Defence Industry Day held

On 14 December the annual Defence Industry Day was held at the BALTDEFCOL. This day supports the learning objectives of the Joint Command and General Staff Course’s Learning Area 3 “Defence Planning” and in particular the Resource Fundamentals module which focuses on material, manpower and financial aspects of national and international defence planning.

The BALTDEFCOL Defence Management and Officership Department had managed to gather a number of experts and representatives of major European defence industrial companies to the Björn Von Sydow lectur hall. Present were AVM (ret) Richard Moore and Dr. Andrew White from QinetiQ Group (UK), Mr. Guillermo Gucchi from Finmeccanica (Italy) and BG (ret) Lennart Källqvist from Saab Group (Sweden).

The aim of the Defence Industry Day was to tackle industrial and technological questions that affect not only defence planning but international operations as well. The cooperation between armed forces and defence industry has increased and taken new forms. Both parties can benefit from this cooperation if it is properly run and managed. Moreover, advanced technologies can contribute rather rapidly to the on-going missions and operations.

The representatives of QinetiQ presented some solutions to procurement and programme support issues and showed how it is possible to save resources with support of new technologies. They even provided some examples showing how it is possible to get more capabilities with fewer resources and in shorter time. Mr. Gucchi from Finmeccanica explained e.g. how the industry with its new technological solutions has answered to the challenges of international operations. BG (ret) Källqvist from Saab explained the origins of the Swedish defence thinking and emphasized the importance of information and the role of new C4 technologies of providing it.

This not just another-day-at-the-office at the BALTDEFCOL ended with a panel discussion where the distinguished quests answered to the challenging questions the students and the directed staff forwarded to them.