On Tuesday, the regular Commanders' Assembly of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the Czech Republic took place, attended by 114 commanders and chief warrant officers. As per tradition, the assembly was addressed by the Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic, Jana Černochová, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army, Lieutenant General Karel Řehka. The primary objective of the meeting was to assess the army's priorities and key tasks over the past year. The assembly was held shortly after Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced his intention to increase defense spending to three percent of GDP.

In his speech, the Chief of the General Staff said that we are strengthening the defence of our homeland within the framework of collective deterrence and defence of the North Atlantic Alliance. "We are preparing for combat and we are preparing to avoid combat. And that's exactly what we're doing," said Lt. Gen. Řehka, who stressed that NATO today needs to urgently build a credible deterrent and defence to avoid potential problems in the years ahead. According to him, the time is urgent and there is not much time left, so it is necessary to "put the pedal to the metal". According to the Chief of the General Staff, the Czech army faces much bigger and more urgent tasks than it has been performing so far.

"In summary, the situation is not improving. The war in Ukraine is still going on. There is tension in the Middle East and in other parts of the world. Whether it is the African Sahel or the Indo-Pacific region. The threat of international terrorism has not abated either," General Řehka continued in his address, adding that the only adequate response to these challenges is to be stronger. "And that is what we are trying to do. My main and, dare I say, only essential task is to ensure the combat capability of our army. We are training intensively, validating our operational plans and strengthening our capabilities and capacities. In the previous year, we have carried out a number of exercises which confirm that we are ready to face various threats. We are updating our defence plans and this process is also taking place in parallel at the North Atlantic Alliance level and is the basis of our common defence and deterrence," the Chief of General Staff said.

As already mentioned, General Řehka's main goal remains to ensure the combat capability of the army, which is linked to other priorities: 'Firstly, the military review of defence, we are updating defence plans. We have a military defence plan, which we have not had here in its current form and detail for over twenty years, and it is also fully linked for the first time to the Alliance's collective defence plan with a regional plan. We have completed the planning at the strategic and operational level and this year we will further elaborate it at the tactical level and practice and demonstrate it with others," the Chief of General Staff said, also recalling the linkage with the IRS components.

Another challenge for the Czech Armed Forces is to ensure a whole-of-society approach, which stems from the defence strategy. "We have been working on a new concept of mobilisation and operational preparation of the national territory, and the new command and control concept also creates conditions for the operational level to be able to plan and manage operations across all operational domains," said Lt. Gen. Řehka.

In his speech to the commanders, Řehka also recalled the completed vision of future warfare, which provides insight into the expected way of conducting combat operations after 2040, including the impact on the Army of the Czech Republic, and at the same time directs the army in the necessary development of current capabilities. "Again, more important than the document itself is the process and thinking we went through in creating it, and the fact that we are thinking about future warfare," the Chief of the General Staff said. He said there is a need to cultivate a strategic debate on defence and security, where the fundamental decisions always belong to political leaders and it is primarily up to them to discuss the fundamental security issues. According to General Řehka, it is essential to have serious public discussions on defence and security wherever possible and at all levels.

The Chief of the General Staff further recalled the accumulated gaps in the army equipment from the past years, which he said the current two percent of GDP with the accumulated internal debt of CZK 600 billion is not enough to cover.

Řehka also reminded that the service law is being amended and recruitment is being digitalized, which will ease the bureaucratic burden. Health requirements have also changed. "We are working to improve accommodation options in garrisons and we are also taking steps to make it easier to balance the demands of service with family life," the general said.

In his speech, the Chief of the General Staff also mentioned some of the ailments plaguing the army, such as the purchase of equipment components. "For example, we have been trying to buy backpacks for a whopping six years. It's really frustrating that buying a backpack is almost like buying a supersonic aircraft. We have a similar story with ballistic vests, and hopefully we're past both," Řehka said.

General Řehka also reminded that the army currently has less than 24 000 professional soldiers serving, but strategic army documents target 30 000 by 2030. "Despite this, we added so few soldiers to the army last year that the total increase is only some 176 soldiers," the general noted. In addition, he said, new alliance capability-building targets show a need for up to 37,500 soldiers to meet collective deterrence and defense needs. To achieve that goal, the Army would have to grow by 14,000 over 10 years, about 60 percent of its current strength. "It's obvious that we can't do it at the rate we've been running. And if a system is not working, it needs to be changed," concluded Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army, Lt. Gen. Karel Řehka.

In her speech, Defence Minister Jana Černochová took stock of her three years at the Ministry of Defence. "Despite the turbulent economic development, we enforced a fundamental guarantee of financial resources for defence and we also changed other legislation. At that time I promised you here that the army would no longer be a back-up for other ministries and thanks to the government of Petr Fiala this is not the case," the minister said. She also said that she believed she had managed to turn her promises into actions and tangible results. "But it is still true that no big and fundamental changes can take place overnight, even during one election period.

What hasn't been addressed for decades cannot easily be fixed in three years, but we must continue to work hard, not slack off and do our best to do everything necessary. Despite all the work we have done together, the current world shows us that it will not be enough for the future. The arrival of the new administration of President Donald Trump reveals this in full nakedness and in the context of the developments of recent months, perhaps no one doubts anymore that the European member states of the Alliance must step up their pace in strengthening their defence to the maximum and that Europe simply cannot continue to rely on the stronger brother living across the ocean to solve every crisis for it," said the Defence Minister.

Černochová also pointed to the issue of maintaining military and civilian personnel, which she sees as perhaps a bigger problem than finances. She said the army does not have enough professionals or reservists, although the numbers of both are slowly increasing. She said there is no simple solution to deal with this problem quickly and easily. The population is ageing, young people are dwindling and the department faces competition from other employers. "We need to look at the issue overall, but in any case, alongside that, we also need to work on changes that we already know are necessary. I am therefore very pleased that the amendment to Act No. 221/1999 Coll. on professional soldiers, which is now in the Senate and which increases certain financial benefits, including the recruitment allowance, is going through the legislative process at an unusually fast pace," Defence Minister Jan Černochová said in her speech.

At the subsequent press conference, we asked both the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff whether, given the experience with the acquisition processes to date, they should be changed or accelerated. On the military side, for example, through different methods of specification, testing or complaints processes, on the political level, for example, through changes to the Public Procurement Act or a new law?

"I think it's just going to be necessary in the future, the process is just going to have to change. I'm not an expert in acquisitions, but even from my level I know and I see that we have some reserves that we are probably able to speed up here, for example by digitizing the process, maybe shortening or skipping some intermediate steps and so on. But there are limits to this, where you have to look at the acquisition system overall and from a financing point of view. You get into different situations where, on the one hand, you don't always spend everything, on the other hand, you can't keep the momentum going if you don't have it backed by funding. Then there is the experience of war.One is that we need to put much more emphasis on security of supply, on supply chains and on building and strengthening the domestic defence industry. At the same time, the state should create mechanisms to have some guarantees with the domestic industry. This is something that we sometimes lack today. So I see some reserves and I think that it will require changes both in us as processors and at the national level of the legislative process," Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Karel Řehka.

"I'll follow up on the General. Certainly there was and is a will on our part. We have already accelerated some of the processes, unfortunately we are not up to speed with some of the processes as the Ministry of Defence, part of the process goes to the Ministry of Finance. We cannot start acquisitions without guaranteeing funding. We can accelerate some deadlines, for example, among colleagues, which we have done. We can, of course, go more along the lines of the government-to-government system. And the general said it jokingly at the commanders' meeting that the purchase of the backpacks took six years versus the purchase of the fifth-generation aircraft, which took a year and a half, because we just went with the government-to-government system. I know that we sometimes come into conflict with the SAO, where we are accused of either acting too fast or acting too slow. I just think that it is the responsibility of us politicians to decide what procedures we choose. Indeed, we have often chosen the procedure to obtain military material in the shortest possible time and at prices valid at the time. In times of war, the price of military material goes up, and if we delay, stagger and argue whether this or that is better, then in a year or two years' time the prices will be much higher. We are aware that there are still some things that can be accelerated in the process, but I would not think that it is just about changing the law. The law is not that bad, and it offers a number of exemptions. We would not presume, as the Ministry of Defence, to go against the law. We do have some exceptions in there and we have applied them. But then we found ourselves in the SAO report," Defence Minister Jana Černochová replied to our question.