listen to all that technical jargon what does it mean? You work better together, a lot better. You integrate the forces in both the planning and in all of the operations up front. That's probably one of the main lessons learned.

Another lessons learned is that the ability for forces to bring conventional capabilities and special operations together similar to that discussion I just had about jointness, but bring them together and have them operate in an interoperable fashion, is exceedingly important, and once again provides greater value for the operation or combat operation that you're conducting.

So those were two very significant positive impacts, for example.

On the negative side, and I've got some expensive, unclassified testimony on this, you're welcome to look at my testimony here in the United States on this, but our ability to quantify and qualify, if you will, Battle Damage Assessment--that's a term that we use within the military, both in NATO and in the United States, it's called BDA or Battle Damage Assessment--our ability to do this rapidly for very fast-paced operations, is not good enough today.

We have a significant way to go to be able to assess the effects, if you will, on the battlefield, so that's a significant detriment to our operations and we need to know how to do this in a more quick, in a faster turnaround. But the ability to assess effects as opposed to counting things, today we count things. We count how many tanks are destroyed, we count how many artillery pieces are destroyed. That is not as important as the effect on the battlefield or the outcome of an operation that you would conduct.

And what that means is, is that we believe in what we called effects-based operations. In other words, if you do something what is the reaction and the outcome on the battlefield, as opposed to just counting numbers.

So those are probably significant findings.

Q: Kathryn Luxter(?) of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. I would like to ask you a question about lessons learned as working method. Is there any limit to the situations, or conflicts, that can... and the experiences that can be drawn, that are judged interesting? I mean, whether or not they relate only to NATO partners. And if there is no such limits that will eventually mean that the results of the lessons learned will be shared as well.

Could you comment on that?

Admiral Giambastiani: Sure. First of all, most of the lessons learned efforts that we have started are generally always classified in nature initially and then we work to find out what we can declassify so that we can provide them to the public.

Now NATO just got into the lessons learned business less than a year ago, and when I came to Allied Command Transformation I modified the way we operate here, as I said, so I could deploy lessons learned operators. Now why did I do that?

Generally, lessons learned efforts in the past have been what one would call a static post-mortem. We would go do an operation somewhere and then after the operation was completed we would send a team of people somewhere to go learn about the operation, take debriefings, look at notes and data and then a year later come back and create a report that somebody would look at long after the operation was over.

Our view was, is that it was more important to create an interactive and dynamic diagnosis of what was going on while it was happening, so that we could gather some insights immediately and provide them back to the operational commanders as soon as possible. So that's the focus that we're taking now with the lessons learned effort.

Now, your question about is there any limit to this? Well of course there is the number of people you have in this effort. Right now our lessons learned effort is with an extremely small staff because that's what I currently have. It's probably about under two dozen people.

And that's my entire headquarters at Monsanto, and I have deployed three, four, five, six of these in Afghanistan. But as the Alliance moves to other areas we will deploy lessons learned forces with these operations. It will be initially a reasonably small effort. We think it will grow I size somewhat as we move in the past, because on the U.S. side I started this about a year ago and it has grown considerably. In the United States I had two people working on this a year ago and now I have about 40. Okay? Just to give you an idea of the magnitude.

Now can you cover every subject? Certainly not. And what we do is, we step back and ask ourselves, what issues do we want to cover that are of importance, and right now we've chosen ISAF in Afghanistan so that every time we rotate NATO forces we can bring the lessons in the training program for the next group that leads.

The next pace we want to use them for is to integrate them in our NATO Response Force training so that we can make the NATO Response Force more relevant. So those are two good areas. But we are not... we are resource limited here. We don't have unlimited potential. That's a long answer.

Q: Carmen Romero(?) from the Spanish News Agency. Admiral, apparently you complained this morning to your allies saying that you didn't have enough financial resources because you only have the money designated to (inaudible). I would like to know if this is correct, and what was the reaction of the allies?

Thank you.

Admiral Giambastiani: Okay, I'm not sure who handed you the information that I complained to the allies today, because I actually did not. And in fact I don't even speak formally to all of the Chiefs of Defence, although I've been in the meetings and I participate with them, I'm actually going to talk to them about an Allied Command Transformation report tomorrow, okay?

But since you ask the question, what I would describe to you is as follows: Because of my work in the United States as Commander United States Joint Forces Command I'm responsible for doing experimentation in a joint level in the United States.

I have a budget within the United States and about 25 percent of my budget is focused on experimentation in the United States. Currently, because we ware creating the NATO structure here, Allied Command Transformation, and it's a brand new command, my current budget, which I inherited from ACLANT, only allows two percent of my budget for experimentation. So I have a huge imbalance here, and that's really the gut issue here.

So we're not talking large dollars or large euros, numbers of euros, but the point is is that I have to redress that imbalance, if that makes sense to you.

So I haven't talked to them yet about it, this time, but I have in the past. Okay?

Q: Leon Bruno, Agence French Presse. Could you clarify the level of participation of specifically of France? They had requested and wanted to be part of this Transformation which obviously they are, but since they're not in the integrated military structure I'd like to know exactly how France is represented in ACT and what's it's role there.

Admiral Giambastiani: Sure.

Q: And if I may ask a second question, how do you see your role, how do you see Transformation when resources are so scant inside NATO, which has a significant importance in deployments, for example, in Afghanistan? How do you see your role in that?

Admiral Giambastiani: Well, here's what I would tell you: Right now you all know France is not part of the integrated military structure. However, France has offered, and we currently have four officers at the Headquarters Allied Command Transformation who are what we call voluntary national contributions to my staff.

I also have a French military mission headed by a French admiral, who is the French military mission head to Supreme Allied Command Transformation and he has a small staff separately.

One of the three officers that first deployed out of my lessons learned centre in Portugal, to Kabul, Afghanistan, was a French officer, a lieutenant Colonel and he was part of my lessons learned team. So right now that is French participation within Allied Command Transformation.

And to your second question, with regard to resources, as always resources will be an issue, and I think one of the reasons why it makes sense in general to work and commit yourself to a Transformation command, as NATO has, is because in the long run it helps you more widely expend the resources that you have.

That's the reason why, in my view, NATO accepted putting this command together and embraced it and moved very rapidly. Think about the fact that when I released, as commander U.S. Joint Forces command in October of last year, I did not relieve as Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. And eight and a half months later NATO created allied command Transformation and acutally stood it up. That is light speed, in my view, for any large organization. It's pretty impressive.

And NATO is very serious about this, and I think that's why NATO is why NATO as an alliance has embraced this.

Q: Could I have a follow-up on that? I'd just like to have your thoughts. Indeed, the NRF was set up very quickly, but if nations are ready to identify forces for an NRRF, which we don't know when we'll use, but at the same time they're not able or willing to give forces for actually combat operations today saying Afghanistan then there you have a sort of contradictory situation.

Admiral Giambastiani: I'm not sure what your question is?

Q: My question is to have your reaction on that. I mean, you said it in light speed, the NRF and all that. Fine. But the fact is is that there are insufficient resources to fulfil several duties out there and the case now is Afghanistan...

Admiral Giambastiani: I would refer you... I would refer you probably to Lord Robertson's discussions on this subject. I just read this morning when he talked about the number of standing forces within NATO he... and I'll use his numbers: 1.4 million forces active; another 1 million in reserve and yet we have 55,000 deployed and we seem to have trouble generating additional force structure out of 2.4 million men and women under arms within NATO countries. That's pretty significant.

So I stand by Lord Robertson here.

That's why you have a Transformation come in and work on that.

Q: I'm Frederick (inaudible), United Nations and from your very lucid and detailed explanation, Admiral, it appears to me that Allied Command Transformation seems to be less of a command than a research and a comment organization.

What I'd be very grateful if you would tell me, is what does it actually command? You mentioned three centres. Is that what it commands underneath it? And how big is Headquarters ACT?

Admiral Giambastiani: Sure. First of all, many nations initially within NATO were concerned about participating in a non-operational command. And therefore were hesitant a year ago to think about this structure. Since then I would ask you to talk with individual nations about what they find is important about Allied Command Transformation. In the classic military sense of what you command, Allied Command Transformation is very small. In fact, we make up, I think, less than ten percent of all of the military headquarters manpower within the entire NATO structure. Which in itself ought to send a message that we are lean and mean, okay, and that we want to purposely be small, but have a large impact.

Because we have two customers. One of them is to support General Jones and Allied Command Operations fully. In its training, doctrine and operational mission. And secondly, to work directly with individual nations as a customer, if you will.

So there are two customers, Allied Command Operations and the individual nations. So in a classic sense you're completely correct. We are a very small outfit, but that ought to send a clear message to everyone that we're trying to have a large impact with a small command, if you will, but working in the centres that we talked about already.

Now there are other things that we work with, curriculums for schools, NATO schools, NATO college, the rest of it, but what's important is to have impact on NATO doctrine, organizations from the joint task force Headquarters level, in other words, command and control, and that's fundamental to how the NATO response force operations for example.

How we jointly train, how we help describe the force structure of NATO. For example, the NATO Force Structure Planning Cell is now within Allied Command Transformation. That is significant.

So what I would tell you is is that that's where we play a major role and the, of course, trying to make this dynamic diagnosis. That ought to send a message for that force structure of 2.4 million out of there, how to transform yourself and help transfer early.

Q: Yeah, John Chalmers with Reuters.

Admiral Giambastiani: Yes, John.

Q: You spoke about the lessons learned from Iraq and you have the Joint Warfare Training Centre. Do you have... given the fact that we now have a very serious situation in Iraq post conflict, and give that NATO's operations in the last decade have tended to be peacekeeping operations, do you think that you should have a post-conflict or post-warfare training centre.

Admiral Giambastiani: I can guarantee you that if NATO operates in Iraq as an Alliance then we will have a lessons learned team with them from the day they walk in to the country, if that's what happens. If the Alliance decides to do it our lessons learned team will be there with them. And it will be a very important component of what we do.