No amount of cyber capabilities and commercial drones will stop enemy hard power. Consider this in your military planning.

The further ahead you plan, the less certainty there is. We don’t know what the world will look like in 10, 20, or 30 years. It can be dramatically better, or dramatically worse than today.

So what’s the problem with not knowing where we will end up?

The problem in organizational life is that most initiatives need lots of time for planning, preparation, and implementation. Combine that with the speed at which things can change in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, and you’ll realize that you might be in trouble if you don’t prepare in due time.

What is true for everyday life, is crucial for the armed forces. They are usually organizations of last resort for their governments, so don’t take any experiments.

In contrast to other areas of life, armed forces development is subject to political processes, and that usually doesn’t accelerate decision-making processes, and often leads to questionable compromises.

No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, armed forces development must follow the core concept of hoping for the best, and planning for the worst.

Put bluntly, that means to plan for full-scale war. If you can handle a threat as serious as full-scale war, you can handle every other threat.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t wish that Switzerland, my home country, or any other country, will have to fight a war. But when looking around, hot wars like the one in Ukraine or the one brewing over Taiwan still are realities.

Ukraine and Taiwan, that’s far away from cozy Switzerland. Being surrounded by NATO countries, why would we have to prepare for threats faced by Ukraine and Taiwan?

Think again about hoping for the best, and planning for the worst. Nobody knows what the political landscape will look like 10, 20, or 30 years from now. Nobody knows whether Switzerland’s territory will suddenly become a strategic target, maybe because of its water reserves in a warmer world.

Threat = Intention x Potential

Let’s go back to the military threats. There is a simple equation to quantify threats:

Threat = Intention x Potential

Let’s start with the potential. The potential is the visible part of a military force — equipment, personnel, and capabilities. It takes time to build up potential: Procuring equipment, training personnel, and developing capabilities can’t be done in short periods.

The typical defense procurement process takes 10–15 years. Training personnel in adequate numbers takes credibility with the population, and ample time and infrastructure to execute the training. Only once adequate numbers of personnel are trained, capabilities can be developed.

Put it whatever way you want, if an opponent needs time to procure equipment, train personnel, and develop capabilities, you will, too. And if you’ve cut back too much on equipment, personnel, and capabilities in the fat years that lie behind us, you are at a disadvantage compared to possible opponents. You will have to catch up to equalize the potential.

The intention is less visible, and it can change much faster than the potential. Think of a new government being voted into office. The effects of climate change that make priorities shift for certain countries. Opportunities that suddenly appear to fuel old feuds.

When the intention of your opponents changes against you, and your potential is ill-developed, you’re in trouble.

Let’s look at a few aspects of what you should do today, when living the core concept of hoping for the best, planning for the worst.

1. Equipment

We see nations buying large numbers of modern fighter jets, and we see the entire West scrambling to buy vast numbers of main battle tanks and artillery guns. So we know that this “conventional” equipment will be in service well into the 2060s. And when it comes to hard power, we need to be able to oppose enemy hard power with our own hard power. No amount of cyber capabilities and commercial drones will stop enemy hard power.

Knowing that an attacker’s force needs to outnumber a defender’s force by a factor of 3–6, looking at potential enemies’ arsenals of conventional equipment defines the quantity of conventional equipment you need for the worst case. Look at the biggest possible enemies such as Russia, China, or the U.S. for your calculations, not the small neighboring states.

No political compromise and no partnership with other nations can wash away what equipment you will need during the worst case.

2. Personnel

The logic is the same for personnel and equipment. Remember all military equipment is operated by people, so it’s not done with buying vast amounts of modern equipment.

If we see that Russia throws several hundred thousand soldiers into battle in Ukraine and that China keeps an army of over one million soldiers, we know what headcount we would need for the worst case, i.e. defending our country: A factor 3–6 less than the largest force that might intend to invade us.

This might be significantly more than today’s number of soldiers. Raising the headcount of your army only works when you have credibility with your population, otherwise, the future of your country will start fleeing their homeland.

3. Capabilities

Put simply, a capability is a combination of up-to-date equipment and well-trained personnel. You can’t maintain capabilities without equipment and personnel.

For example, if your potential enemies can project fire over 1’000 km, you need a way to defend against incoming long-range fire. Furthermore, you need the capability to fire back over the same distance to wipe out the launching sites of the long-range fire.

That might become delicate on a political level, especially when you could strike neighboring countries with ranges around 1’000 km. Again, think of the worst case: If somebody would ever attack you with long-range fire, I’m sure politics wouldn’t mind you firing back. But you can’t fire back if you didn’t develop that capability before it was too late.

Conclusion

It’s not about being paranoid. People tend to forget quickly what cruelties mankind can project. And after 30 years of peace, full-scale war is back in Europe.

We have reduced equipment, personnel, and capabilities way below an acceptable level for today’s dangers, and we’d better return quickly towards hoping for the best but planning for the worst.