VII. Resilience
7.2. Seven baseline requirements
NATO helps Allies build resilience. At the 2016 Warsaw Summit, allied leaders agreed to boost NATO’s resilience to the full spectrum of threats and further develop their countries’ individual capacity in conjunction with NATO’s collective capacity to resist any form of armed attack. They agreed on the 7BLRs for national resilience against which allies can measure their level of preparedness.
These baseline requirements reflect the three core functions of civil preparedness that must be maintained even under the most demanding conditions: continuity of government, essential services to the population, and civil support to the military. These three core functions and the 7BLRs are all connected. This means, that if one area is impacted, another may be affected as a result. For example impact on the energy supply may affect ability to deal with mass casualties and other disruptive health crises.
BLR 1 - Assured continuity of government and critical government services
The essential purpose is to ensure the ability to make decisions, communicate them, and enforce them in a crisis. This requirement combines several key objectives.
1) A formalised plan for the continuation of government operations including the succession of political leadership, delegation of powers and the prioritization of key government institutions to maintain essential functions (military, food, water, transportation, infrastructure, medical, industrial, etc.).
2) Effective and trustworthy public crisis communication. National crisis management measures need the population’s support to be effective. Crisis communication is crucial to achieve this public acceptance, but to do so ‘trust’ of the people is crucial.
3) Educated and trained civilian and military personnel, able to operate critical infrastructure and restore it when damaged by enemy attacks. Permanent disabling of critical infrastructures could lead to public demoralisation and loss of support for the government. Ultimately, this will hinder an effective defence.
4) A robust and self-sufficiently operating crisis management centre to ensure a civilian command and control capability. The facility needs to be protected against a range of threats (kinetic strikes, CBRN or cyber-attacks).
BLR 2 - Resilient energy supply
Energy is a fundamental enabler of military capability, and therefore a critical factor in the military operations. The ability of NATO to protect and sustain the power necessary for its operations, depends on the assured delivery of energy no matter the distance, terrain or adversarial actions.
To minimise the negative effects of an energy supply crisis, five objectives must be met.
1) Secure access to reliable energy sources. Spreading risks by diversifying of routes, suppliers, and resources increases reliability in times of crisis.
2) The existence of robust and sustainable redundancy systems helps to minimise the damage in the event of a failure. This includes crisis management plans and trained staff to operate them.
3) Knowledge of critical points in supply chains, the dependencies on (possible foreign) energy suppliers, and the interdependencies between the energy sector and other sectors are essential to plan and prioritize crisis measures effectively.
4) Rapid access to secure information is critical for obtaining a shared overview of the developing crisis and the measures taken by all stakeholders involved. Information sharing processes should be in place, authorizations managed, protocols should be clear to all involved, and information systems should be accessible on a need-to-know basis.
5) Identification of the risks and opportunities that emerging technologies[1] may have on the resilient energy systems. Older systems can get disrupted by new technologies, but the development of new technological solutions can also really take off during longer-lasting crisis situations (e.g. autonomously operating micro grids).
BLR 3 - Ability to deal effectively with uncontrolled movement of people
Mass movement management is important for the military. Military forces may be involved in assisting to refugees and managing their safe passage to areas where they can receive aid and protection. Effective management of the people’s mass movement can help prevent the spread of disease, alleviate suffering, and reduce the risk of violence or conflict. Maintaining stability in affected regions also contributes to the safety and freedom of movement of military personnel and the civilians.
Two goals are central.
1) The existence of a national plan that enables the responsible civilian authorities to ensure the ability to anticipate, monitor, de-conflict, and effectively deal with sudden and/ or protracted uncontrolled movement of people, from within and from outside the national territory. This includes a mass influx of people exceeding 2% of the national population, through civil and military contingency arrangements, capabilities and surge capacity. This plan should contain the provision of food, water, shelter, transportation, medical facilities, security, etc.
2) Civilian-military coordination and planning allowing safe transit of refugees along relevant transport routes, not impeding military forces or being subjected to military violence.
The people’s mass movement can be influenced by a number of factors:
1) the motivation for the mass movement (e.g. natural hazards, conflict, economic disparities, political instability, lack of safety);
2) the situations people encounter while being on the move (e.g. availability of safe routes, food and water, risk of exploitation, spread of extremism);
3) the involvement of external actors (e.g. the policies of neighbouring countries, or the support of international organisations).
BLR 4 - Resilient food and water resources
In order to ensure the supply of water and food, three objectives should be met:
1) a system to identify and report contamination of water and food;
2) a plan to ensure that food and water supplies are available from alternative sources;
3) a comprehensive contingency plan that takes into account the loss of some of the required manpower, expert capacity, and necessary resources to produce water and food to maintain supplies. Sectoral interdependencies with the energy supply and transport, as well as the control of central functions of the supply system by foreign owners, should also be included in the planning.
BLR 5 - Resilience to deal with mass casualties
In order to be prepared for mass casualty incidents, NATO nations should observe five core objectives.
1) Building resilience through civil preparedness to deal effectively with mass casualties, i.e., sufficient personnel and surgical capacity, availability of transportation, taking into account religious aspects of burials, etc.
2) An early warning and reporting system should be operational to alert the population, national service providers in the field, critical infrastructure operators, and the military.
3) A database should be created to monitor civilian medical capabilities (number of hospital beds, personnel, medical equipment, isolation units, laboratories, transport and evacuation capabilities, etc.). If available, military capabilities can be added. This database should be updated frequently and contain real-time, reliable information about healthcare capabilities throughout the crisis.
4) Civil-military plans must be in place to allow for the continued operation of all medically relevant services.
5) Each state should have robust national supply lines for medical supplies. In this context, existing supply chain vulnerabilities should be included in the analysis to ensure the best possible preparedness.
In addition to the physical aspects other factors may have a direct impact on the military operation. There may be emotional and mental health consequences, for example, if people can't bury their lost loved ones or don't want to confirm their deaths. These secondary effects can delay the recovery process and undermine community resilience to return to a state of normalcy and be resilient.
In the CIMIC estimate not only the mass casualties need to be addressed, but also the effects on the population and on societal resilience. The impact on the military operation (not only from J9!) is to be taken into account when advising the commander.
BLR 6 - Resilient civil communications systems
A central component in supporting of resilience is the access to and maintenance of communications.
1) Access to secure, reliable communications infrastructure is of paramount importance both in times of peace, crisis and conflict under all possible threats. Access to the communications infrastructure needs to be prioritised in order to ensure command and control capability.
2) Communications infrastructure needs to be protected against intrusion, disruption, degradation, or interference in order to provide sufficient services HN functions and NATO C4ISR.
3) Robust redundancies are essential in order to be able to respond quickly to failures in telecommunications technology. Particular attention will be paid to the risks posed by new technologies, especially where any critical components of the system are under foreign or private control.
BLR 7 - Resilient civil transportation systems
Civil transportation infrastructures and systems are crucial to both civilian use and the military’s ability to manoeuvre through its area of operations.
1) National regulation needs to set priorities in the area of transport in the event of a crisis or conflict. This needs to ensure that NATO forces can cross the borders of Alliance member states and transit its territory quickly and effectively. It also ensures the necessary movements to realise other BLRs (e.g. food and water supply).
2) National regulations need legal enforcement.
3) Military use of civil transportation infrastructure and systems requires planning for. CIMIC-planners should coordinate with other staff SMEs (a.o. MOVE, ENGR, MED), taking into account general operational factors (available personnel, strategic lift capacity, multimodal transportation connections, etc.) and factors specific to the type of transportation used.
4) Civil-military planning is needed to establish HNS and ensure the military use of civil transportation systems.
[1] New emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous weapons systems, big data, biotechnologies and quantum technologies are changing the world and the way NATO and its member states operate. NATO, 2021, p. 1