Catherine Sendak
Hello, my name is Catherine Sendak and welcome to CEPA’s “State of the Alliance”, a series bringing together thought leaders from Europe and North America to deliberate the most pressing challenges facing allies and partners. Today I am honored to welcome Lieutenant General Karel Řehka , Chief of the General Staff of Czechia. Thank you so much for joining us.

Karel Řehka
Thank you for the invitation.

Catherine Sendak
Yes, we’re so happy you’re here. So as we get started, here, we are more than two years since Russia’s full scale invasion into Ukraine, more than 10 years since their illegal annexation of Crimea. From your perspective, how is the alliance doing? How would you assess the alliance’s of support to Ukraine to this point?

Karel Řehka
I think the alliance is doing pretty well. And it’s not just in support of Ukraine, but it’s also in its own transformation. If you look at the what the Vladimir Putin was trying for a long time he was he, I think he understands that the center of gravity for the alliance is the cohesion and the unity. And I think he was trying to disrupt it all the time. But actually what he managed to do by the war and by the invasion full scale war in Ukraine, he managed to, to do quite the opposite. So so I think we are stronger. We have better cohesion and unity. And we not only support Ukraine as as the individual countries or as a as a, collectively, but we also we we finally woke up. And we are pushing very hard on strengthening our deterrence and defense. And we are transforming ourselves.

Catherine Sendak
Speaking of that waking up, the initiative started by Czechia to obtain more critical Munitions for Ukraine, looking all around the world looking for sources to provide Ukraine. There’s been a lot of news recently about progress in that initiative. I would love your thoughts on on the progress of it and what we all are seeking to do.

Karel Řehka
Yeah, okay. Well, this, this got some attention now, because our President mentioned it during the Munich Security Conference. But actually, this has been ongoing scheme for last two years, pretty much since the beginning of the invasion. And so not only we provide it, we provide assistance in different fields, in all instruments, so it’s diplomatically economic wise. And also militarily, we provide support for training, but also for material, not only from the army stocks, but also from from our defense industry. And one of the schemes, what we do is that we try to identify stuff around the world, which is needed in Ukraine, and make sure we ship it to Ukraine. And so currently, we talked about this artillery munitions, especially, this is something which is very urgently and acutely needed in Ukraine. So obviously, midterm and long term, we need to boost our production capacity. But at the same time, you know, this will take some time. So what we try to do, we managed to identify a munition, which is needed in Ukraine around the world. And we tried to connect the the financing, and money from different places with the ammunition and make sure it’s organized, and it can get to Ukraine as soon as possible.

Catherine Sendak
Providing that stop gap while both Europe and the United States amp up production, which we both recognize needs to happen faster. So that’s, that’s great to hear. I think from the alliance perspective, Czechia is celebrating its 25th anniversary in NATO this year. And later on, we’ll be celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO as an alliance. As you all look back on 25 years of membership in NATO. We’d love your thoughts on the evolution of the relationship, how you assess the partnership, and moving forward that partnership with NATO.

Karel Řehka
Well, actually, as I see it as a military person, because I’m a soldier, but truly, it’s not about military being a NATO, it’s about the whole country being part of NATO. It brought and and what it, what it gave us mostly is a prosperity because it gives us safety. It gives us safety, stability, and security. And and that means prosperity, because you cannot have prosperity for your citizens without security. So I would say we live comfortable lives. We are very safe and secure. And I think this is thanks to NATO. And I think one of the major lessons out of the Ukraine war, the nationwide lesson, district strategic level lesson is really it showed us and reminded us how important it is that we became part of NATO and that we use that window of opportunity what we had and and I have to I have to just thank to all of those people who who managed to do it because because this was a, this was major achievement. And historically, if you look long term in the history of our country, we are in a in a central Europe, we are not in easy geographic location. And actually, right now we have a unique situation where we are surrounded by only allies and friends. And that’s whether it’s NATO or EU. And this is, this is absolutely crucial for the security and prosperity of our country.

Catherine Sendak
It’s such an interesting perspective, because there’s so many European countries that aren’t surrounded by allies and friends that have a very different border. And to that end, you know, as we look at Russia’s, you know, illegal full scale invasion in Ukraine, as you all from a military perspective, look at your planning, your threat assessments, your strategic priorities, how has Russian actions influenced those priorities?

Karel Řehka
It influenced everything and it’s again you know, it goes from this, this grand strategic level, down to the tactical level, what do we do in military, we as a, it’s not only Czech Republic, because we’re not in isolation. It’s the whole EU and the whole NATO, especially, as I mentioned, the NATO changed a lot. So we’re finally implementing with with the concrete measures, these deterrence and defense concept, with a new family of plans with the new force model and all those things, and obviously Czech Republic is reacting to, for us everything changed. We have a new national security strategy, we have a new defense strategy. And for the military, we have the new development consent for the military. And those are all all three, those documents are key for the military, it gives, it gives us tasking, and also the direction. And it’s a government level documents. And basically, what it says and what the major change is. First, it clearly identifies the threats. And it and in regards to Ukraine, it mentions that Russia is a is the greatest and the direct threat to the Czech Republic, which wasn’t mentioned before in this security strategy. And it also tells us that we need to we need to prepare, we need to do long term preparations for potential large scale, high intensity armed conflict with the technologically advanced enemy who possess nuclear weapons. So that’s a complete shift. That’s a different task in for the military. And it also, the other important narrative of those strategies is that and as again, as a major lesson from Ukraine is that if you are preparing for such eventuality, for such a conflict, the defense is not about the military, it’s about it’s about the whole of society approach. So these are the major lines and obviously for the military, then it gives you different problems. So you, you not only look at the expeditionary capabilities you need to look at, you need to modernize and change every war fighting function of the military pretty much. And it’s much more about also stocks, supplies, different sustainment concepts, security of supplies, reserves, and things like that, which were not so relevant for the out of area operations.

Catherine Sendak
Right, a very different fight we’ve we’ve been fighting for the past 20 plus years. And so that’s a great note and you bring up the regional defense plans that the alliance is working on implementing from, from your perspective, you know, are there challenges with the execution of those plans that you’re concerned about? How do you feel the implementation is going so far?

Karel Řehka
Well, of course, there are challenges.

Catherine Sendak
With almost 32 partners here.

Karel Řehka
Nothing good is easy. So yes, there are challenges, obviously, because it’s not only my country, I guess it’s more countries. For the last 20 plus years, we were focusing on something completely different. Plus, I have to say, we heavily under resourced the defense and the military in our country, at least in last two decades. And, and that’s, you know, if you waiting for the crisis, and then you start investing into the defense, that’s the most stupid way you can do it. And this is exactly what happened. So I believe we’ll learn from it. There is a major change, also a major political support of the government to the military, we get a new law, which tells us by law that we need to invest minimum 2% of GDP into defense. And, and obviously, that, that basically changes a lot.

Catherine Sendak
Well, it’s so interesting. We were talking before about, you know, seeking munitions for Ukraine, you know, in everywhere, globally. You know, and we’re learning so many lessons here in the United’s States about how to restock and replenish our stocks and what that looks like, that long term planning. What is the Czech Republic doing to address internal stocks, munitions, replenishment?

Karel Řehka
It’s, it’s part of the plan. It’s, we try to, it’s one of the priority areas. For me, it’s the it’s a spirit modernization. And it’s priority for the whole MLD. And for the whole country, I would say. So, so we are, because of the because of the gaps from the past, we have to invest a lot into modernization now. So actually, you probably know that that the recommended recommended portion of the budget is about minimum 20% should go into modernization and investments for next five to seven years. For us. It’s actually about 50% goes to modernization and investment. In some years, it’s actually 60%. Just this is not long term, sustainable, probably portion. But this just tells you how much under resourced we were in the past. So this is one of the areas we’re doing, we’re getting rid of the any dependency on the Soviet type of equipment, which we already changed very much. But now we we’re doing the rest. We are modernizing every warfighting function you look at so it’s firepower, sustainment, mobility, intelligence, everything basically, is more modernized. We have a number of projects, obviously, the biggest ones the well knowns are the F 35s or the you know, the CU 90s the infantry fighting vehicles, because it’s major projects, but actually, it’s guns, it’s air defense, radars, sensors, it’s everything. So this is one thing. But at the same time, the second thing, we are gradually building up the stocks of munitions and other things. And also when we procure new equipment, we are much more looking at the lifecycle, security of supplies. And we always try to get at least 30% of, 30% of the investment from the domestic industry. So to help to develop the domestic defense industry.

Catherine Sendak
That’s great. You know, I’ve always appreciated that goal within the alliance of the 20%, modernization and equipping. I think it’s, it’s a worthy goal that doesn’t get enough attention publicly, because that is how you’re going to address these challenges moving forward to make sure you have the things you need and the capabilities that you need to to address the threat. So turning topics a little bit. Lessons learned from from the battlefield in Ukraine, the convergence of 21st century technology and 20th century warfighting, we’re seeing the increased use of AI, UAS, on the battlefield for for different ways that we then, you know, that we predicted, you know, as you’re looking at that, from your perspective, and where you sit in the Czech Republic, you know, how are you all are viewing the evolution of warfare when it comes to the use of technology?

Karel Řehka
So if I get there, are there are those nationwide big lessons, which is about resilience, whole of society approach or whatever. And if I go to the military part to the warfare, there’s, again, you know, if you look at the warfighting functions that the military does on the battlefield, every function has major lessons. So it’s, it’s there’s a lot of it. But I would say, what is what is interesting now on the battlefield, or what it shows us is, first, the big war between the two states, big states or more states will never be short. There’s always elements of attrition, even though you have you may have technological advantage, there will, there will be this element. That’s why you need those supplies, reserves and all that stuff. So the operational capacity is not only about quality, but it’s a combination of quality and quantity, and you have to look for the right balance. So that’s one of the lessons. Obviously if you look at this if you look at this war, it may sometimes it may I remind you of the First World War because trench warfare, Second World War, the tanks, the heavy use of artillery, but actually, that just looks on the surface. But below the surface, you have this combination of the old and new with a lot of the modern technologies and and that reminds more and more this multi-domain concepts of the new warfighting. So it’s about the it’s about the right management of the huge amount of data and making sure you can collect it, you can process it you can get the right information at the right time to the right place and make it usable. You can see how how much is the time from the sensor to the effector, sensitive shooter time, as we call it sometimes how much that decreased and that puts demands on how we configure our forces in the field, how we configure our command controlling the field. So, also, if you’re looking at the force protection, for example, camouflage, it’s not that you camouflage yourself somewhere, you stay there for two weeks, you know, and you’re okay, because the battlefield is full of sensors. So you need to disperse much, you need to be more more wild, more agile, and a game that that brings the challenges to command control and communications. So you need to basically be able to concentrate the effects without concentrating forces too much. And, and you can go on and on. So So basically, there’s major lessons like this also, on the logistics, how do you sustain the forces without having a too heavy logistics tail, and being vulnerable on this. Which is exactly what we were doing for last 20 years in autofair? operations. Which was logical, because it was different set, different scenario. And if you look, if you look at the battlefield, what is exactly. You know, as I mentioned, you sometimes, for example, the asymmetry, you know, you have to look also, economically, you cannot shoot $1 million rocket, right to the to shoot down the $20,000, you know, UAV, right. So, and then you look at what the Ukrainians are doing, for example, the air mobile air defense teams, you look at the team, it’s a Jeep machine gun, it looks simple, it looks like Second World War. But actually, that’s not the trick. The trick is that they know where to wait for the UAV. So that’s the technology it’s 1000s of sensors, there must be a network, you know, how do you get that information to the right people. So it’s about using the cloud services, it’s about digitalization of the command control. So you can see everything we imagine about the new battlefield with the emerging disruptive technologies, but at the same time, it’s a combination with the old stuff, because power still matters. Artillery matters, and will matter. Just like tanks and other things.

Catherine Sendak
And humans, humans still matter in this equation.

Karel Řehka
And you’re right because it’s all about humans. Because you can have whatever weapons but it’s always been served by people.

Catherine Sendak
Right. Right. So interesting. So on final question is not only are you celebrating an anniversary into NATO membership this year, NATO is celebrating a real mark, 75 years that we are marking in July here in Washington at the summit. What would you like to see out of the summit this summer?

Karel Řehka
Well, I mean, I would like to, I would like to see overall, it’s not just this summit, will and leadership. Because this is what we need, actually. We are strong, we are the most successful alliance, historically, even though we are relatively new member, that this is the most successful alliance. We are very strong and militarily strongest alliance. We protect about billion people. We have 50% combined of the GDP of the world. We have over 3 million people in arms with all the great reserves. And and then if you compare it with the Russia threat, for example, but also other threats. I think we have everything we need also to help Ukraine’s. We just need a will and leadership and and I would like that from any summit in the future.

Catherine Sendak
Well, I agree and what a great place to end this discussion General. Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you for tuning in to CEPA’s “State of the Alliance”. Please visit cepa.org and CEPA’s social media accounts to stay up to date on the latest analysis and events