Esteemed Colleagues,
Welcome to the 20th Anniversary JAPCC Conference. I am pleased to be in the chair once again as your moderator and look forward to what’s in store for us in the discussions ahead. It has been quite a year since our last conference, and indeed ‘Dominance Disrupted’ feels like the perfect description of the past twelve months. With hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs, and massive drone attacks on strategic bombers, we think it’s time to ask the question, ‘what’s the future of air superiority?’
As in the past, we’ll have four distinct panels (see the essays that follow). The first, a high-level strategic panel; the second, a technological panel describing the modern battlefield; the third, a deep dive into NATO’s innovation cycles; and finally, in panel four, we are going to conduct something new – a ‘thought experiment’. The plan is to ask our panel four members to discuss their highest priority tasks for NATO if the Alliance had less than ten years to prepare for a major war. Time is always a vital factor in war and, as history shows, it can be even more critical in terms of preparations for war.
The philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’* While history rarely repeats itself exactly, it offers undeniable lessons on the costs of unpreparedness. The purpose of our thought experiment is not to dwell on the past, but to ensure we learn from it, applying timeless principles of strategy and foresight to the specific challenges of our era.
I hope that the great majority of conference delegates can stick around for this final item. It’s often the case that the (completely understandable) urge to catch an earlier flight or to dodge the traffic means that I find myself gazing out at a much smaller conference audience than I witnessed on the first morning. I have therefore set myself the challenge to do all that I can to make sure that panel number four is well worth sticking around for. Panels one through three, whilst complete on their own, will lay the foundations and build the momentum required for this. I urge you to stay right to the end and see if I succeed in this challenge.
I hope you all enjoy the 2025 JAPCC conference and that we can all take away something positive from it.
Bruce Hargrave
Moderator
