October 3rd – 5th, 2022
In partnership with The Alphen Group and with major funding support from NATO, sponsorship from Improbable Defence, Helsing, UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office with additional support from Airbus Defence and Space, BAE Systems, NATO Defence College and Premise Data
“If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Wilton Park and The Alphen Group jointly organised this three day, invitation only conference on future war and deterrence, bringing together over 60 leaders, experts, analysts and commentators from public policy and politics, the armed forces, the private sector, and from technology and innovation. Participants came from the democratic world across North America, Europe and Asia.
The conference methodology centred around six working groups – affordability and resilience, future force, policy, industry and innovation, strategy and technology. These groups met for the entire second day of the event (the conference programme can be viewed below). They constituted the key mechanism for delivering the conference outcomes, focused primarily on how to achieve enhanced deterrence of state on state conflict projected out to a horizon of 2035.
Following the main findings and recommendations below, the report takes up the conference proceedings, beginning with the opening plenary sessions that set the context for the working group deliberations, including lessons from the war in Ukraine. The report then summarises the outcomes of the six working groups. Appendices contain the full working group reports.
You can download the remainder of the report below…