Today 16 March, the JALLC hosted the first online edition of the NATO Lessons Learned Conference.  This edition of the event is being hosted by the JALLC online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, still giving participants from the NATO Lessons Learned Community and beyond the opportunity to get together and share lessons from their experience of the pandemic.

 

The JALLC’s Commander, Brigadier-General Bogdan Cernat welcomed participants to the event and expressed his pride that, despite the pandemic and the need for social distancing, the number and diversity of attendees to the NATO Lessons Learned Conference confirmed that NATO feels more together than ever.  He also highlighted the need to shape the Alliance’s organizational culture to make the Lessons Learned mind-set a reality at all levels throughout the Alliance and expressed his interest in hearing from future leaders in the workshop session on day three of the event.

 

The JALLC’s Commander was followed by Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), General André Lanata, who reminded the audience that the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the main drivers of adaptation in 2020 for NATO and that, while it imposed many constraints, it also pushed the Alliance to quickly adapt to new circumstances.  SACT went on to ask the audience to think about how the JALLC and the wider NATO Lessons Learned Community can support and add value to the Alliance from both the warfighting and warfare development perspectives. He went on to ask specific question to guide the discussion and thinking over the next days which included topics such as the current Lessons Learned Structure, Strategic Lessons, and outreach.

 

NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Mircea Geoană, addressed the audience next. He stated that NATO’s multinational solutions during the pandemic had been effective and also underlined the importance of working closely and sharing information with other international organizations such as the UN and the EU.  However, he also noted that NATO was perhaps not adequately prepared for something on the scale of the COIVD-19 pandemic.  Highlighting that we should take this global crisis as a valuable stress test for NATO’s lessons learning capability, he reminded the audience that, “we should never let a good crisis go to waste and we cannot do so now.” You can find out more about Deputy Secretary General's speech and find the full transcript here.

 

Next, NASA’s Chief Health and Medical Officer, Dr. James D. Polk, explained to the audience how NASA still managed to carry out flights to the International Space Station, prepare for the next Moon mission, and execute the recent bullseye landing on Mars while keeping astronauts, engineers, and employees COVID-19 safe.  To achieve this, NASA utilized medical intelligence from the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and US National and the Homeland Security Biosurveillance Integration Center. He noted that quarantine is nothing new for NASA; crew quarantining has been in place since the 1960’s, but during the COVID-19 pandemic NASA also used new technologies including teleworking solutions and smartwatches to monitor staff’s vital signs and other bodily indicators.

 

General (Retd) Sverre Diesen from the NATO Science and Technology Organization delivered a presentation on a report titled The Military Impacts of COVID-19 on the Alliance: Challenges and Opportunities. He provided the audience with a background on the report, the methodology used, key findings, and several Lessons Identified regarding the research process. The report analysed the possible futures for the post-COVID-19 environment and determined potential impacts on the military order and was intended for strategic and operational level planners and decision makers in both NATO and Member Nations.

 

The day ended with the first panel of the conference which provided the audience with, National Perspectives on LL Capability adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Panel discussed how different Nations resolved similar problems highlighting that there is a lot to learn from each other’s experiences, both good and bad. Topics of discussion ranged from law enforcement personnel conducting border patrol activities and cybersecurity on critical health system infrastructure in Spain, to global transport solutions to bring Italian citizens abroad back home.

 

The first day of the NATO Lessons Learned Conference was a great success. The audience participated throughout the sessions via the chat feature, providing the fuel (or steam) for the discussions and presentations online.  Tomorrow the audience will be able to hear from three panels: one covering the Partners’ perspective on the Lessons Learned capability during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second will cover the adaptation of Lessons Learned deliverables during the pandemic, and the third will look at innovating the Lessons Learned Capability for the future.

Day 2 of the NATO Lessons Learned Conference looks set to be as interesting and topical as the first.