Ladies and gentlemen,

 

The security of our nations and countries, which we have enjoyed in the past decades, is based on a deterring dominance, which does not derive from the numbers of soldiers, tanks and aircrafts, but especially from our technical and technological supremacy, which has recently become increasingly difficult to maintain. New threats of cyber attacks and hybrid wars are emerging. We are facing a pandemic that has been unparalleled in the past hundred years. And new threats will definitely come.

 

Those threats can be successfully dealt with only through a close cooperation with allies in NATO and EU, and a flexible sharing of lessons learned and identified. That is why there is such a high value added in the venues for meetings of governmental officials, military leaders, civil security agencies and defence industries as well as academics, such as the Prague-based FUTURE FORCES FORUM.

 

The Czech Republic engages in the collective defence since its accession to the Alliance and we can be proud of the job our military have been doing both on common operations and missions as well as in the NATO command structures. And we also want to be proud of our defence industry, for whom events like the FFF open the door to the world, to information on new trends and on national defence and security challenges.

 

Observations from expert panels, discussions and personal meetings during the FFF are definitely very useful for planning the modernisation of the armed forces, cyber security, crisis medicine or crisis management capability. And the full credit for that goes to the FFF organisers.