 Dr Bryan Wells, NATO Chief Scientist
Foreword
By Dr Bryan Wells, NATO Chief Scientist
The London Declaration, issued
by NATO Heads of State and
Government in December 2019,
made clear the importance of science and technology to
Alliance defence and security.
In this Declaration, leaders
stated that the Alliance was
“addressing the breadth and
scale of new technologies to
maintain our technological
edge, while preserving our
values and norms.”
This statement by NATO leaders goes to the heart
of the mission of the NATO Science & Technology
Organization (STO). Our role is to maintain
NATO’s scientific and technological advantage by generating, sharing, and utilizing advanced
scientific knowledge, technological developments,
and innovation to support the Alliance’s core tasks.
The NATO Programmes of Work show that we are already working hard to maintain NATO’s
technological edge, as the London Declaration set
out. The highlights in this booklet are a testament
to the wide‐ranging and expert‐level military
science and technical work that is done for the
benefit of NATO and its partner nations. But we
are not complacent, and we are constantly looking
at ways to improve our programme of work and to
increase its relevance to our Armed Forces.
The statistics on our Programmes of Work
demonstrate the scale of our efforts. We now have
over 300 projects currently underway, ranging
from major research programmes to horizon
scanning activities and lecture series. Over 6,000
scientists from Nations now actively work in the
STO, making this the biggest international defence
S&T network in the world. These scientists are
drawn from government, academia and industry,
from Allies and partners; and we have close links
with the institutions of the European Union. In
addition to the scientists from the Nations, NATO
supports an Office of the Chief Scientists in the
NATO HQ in Brussels, to give scientific advice
direct to NATO political and military leadership, a
Collaboration Support Office in Paris, to administer
the Collaborative Programme of Work, and the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation
at La Spezia, a world‐class laboratory in its area of
expertise.
When I became NATO Chief Scientist and Chair of the NATO Science & Technology Board in July 2019, I made a commitment to maintain the
excellence of the work of the STO, but also to take
these efforts to the next level, by incorporating
the best of all the Nation’s international research
collaboration practice, be it in terms of rapidity of response, or clear paths to exploitation, or in
other aspects. This booklet demonstrates the very
high quality of work that is already being done,
and it also points the way in which we are working
to enhance our work and its importance for the
Alliance.
This year, we have focused the Highlights report onto the work that the STO has recently
completed in the field of emerging and disruptive
technologies, including areas such as cyber,
artificial intelligence, quantum and novel materials.
The STO is therefore already actively working on
the technologies that our leaders set out in the
London Declaration. In the coming years we will
continue to serve the Nations and NATO with
greater understanding of the opportunities and
challenges that these technologies provide, and
how our Armed Forces can embrace and respond
these new developments.
It is an honour to be the new Chairman of the
NATO Science & Technology Board, which
oversees the work of the STO, the dedicated men
and women who form the largest multinational
defence S&T network in the world. And it is equally
a privilege to serve as NATO Chief Scientist,
providing NATO leadership with scientific advice
on the key technologies of the future. This
Highlights 2019 document showcases examples of the very best defence science available to the
Alliance and its partners.
Download the 2019 Annual Report Published by STO |
