General (r) Daniel Petrescu,
Chief of Defence Staff
December 2019- November 2023
For a long time, we spoke about war as if it belonged to the past—or, at most, to an exceptional future. That intellectual comfort is no longer available to us. War has returned, not as an anomaly, but as a normal instrument of policy. The evidence is not confined to a single theater. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has brought back high-intensity, industrial-scale warfare to Europe, while instability in the Middle East demonstrates how quickly regional crises can escalate beyond their initial boundaries. At the same time, persistent hybrid pressure—cyber operations, disinformation, economic coercion—confirms that competition is continuous, even when it does not cross the threshold of open conflict.
What matters is not each of these developments taken in isolation, but the pattern they form together. Conflict is no longer episodic. It is becoming structural. We are not preparing for war in a distant future; we are operating in a strategic environment that is permanently contested, where escalation can occur rapidly and effects propagate across domains and regions.
This shift forces a more fundamental reconsideration: what do we actually mean by national power today?
For decades, power was understood through relatively stable categories—military, economic, diplomatic, informational. While still valid, this framework is no longer sufficient to explain how wars are fought or how they are sustained. Modern conflict is shaped by the interaction of systems: industrial capacity, energy security, supply chains, technological sovereignty, and societal resilience. Military force remains central, but it no longer operates independently. It is embedded within a broader ecosystem that determines whether a country can endure, adapt, and prevail over time.
This becomes particularly evident when we look at prolonged conflicts. A state may possess advanced platforms and well-trained forces, but without secure energy access, resilient supply chains, and sustained public support, its ability to continue fighting degrades rapidly. Modern war is not decided only on the battlefield; it is decided by the capacity to sustain effort under pressure. In this sense, national power is no longer a sum of components. It is a system—one that must function coherently under stress.
Ukraine offers perhaps the clearest contemporary illustration of this transformation. What we are witnessing there is not only a military confrontation, but a test of industrial endurance, logistical resilience, and adaptive capacity. The scale of ammunition consumption alone— reaching thousands of rounds per day and millions per year—demonstrates that industrial production is not a supporting function, but a decisive factor. Without the ability to produce at scale, even the most capable forces cannot sustain high-intensity operations beyond a limited timeframe.
At the same time, the conflict highlights another defining characteristic of modern warfare: the speed of adaptation. Technologies evolve rapidly, often becoming obsolete within months rather than years. Ukrainian forces have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adjust in real time—through rapid prototyping, software updates, and battlefield improvisation. This stands in stark contrast to traditional procurement cycles, which are measured in years, if not decades. The implication is clear: defense systems must operate on dual timelines—one designed for long-term capability development, and another for rapid adaptation, capable of delivering relevant solutions within months.
Equally important is the growing role of civilian innovation. Many of the most effective capabilities in Ukraine—particularly in areas such as drones, ISR, and targeting—have emerged not from traditional defense contractors, but from agile, civilian-driven ecosystems. This challenges long-standing assumptions about how defense capabilities are generated and forces ministries of defense to rethink their engagement models. Iterative development, tolerance for imperfect but rapidly improving solutions, and closer integration with the private sector are no longer optional—they are operational necessities.
All of these developments unfold within a broader transformation of the battlefield itself. It has become more transparent, more lethal, and more contested. Persistent surveillance reduces the ability to conceal forces, while the combination of low-cost drones and precision systems accelerates targeting cycles. In such an environment, survival depends less on protection alone and more on dispersion, mobility, deception, and continuous adaptation. Perhaps most significantly, the advantage increasingly belongs not to the side that begins with superior capabilities, but to the one that can learn and adapt faster.
At the operational level, this evolution is reflected in the consolidation of multi-domain operations. Land, air, maritime, cyber, and space are no longer distinct arenas of action, but components of a single, interconnected operational environment. Effects generated in one domain immediately influence outcomes in others. A cyber disruption can paralyze logistics; a drone can enable precision artillery; satellite data can shape tactical decisions in real time. Under these conditions, the idea of developing capabilities in isolation becomes obsolete. Effectiveness is no longer defined by individual platforms, but by the integration of systems into a coherent whole.
Against this backdrop, Europe’s adaptation appears uneven. There is growing recognition of the problem, and investment levels are increasing, but structural limitations remain. The industrial base is fragmented, procurement processes are often slow and complex, and production capacity has struggled to scale at the pace required by the current strategic environment. The risk is not that Europe will fail to invest, but that it will fail to convert investment into usable capability in time. Ammunition production, for example, has taken years to ramp up, while supply chains remain insufficiently integrated. In a crisis, this creates a critical vulnerability: resources may be available, but the capacity to translate them into operational effect may lag behind.
For Romania, this evolving landscape presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Our country benefits from a favorable strategic position on NATO’s eastern flank, strong political alignment, increasing defense budgets, and access to European funding instruments. Yet these are only inputs. Their value depends entirely on how effectively they are transformed into capabilities.
The essential question, therefore, is not whether we will invest in defense, but how we will position ourselves within the broader European defense ecosystem. A purely acquisitive model—focused on importing systems—offers speed, but at the cost of long-term dependency. A partial industrial participation model provides some benefits, but limits strategic relevance. The more demanding, yet far more consequential option, is to evolve toward a role as a capability hub—focusing on specific domains such as ammunition production, maintenance and repair, drone ecosystems, and training and integration. Such an approach does not attempt to do everything, but seeks to build depth and relevance in areas that matter operationally.
This leads to a central conclusion: military capability and industrial capacity can no longer be developed sequentially. They must evolve together, from the outset. Every major acquisition should be conceived not only in terms of immediate capability, but also in terms of sustainment—local maintenance, repair capacity, and stockpile production. Planning must move beyond peacetime efficiency and incorporate the logic of endurance: redundancy, surge capacity, and resilience under stress. At the same time, institutional mechanisms must be created to enable rapid innovation, ensuring that new technologies can be tested, integrated, and deployed within operationally relevant timelines.
European instruments such as SAFE and the European Defence Fund offer important opportunities in this regard, but their value lies not only in funding. They function as platforms for integration, collaboration, and industrial positioning. The strategic choice for Romania is whether to participate at the margins or to shape outcomes more actively.
Ultimately, however, the challenge is not conceptual. It is organizational. It requires discipline in execution—clear accountability, effective program management, and the ability to make timely decisions. It also requires selectivity. Not every project contributes equally to capability, and fragmentation remains one of the most significant risks.
For many years, deterrence was understood primarily in military terms, as a function of force structure and readiness. That understanding is no longer sufficient. Deterrence today is built as much in factories and supply chains as it is in units and formations. It depends on the ability to generate, sustain, and adapt capability over time.
In this emerging strategic environment, the most relevant nations will not necessarily be those that spend the most, but those that can convert resources into coherent, resilient, and integrated capability. Romania has the necessary foundations—strategic context, partnerships, and access to resources. What remains is execution.
And execution, in the end, is not a technical matter. It is a strategic choice.
