D. Palavenis. A new NATO initiative, DIANA, has been approved. And where is Lithuania?
Photo from the author’s personal archive
April 6-7 The NATO Foreign Ministers’ Meeting approved the Charter for the Establishment of a Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) and For the NATO Innovation Fund. It turned out that Lithuania would only join the NATO Innovation Fund, but would not open test centers in the country on the initiative of DIANA and would not create an accelerator for start-ups working with change technologies. The position of NATO’s neighbors remains completely unclear. This commentary offers arguments to rethink Lithuania’s position on DIANA.
2021 June At a summit in Brussels in 2007, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced plans to establish DIANA. It was agreed that DIANA would act as a platform through which NATO could invest in a change in defense technology. DIANA is scheduled to start operations in 2023. NATO’s Science and Technology Organization has refined the list of technologies for change that will affect future warfare: artificial intelligence, big data, autonomous systems, biotechnology, quantum, supersonic and space technologies, new materials and propulsion systems.
2022 April 6-7 The DIANA Charter was endorsed at the NATO Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in 2006 and committed an initial € 1 billion. Euro amount for the Innovation Fund. DIANA and the Innovation Fund are separate elements, but they will work in concert. The aim is for private investors to participate in DIANA projects and invest in the potential of change technologies after assessing the risks. The amount of the fund to be created will be distributed over a period of fifteen years.
According to the DIANA Charter, this initiative involves NATO member technology test centers and start-up accelerator platforms to enable developers to grow. The program of challenges announced by DIANA participates in bidding solutions that can be implemented through an emerging ecosystem using a test center, an accelerator platform, and could also attract funding from an investment fund.
The DIANA ecosystem is currently known to consist of two regional centers, one on the European continent (London / Tallinn) and the other in North America, 47 test centers, and 9 starter accelerators. The exact locations and numbers of the second regional headquarters, the Canadian-US test center, and the accelerators are unknown and will be announced in June.
According to the published map of DIANA, it can be seen that Lithuania is not going to allocate the available technology test centers and starter accelerators. It is worth noting that other Baltic countries are more pragmatic about the DIANA initiative. Estonia will designate three testing centers and set up a regional DIANA headquarters with the UK. Estonia, together with the UK, will develop a start-up accelerator focusing on cyber innovation, virtual site viability research and stand-alone vehicle testing. Latvia is allocated a testing center for this initiative.
And where is Lithuania?
At the moment, it is not clear why the Lithuanian test center or the starter accelerator are not visible on the map of NATO DIANA institutions. This is more than strange, as Lithuania is ready to participate in the activities of the NATO Innovation Fund by allocating funds.
It is unlikely that NATO would have rejected Lithuania’s proposals for at least one of the current research centers in Lithuania specializing in research into change technologies. The requirements for a research center were set very broadly, so the issue could be provided by state-run private research centers: e.g. Center for Physical and Technological Sciences, Center for Natural Research, Biotechpharma Research Center.
February 8 Minister of Economic Affairs and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė in an agreement with NATO Representative Mircea Geoana, in which she mentioned that the Ministry is participating in DIANA.
All this shows that the capacity of the test centers in Lithuania is there, enthusiasm for participating in this initiative has been expressed, but all this was not enough for the Lithuanian centers to be included in the DIANA initiative. Doubts that the representatives of Lithuania working in NATO knew the fact and at this moment drew the attention of both the representatives of the Government and the representatives of individual ministries. It is likely that the desire to join DIANA got lost in bureaucratic mazes as the circle of interested participants increased. It is likely that better inter-institutional communication between the areas working with different ministries on defense innovation would have prevented this shortcoming.
Meanwhile, with regard to the possibility of the emergence of the DIANA starter accelerator in Lithuania, it should be noted that the requirements for the accelerator were high, but it would be possible to offer several options e.g. Northtown Vilnius, Klaipeda Science and Technology Park. At the moment, it is difficult to predict whether having a DIANA accelerator in the country would give a direct benefit to Lithuania. However, in order to position the country as a particular direction of change in technology e.g. It would have been expedient for the leader of biotechnology to pursue the emergence of the DIANA starter accelerator in Lithuania. The example of Estonia shows that this is the case for a small country, and solutions are being found to achieve this goal, e.g. joining another NATO country.
And what’s next?
First of all, it is to be hoped that Lithuania’s position on participation in DIANA will be re-evaluated. In case of larger organizations, the possibility to include the elements allocated by Lithuania in the DIANA initiative until June. In order to avoid inter-institutional discrepancies in the future, it would be expedient to better coordinate actions at the level of the Government or to take over the initiative to the Ministry of National Defense.
The Lithuanian Armed Forces, as one of the potential end users of defense innovations, should be involved in this process in a timely manner. The aim must be to ensure that the technological solutions developed are not only necessary but also technologically superior to those of the opponent. It would make sense to intensify cooperation with the US and Germany to participate in joint research on defense innovation. It is likely that such cooperation would later be realized through the establishment of joint defense industry companies in Lithuania.
The author of the comment is Donatas Palavenis, BPTI junior researcher
The author is grateful to NATO Deputy Secretary General Giedrimas Jeglinskas for his comments in preparing this commentary.
The author’s opinion does not necessarily coincide with the editorial position.
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