NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE SYSTEM

Author: Mitko Stoykov

Institution: Center for Development and Policies 

Date: July 17, 2022

 

 

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE SYSTEM

 

Prerequisites for improvement

 

The national security system of the Republic of Bulgaria functions in a dynamically changing security environment with numerous challenges, risks and threats to the security of the state and society.

The geographical location of Bulgaria allows a continuous increase in geopolitical importance and attractiveness with the possibility of immediate impact of significant external and internal factors on the security environment and the state of defense and national security. The increased confrontation in the Black Sea region and the war in Eastern Europe contribute to an increase in the number of crises and conflicts near state borders, requiring continuous attention and implementation of a targeted, effective, long-term and predictable security and defense policy. Therefore, the main generator of national security, stability, a guarantee of defending the national interests, sovereignty and territorial integrity will be the adequate capabilities of the institutions of the national security system and the advantages of the country’s membership in the European Union and NATO.

 

Assessment approaches

 

An established cyclical practice for the long-term assessment and update of the policy and strategic management of national security and defense systems is the strategic security and defense reviews. They are politically motivated and managed processes for applying a special scientific expert toolkit to carry out an in-depth strategic assessment of the capabilities of all constituent elements of the national security system and its readiness to counter current and future challenges, risks and threats.

The reviews are a strategic tool for assessing the compliance between the legally delegated functions of the state institutions in the field of national security and the administrative structures, management systems and response forces built for the implementation of these functions, and for assessing the readiness for the implementation of their main missions, functions and tasks. The results are the basis and motivation for a planned increase in the effectiveness of security and defense by updating the regulations, policies and capabilities of the national security and defense system.

 

Current state

 

The current state of defense can be tracked in the annual reports, but unfortunately this practice has been discontinued in the national security system. The lack of a unified state methodology for strategic planning, and the limited time horizon of the five-year planning provoke a need for longer horizons to ensure continuity in policy, investment and resource provision of the construction of defense capabilities, which are accounted for in the 10-year time horizon for validity and implementation of national strategic programs, guaranteeing and synchronizing national strategic planning with allied counterparts in NATO and the European Union.

At the same time, the initial lessons from the war in Ukraine, the need for long-term planning and the continuity of the increasing budget expenditures and investments for the implementation of the modernization and capacity-building programs require a new in-depth review and expansion of the horizon for the implementation of the major modernization projects of the Armed Forces (Army) and ensuring the effective operability of defense capabilities throughout the life cycle of available and future weapon platforms and systems.

 

Regulatory base

 

Overcoming legislative deficits and limitations is of primary importance for the long-term effective functioning of the national security and defense system. The excessive legal incorporation of details from the existing institutions, the lack of a comprehensive scope of duties of all elements of the systems outside the current legally established administrative framework of the departments creates a number of limitations both for the structural and functional integration of all available capabilities, as well as for the necessary synchrony and synergy within their future construction and operational use. Overcoming the indicated deficits can be achieved by changing the basic principles of the basic laws in the security and defense sector in the direction of replacing the current departmentalism with systemic functionality (laws on national security; defense; internal security, intelligence, crisis management, etc.), and also by increasing the role of strategic doctrinal and conceptual norms for adaptive regulation of the size, structures, preparation and operation of forces.

 

Basic problems

 

The insufficient systematicity, scope of public relations, conceptuality and implementation of the assigned duties of the Act on The Management and Functioning of The System of National Security Protection require a new in-depth review and substantial changes to expand the scope of the national security system, the representativeness and the responsibilities of the Security Council to the Council of Ministers and to the institutions.

The unfulfilled obligations to build a crisis management system and a system of situation centers should be assigned in the Crisis Management Law. With its adoption, a significant part of out-of-scope public relations can be regulated, which will provide a new opportunity for legal regulation of the obligations and responsibilities of the institutions of the Republic of Bulgaria for building capabilities and managing the full spectrum of crises and emergency situations. The law will allow building and integration of the capabilities of the necessary subsystems for intelligence and early warning, strategic planning, situational management, including the implementation of advance plans and specialized measures for crisis management, counter-terrorist operations, search and rescue operations, operations to protect the critical infrastructure and the state border, air and sea space of the Republic of Bulgaria, as well as for managing the consequences of crises and emergency situations.

The adoption of the Crisis Management Law will allow overcoming the legal vacuum, harmonizing the conceptual apparatus and synchronizing the essence of the national conceptual foundations, prevention, preparation, planning, conducting and management of operations in response to crises in the alliance systems of NATO and the European Union.

 

Lessons and practices

 

The initial lessons of the war in Eastern Europe require a mandatory in-depth review of national strategic management documents. The significant reduction of the early intelligence warning phase and the guaranteed adequate response require intensive efforts to build the country’s early warning system, which allows for early detection, forecasting of developments and timely response to challenges, risks and threats to national security. It should include the capabilities of air and sea surveillance systems, the country’s borders, critical infrastructure facilities with the necessary tracking, analysis and early warning capabilities.

The practices of the operational use of the armed forces in the war in Ukraine confirm the need to review and evaluate the current structure of the Armed Forces, the maintenance of a significant volume of modern command and control capabilities of all armed forces services with enormously increased requirements for the capabilities of operating in a network, for increasing the precision and range of firepower of platforms and systems, to ensure dynamic protection and high mobility, to maintain survivability and flexibility of command and control systems at all levels, for territorial defense and infrastructure protection.

The effectiveness of a number of currently underappreciated conventional platforms and weapon systems has been confirmed, especially when operating in a highly urbanized environment and a pre-prepared theater of war. Of utmost importance are: the preliminary and synchronized preparation of all power institutions for participation in the defense, defense with readiness for operational use of the country’s critical infrastructure, for the use of integrated air defense systems, for planning and conducting information campaigns and operations, for cyber operations, for building focused and deeply echeloned logistics, and theater civilian protection capabilities.

The urgent need for maintaining a unified system for defense-mobilization preparation, combat and operational assembly has been proven. It is extremely important to deepen the interaction within NATO and the European Union with the participation of the country in the construction and operational use of allied capabilities, including an emphasis on full interoperability for the joint security and defense of the Eastern Union borders.

 

Current needs

 

The response to the need to significantly accelerate the implementation of projects for the modernization of the armed forces implies not only an increase in the percentage share of the gross domestic product of defense costs, but also requires a significant volume of additional investments, which, given the strong impact of the current crisis, may turn out to be overwhelming for the country’s economy and social security systems in a prolonged period. Precise prioritization and careful rescheduling of these costs is therefore necessary to reduce the negative impact on systems functionality of lagging or underdeveloped capabilities.

Part of the negative impact can be reduced by assessing the current technological state and capabilities of the national military industrial complex with its readiness to provide technological and production support for the operational and life cycle of the owned and future platforms and armament systems. The scientific and expert provision of the management of the current military-industrial complex and its technological development in the future can be achieved through the construction of a national scientific and technological center of the national security and defense system. The establishment of a scientific advanced research institute for security and defense will allow the construction of an effective structure for strategic scientific and applied research and expert provision, as well as a center for functional interaction and cooperation of all national scientific and educational structures in the field of national security. It will also allow synchronization and coordination of national efforts with the collective of NATO, European Union and Member States research systems.

The functioning of the institute will contribute to: the creation of new theoretical and applied scientific knowledge and products in the field of national security and defense; the provision of targeted long-term scientific forecasting of the development of national security challenges; scientific and expert assurance of management decision-making; scientific-methodical provision of capacity building; scientific research to improve the quality of specialized education and qualification in the national security system; encouraging and supporting the joint participation of scientific and educational institutions in scientific research and programs for education and qualification in the field of national security.

 

Interoperability

 

The need to overcome the differences in interoperability between institutions and personnel training requires a general rethinking of the structure and tasks of the defense, mobilization training and mobilization reserve systems, as well as the approaches to hiring and discharging personnel, increasing the periods for initial military training, retraining, operational and combat assembly of forces. A clearheaded assessment of the needs of providing personnel and the possibilities of returning to proven national traditions for the preparation of the country’s mobilization resources is necessary. It is also necessary to deepen the requirements for the education and training of commanders for small tactical units with strictly specialized training and competencies, to increase the requirements for the training of the command staff at the operational and strategic levels of the defense systems, as well as to consider joint training and training approaches to operational and strategic level managers from all departments according to unified national criteria for education and training in the field of security and defense.

The creation of a unified national program according to established standards for planning and conducting exercises will support the preparation not only of the peacetime composition of the defense system, but also of the commanders and forces of its wartime composition outside the structures of the Ministry of Defense and the Bulgarian Army. The need for the introduction of uniform state standards for education, training and qualification of experts and managers from the state administration in the field of national security and defense requires the holding of courses for joint specialized education, qualification, exercises and training of personnel at the operational and strategic level from all state administration institutions, organized training of all state administration and local government management bodies to increase the protection of the population and the readiness of the institutions for the management of crises, emergency situations and war.

 

Conclusion

 

To bring the capabilities of the national security and defense system to readiness to respond to current and future challenges, risks and threats is a continuous process requiring a targeted nationally responsible security and defense policy in sync with NATO and European Union policies. Building capabilities on uniform standards requires changes in existing strategies including the development and approval of a long-term concept of national security and a strategic framework for improving the conceptual-theoretical foundations, the legal and regulatory framework, for updating the existing and building new subsystems in security and defense, their connections and management.

Bringing the country’s strategic planning to uniform approaches, methodology and standards requires the development and approval of a concept for strategic planning of the Republic of Bulgaria, which will serve to update, improve and synchronize the approaches and practices of strategic planning of all ministries and state institutions.