Highlights from AOC Europe

AOC Europe 2025 provided attendees with many excellent insights into EW lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War, emerging operational concepts, NATO challenges and cooperation, and new technologies, such as AI and quantum.

The week opened with Plath Intelligence Day, which focused on multi-domain autonomous intelligence and real-time intelligence, data fusion and adaptation. Senior leaders from Plath discussed the need for military forces, as well as industry, to embrace change and adapt to the faster pace of military operations; invest in new SIGINT capabilities rather than outdated technologies; and to cooperate more intensely – not only between companies but also between nations.

Admiral Davide Berna, former commander of Italy's Joint Intelligence Center, told attendees that the multi-domain operational picture is extremely complex. He urged the audience to "embrace innovation" and observed that innovation is not just technological, but also a state of mind that can improve processes and yield new concepts.

Maj Gen Enrico Pederzolli, ITAF, commander of Italy's Joint Intelligence Center, said one of his command's biggest challenges is to collect multiple types of intelligence (including SIGINT) across multiple domains. Another challenge is to rapidly deliver this intelligence to weapons systems, potentially by developing secure combat cloud-type solutions.

On Day 1 of the AOC Europe Symposium, Lieutenant General Angelo Gervasio, Technical Advisor to the Chief Head of Defence, Italian Armed Forces Joint Staff, told the audience about the spectrum policy challenges that the Italian armed forces, like many others in Europe, are facing due to the spectrum needs of commercial applications, such as 5G communications. He also addressed the centrality of the EMS in linking together the air, land, sea and space domains, as well as the importance of recognizing the EMS as a warfighting domain.

Lieutenant General Luca Goretti, Italian Air Force Chief of Staff, told the audience that new technologies are useful but that people remain essential for conducting successful operations. He said that learning how to operate weapons systems and share data in a timely manner are what's most important and also what are the most difficult aspects of air operations. The ability to share lots of data – about threats and targets – across multiple air platforms creates a "mosaic effect" that makes it extremely difficult for an adversary to prioritize which nodes to attack.

One of the major themes of AOC Europe was space operations. The Russo-Ukraine War, for example, has highlighted how both sides rely on satellites for PNT signals, satellite communications and command and control of long-range weapons. In a session themed "Dependence on Space for EW Operations" Major General Michael Traut, Commander, German Space Command, discussed the many ways the space domain is becoming a warfighting domain, exemplified by the ways that Ukraine and Russia are using and attacking space platforms and jamming space-based signals. One interesting aspect he mentioned was situational awareness and self-protection for constellations of satellites – potentially including threat warning sensors and electronic countermeasures.

Another theme throughout the week was how European nations, as well as NATO, can speed up its innovation cycles closer to what Ukraine and Russia are achieving on the battlefield – timeframes of 6-8 weeks instead of months and years. One session that focused on this concept was the "NATO Special Session: Bringing to Life the High/Low Mix for NATO MDO." One of the messages from this session was about NATO's need to utilize and adapt the EW capabilities it has today rather than delaying decisions and waiting for new EW capabilities and weapons platforms to be procured and brought into service several years in the future. One way to leverage current capabilities in new ways is to focus on EW command and control. Another way to speed innovation is to move away from requirements documents and bring the EW industry into the development process at much earlier phases than at present. Referring to the session theme, one speaker said, NATO must figure out what its high/low mix needs to be for EW. What types of expensive, exquisite, high-end EW capabilities does it need and how can it complement these with large numbers of less expensive, rapidly acquired EW capabilities that can overwhelm an adversary's C2 capabilities. – JED Staff