The recent remarks by the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces at the Congress of Mayors, Despite the polemics they provoked, they served as a strategic reminder that a high-intensity conflict would affect the whole nation, and not just the armed forces.
Conflicts fought by French armies since the 2000s have mainly involved counter-terrorism, peacekeeping or peacemaking operations. As such, they have not directly involved the survival of the nation or the preservation of its sovereignty.
However, the return of major conflicts such as the one currently raging in Ukraine is a reminder that war involves the entire nation: administrations, companies, intermediary bodies, communities and citizens. As a collective expression of the Clausewitzian will, the Nation contributes to the war effort through direct action in theaters of operation, through logistical and technical support for the units engaged, and through the continuity of activities essential to the life of the country.
It's partly the role of reservists. In the event of crisis or war, the reserves can mobilize additional resources, whether operational, industrial or technical. With international tensions on the rise, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces has undertaken a major effort to extend these systems, with the aim of eventually achieving a ratio of one reservist for every three active servicemen.
Another lesson of contemporary conflicts, with their accelerating pace, is that operational superiority no longer depends solely on the ability to engage, but also on the speed with which innovation can be integrated. Hence the need to rethink the role of civil society in the overall defense innovation process.
Civil society plays a major role in the Ukraine conflict
The Ukrainian example illustrates the decisive contribution of civil society. Under the pressure of an existential conflict, thousands of non-military players designed, adapted and deployed immediately usable technological, tactical and organizational solutions alongside the armed forces. This dynamic is not a matter of improvisation. It is based on an ongoing process set in motion since Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, which constituted a real electroshock and reactivated citizen mobilization. Faced with a limited state, and scattered armed forces (they were made up of just 260,000 men in 2021 compared with almost 900,000 today), Ukrainian society has developed a technical, social and entrepreneurial base, capable of rapidly switching over to the service of defense.
In the field, the significant acceleration in the pace of defense innovation and the speed of change in operational requirements make it particularly difficult to predict the capabilities needed during operations. Yet the civilian world, even when it is far removed from defense issues, has massive and diversified skills (cybersecurity, robotics, AI, software engineering, additive manufacturing, electronics, advanced materials), likely to contribute to meeting these new needs. Robotics engineers working for industry, cybersecurity experts in the private sector or entrepreneurs specializing in drones do not always belong to defense networks, even though they possess skills that can be put to immediate use.
Towards the implementation of a «An »innovation reserve" to complement existing reserve mechanisms
The creation of an innovation reserve would :
- Identify, in peacetime, the people and organizations likely to provide support in times of crisis, and map their skills; ;
- Become a structured entry point for innovation ideas, whether technological or organizational;
- Facilitate the rapid dissemination of solutions by bringing together innovators, potential beneficiaries and technical communities. The Ukrainian case provides concrete evidence of this: the Aerorozvidka unit, born of cooperation between civilian drone experts, software engineers and the military, contributed to the development of Delta, a tactical situation system that is now central; the improvised production of ammunition for FPV drones by local entrepreneurs enabled rapid adaptations without depending on long industrial cycles; the IT Army's networks of developers provided a distributed and reactive cyber defense capability ;
- Participate in spreading the spirit of defense, by facilitating the activation of other citizen mechanisms in the event of a crisis, as shown by the examples of fundraising in Ukraine, or the free training courses run by certain organizations to help people adopt the right reflexes in the event of an emergency (which number to call, which radio frequency to listen to, what food and equipment to store at home, etc.).
Two principles should guide the design of such a system:
- Simplicity. The system must be accessible, in line with civilian practices and backed by existing tools. It does not have to be a contractual commitment in the sense of the current reserves. In the current crisis, we need to preserve the flexibility of the links between the armed forces and the population. The challenge for the Ministry of the Armed Forces would therefore be to create a framework for channelling the nation's collective intelligence, freeing it from the organic link represented by the contract of enlistment, whether in the active forces or in the current reserves. The Ukrainian experience shows that civilian platforms such as Kickstarter or Gofundme can become vectors for supporting and identifying innovations from civil society. In fact, it was this type of platform that partly inspired the «Brave1» initiative set up by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to bring together companies, citizens and the military around projects with operational potential.
- Anticipation. As rapid action is a decisive factor in a conflict, the system needs to be structured upstream so that it can be activated immediately in the event of a crisis. This means starting work right away on a number of fronts: identifying the skills that can be mobilized, the functional architecture of the system, links with existing networks, and a communication and awareness-raising strategy.
The mobilization of civil society for defense innovation is part of a wider movement: that of the gradual emergence of a French concept of «total defense», inspired by Scandinavian models and revived by the lessons of the war in Ukraine.
An agile, pre-configured and interconnected innovation reserve could become one of its pillars, enabling the rapid transformation of civilian skills into operational military capabilities, and thus constituting a strategic advantage in theaters of operation.
