About

Research program:

The Interconnection of High Strategic Capabilities

The IESD research program aims to understand the multiple political and operational consequences of high-intensity capability couplings in homogeneous spaces and Contested Commons. IESD researchers focus their work on assessing and understanding the political, operational, and technological transformations of these increasingly interconnected structuring capabilities, on which the future shape of force actions and power relations largely depends.

These “high strategic capabilities” include, but are not limited to; airpower, military uses of outer space, nuclear weapons, digital capabilities, and missile defense. They appear crucial today for the understanding of global strategic developments and thus for the future of French and European defense:

• On the political level, the mastery of these high strategic functions will largely condition the credibility of France and Europe in relation to their competitors, adversaries, and allies who, for their part, clearly make it a capability priority, as suggested by the budgetary and technological efforts of strategic actors such as the United States, China, Russia, not to mention India or Israel. Future definitions of what is meant by “strategic autonomy” will depend in part on a better perspective of the place held by high strategic functions.

• On the operational level, current military operations are no longer applicable to the combined operations required by the new joint doctrines (multi-domain, multi-milieu/multi-field).  We are dealing with a continuum of effects which are completely open-ended, based on forcing the hand of the adversary.  The actor who gives up their freedom of action in the “homogeneous spaces” framed by the mastery of high strategic functions, runs the risk of losing the ability to anticipate or block their opponent’s moves: either these moves turn out to be too numerous (saturation), too fast (velocity), or almost undetectable (stealth).

• In terms of technology and innovation, high strategic functions are by nature “capability frontiers” that are indispensable to the competitive context of today’s multipolar globalization.  The future of high-intensity combat will depend on the technological avenues linked to these domains, such as data fusion, automated targeting, processing capacity, robotics, and artificial intelligence. This capability “mix” will progressively constitute the prerequisite for new forms of superiority across the spectrum.

The objective of the IESD is that these researchers, federated initially around the theme of high strategic functions, constitute a center of excellence and academic influence making reference at the European and transatlantic levels. The core team supporting the program will therefore have to build up around it a network of doctoral students and students likely to specialize in the field of strategic studies so that their analysis and evaluation capacities can be called upon by researchers. research centers, operational actors from the Ministry of the Armed Forces and public institutions, and private actors from the Defense and Security Industrial and Technological Base (BITDS).

After two years of pre-labeling, IESD was awarded the “Centers of Excellence in Strategic Studies” label, set up by the General Directorate of International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces in from January 2021.

The IESD application was able to take advantage of scientific achievements made between September 2018 and July 2020, assessed by an international scientific council. Thus institutionalized and financially sustainable, the IESD is given the means to become a true center of reference within national and global strategic studies.