Toespraak Commandant der Strijdkrachten bij European Defence Innovation Forum 2026

Dear guests, 

It’s good to be here. 

First of all, I want to thank Ukraine for organising this Forum with us, and expanding it to include other nations. 

We all support Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. 

But we’re not just supporters– we are increasingly becoming partners in the defence of Europe – both now and later, after a peace agreement is reached. 

Partnership requires mutual understanding, sharing battlefield experience and personal stories, and getting to know each other on multiple levels. 

Forums like these contribute to that understanding. 

As the Netherlands Minister of Defence said this morning, our relationship is evolving. 

The Netherlands was one of the first nations that began training Ukrainians when the war started. 

It soon became clear that we would learn from you. 

The student became the master. 

As a Ukrainian trainee said to a Dutch sergeant: ‘Our tactics are written in blood’. 

You’ve continued to share your lessons learned with us.  

For that, I am deeply grateful and humbled by your sacrifices, lest we forget. 

[…] 

Last year, a group of Ukrainian veterans visited me and my operational commanders in The Hague. 

My commanders and I brought decades of operational experience to the table – but what these Ukrainian veterans shared was priceless to us. 

That innovation needs to move faster and that the walls between industry and warfighters must be torn down. 

And that military leadership is changing. 

Let me start with leadership. 

Last year, I visited a very tech-savvy unit in Ukraine – their ISR concepts were highly impressive to me. 

The captain of that unit was managing a team of colleagues with high-end corporate IT experience. 

Age, rank or job title wasn’t important here. It was about initiative, expertise and creativity. 

I noticed how informal this captain was with his unit. And with me as well. At one point, he said to me: we don’t need generals. J We need young, innovative people who can find solutions for our battlefield problems. 

And that made an impact on me. 

Because the rest of Europe is facing a window of vulnerability until at least 2030. 

Our armed forces need time to be ready for the current threat. 

Within that window, we have to strengthen our deterrence – and if deterrence fails, we have to be ready to fight and win. 

The European Union has 27 Chiefs of Defence, all charged with the task of modernising and growing their armed forces to rapidly reduce that vulnerability. 

These CHoD’s have plenty of operational and warfighting experience….  

…but most of that experience was gained away from their home turf, with defence equipment at their disposal that often took decades to develop and produce.  

That’s not how it works in Ukraine.  

There, the innovation cycle is short, the fight is existential and Ukrainian teams are comprised of regular military officers and NCOs, reservists, and civilians with urgently needed skills.  

Because that is what works best. 

So as one of those European Chiefs of Defence, I understand that we need to be open to new approaches. 

We need to learn from the changes happening in military leadership.  

And so many of us generals and admirals have read countless books and had endless discussions about leadership.  

But in Ukraine, military leadership has been put to the test every single day for several years.  

As generals and admirals, we need to learn from that. 

We know that leaders are learners. 

But in this case, the master truly needs to become the student again.  

If you’re not a leader who can make diverse teams work, and foster and adopt innovation fast, then you’re not fit to lead. 

That goes for every rank and level. 

At a work event this summer, a corporal came up to me and asked: General, with all this high-tech and unmanned stuff, does that mean that I won’t have to fight anymore? 
 
And I said to this corporal: you still need to fight.  

But you’ll be supported by – or rather, you’ll be a part of - high tech systems – and you’ll have colleagues who know how to operate those systems. 

That is essential, because in a war I am sending my men and women into a transparent and ever-changing battlefield, where thousands of them will die on the first day of fighting if they: 
- are visible on that battlefield,  
- do not have the best air defence, 
- and are not backed by deep-strike capabilities to attack the source of enemy fire before it hits them.  

So a well-trained marine needs a drone pilot;  
a shooter needs credible data fast; 
a tank needs to be camouflaged against drone vision; 
and our air defence units need a comprehensive understanding of the multitude of airborne threats coming our way. 

If we want to achieve this, our leaders need to become more tech-savvy and be able to lead teams with an array of skills. 

Because modern leadership isn't just about leading people; it's also about leading the integration of technology.  

However, we can only lead with technology if our industry quickens its pace, and is able to actively learn from Ukraine as well. 

In Ukraine, we are seeing a fundamental shift in modern warfare. 

The sensor-to-shooter loop,  
the integration of autonomous systems,  
the rapid evolution of electronic warfare. 

The battlefield is changing weekly, sometimes even daily. 

Ukrainian armed forces are able to keep up with these changes because cooperation with their defence industry continues to grow ever closer. 

The line from factory to front line is short. 

The rest of Europe is not there yet. 

We need a bigger, faster and more integrated European defence industry. 

If we’re not able to get there, it will cost us – in more than one way. 

Defence is more expensive than offence – especially when we’re not innovating fast enough. 

Shooting down a cheap drone with a million euro missile is not sustainable – it is a fight you will eventually lose on the balance sheet. 

We must move toward a "dual-track" approach: maintain our strategic core, but urgently build a highly adaptive, short-cycle layer as well. 

If our procurement cycles take ten to fifteen years to deliver a platform, but the technological relevance of that platform expires in five, we run the risk of producing superb defence materiel that can be sent straight to our military museums as soon as it’s ready. 

I’m seeing positive change, though. 

Last year, the Netherlands Ministry of Defence sent out a challenge to our industry: develop a new, low-cost type of counter-drone to take out small enemy attack drones just after launch, over enemy territory. 

How they did it was up to them.  

It’s a version of mission command with our industry. 

Three consortia built prototypes. We tested these drones earlier this month.  

Try before you buy, as it were.  

And if these tests lead to contracts, we are ready to open them up to our partners. 

There’s always a worry that once bought, the drone will become outdated quickly.  

So we need drone production as a service.  

Industry delivers the drone, the updates and the upgrades.  

Customers buy modest quantities and pay for continuous innovation. 

The initiative I just mentioned was useful, but again, it was a national challenge, not a European challenge.  

We live and we learn, so our next challenge is one for European industry.  

The task is to develop solutions to eliminate heavy and fast-moving drones.  

This is how we move towards an innovative attitude: by moving beyond national interests, beyond customer-producer relations, by introducing mission command into our defence industry and by buying not just the product, but the service as well. 

Let me say a bit more about those national interests.  

We need to temper national interests to achieve a greater European military effect. We know that. 

And yet, there is still some commitment anxiety among European nations to really move from national to European. It’s complicated, I get it. 

Nevertheless, we have to do it, so let’s really commit to each other!

Let the military define what the military needs, unencumbered by national industrial interests. 

Europe does not necessarily suffer from too many systems.  

Because variety can be a strength; Darwin taught us that diversity is how a species survives.  

But evolution is about selection, and we have switched the selection button off.  

Too many of our systems exist not because soldiers chose them, but because a national industry needed protecting.  

That is not diversity.  

It is fragmentation, and we pay for it twice over: in money, and in combat power. 

What we need instead is the best equipment, from a robust supply chain.  The result of true competition across the European single market. 

And here is what protectionists get wrong: this is also the better economic deal.  

A sheltered industry builds for one customer and sells to no one else.  

An industry that has to win by delivering the best quality builds what the world wants to buy. 

Only then do we earn a real trade surplus, because our equipment is simply the best. 

True competition also means simpler rules, to allow small and medium-sized enterprises to join in. 

They bring innovation, agility, production capacity and real competition. Let them in. 

Remember, competition does not weaken our industries.  

It makes them worth having.  

And it gives our soldiers what they need to deter, and if necessary, to fight. 

If national industry interests prevail, our equipment will be suboptimal, too little and too late.  

So let’s make sure that the joint European military requirements are always priority number one.  

And let’s organise industry cooperation around this principle.  

Because if we make the mistake of protecting our national industries first and our continent second, we risk losing both. 

And with the demand being as high as it is and the budgets increasing dramatically… we don’t even have to choose.  

We can help our economies and our armed forces at the same time.  

But we have to think and act strategically, together. 

So, dear governments, dear industry: tear down those walls. J 

And if any of you here in the audience have ideas on how to do that, tap me on the shoulder during the networking session. 

Now, dear friends and partners. 

Before we move on to that networking session and our hard-earned beer, allow me to once again address the Ukrainian representatives who are with us here today. 

Your lessons learned are written in blood and they are vital to the transformation of the armed forces of all of Europe. I cannot thank you enough for your generosity. 

You know how to build defence equipment that’s fit for our men and women in arms today. 

You know how to lead teams with members from different backgrounds, bringing together the range of skills needed for the task at hand.  

To the rest of us present here today: the defence of Europe lies in our ability to adapt – and to work with, and learn from Ukraine. Thank you.