Athens briefing report: Sights trained on inclusive Greek defence landscape

Thu 10 Mar 2022 @ 11:29

Last week’s Armed Forces Officers Club meeting united numerous senior-level military leaders, policy makers, armaments directors, academia/R&D, and industry leaders.

Attendance outstripped expectations, with 50 in-person attendees, 300 streaming live online, and subsequent 600 downloads for a taster of topics and technologies for the main MAST Med 2022 event in Athens this November.

Discussions homed in on a need for “closer consultation between government, military, industry, R&D, and academia”, to ensure Greek military leaders receive equipment ready for both current and future operations.

The critical roles of R&D and academia in supply chains was stressed: identifying and developing technologies that “broker” future military capabilities requirements and Ministry of Defence budgets, with industry’s own technology research investments:

“Something overlooked by typical trade-shows, which display mainly current/available technologies without reference to sustainable/future systems”
— Anonymous RADM attendee

Some concern was expressed by Greek industry over both a lack of financial support, and cohesion amongst associations, to guarantee a breadth of Hellenic industries competences/offerings/and research activities are adequately represented in a variety of diverse global defence arenas.

Acknowledging the outcomes of the meeting, MAST Med 2022 guarantees that the expressed interests/concerns of all key stakeholders are well covered in top-level plenary sessions, technical conference exchanges, exhibition displays and networking functions within its overarching theme: “The Mediterranean: Laboratory for Naval Warfare”.

Athens briefing presentation

Athens briefing presentation

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