NORFOLK, VA – NATO ACT hosted NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment, Wendy Gilmour, on March 6th, 2023, to discuss investment priorities, capability development, and agile innovation.
Wendy Gilmour is a decorated public servant, focused on diplomacy, security, and climate initiatives, with over 30 years of experience; her role as Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment focuses on the development and adaptation of cutting-edge, innovative, and interoperable capabilities. NATO ACT, headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, is NATO’s Warfare Development Command, optimizing NATO-wide interoperability and readiness.
Recently, at Finland’s inaugural Security Defence Day (SecD-Day) conference on February 8th, 2023, she addressed a delegation on the importance of full spectrum, multinational procurement collaboration: “When nations come together to procure capability together, it ensures interoperability, and also means we get the full gambit of technology and ideas into the capability…” NATO allies and partners must leverage cross-functional operability to maximize procurement effectiveness and utilization.
Amidst ongoing global conflicts in a complex international security environment, this meeting focused on key topics like procurement for economies of scale, multi-domain operations, defence innovation, and strategic foresight.
Highlights include multi-domain defence investments, innovative funding pathways, equipment manufacturing, and supply chain threats. Staying adaptive during a time of emerging risk while navigating both wartime and peacetime economies, Gilmour and her team work with NATO ACT to refine a transformative evolution of structures, processes, and force management.
Gilmour discussed agility in fund development, while highlighting the Alliance’s focus on capability, resilience, and integration – Alliance investment will be driven by innovation and opportunity presented by current and future generations. NATO ACT investments focus on multi-domain operations, digital transformation, and organizational modernization. NATO ACT provides procurement frameworks, acquisition strategies, and capability packages to support, synchronize, and enable NATO allied and partner forces to develop the NATO military instrument of power to deter and defend against known threats.
Common funded capability development requires collaborative yet agile investments. These investments provide NATO allies and partner forces improved situational awareness, collective understanding, and information exchange. Working alongside NATO ACT to ensure multiple lines of cutting-edge, innovative, and interoperable delivery from the Capability Directorate, NATO members and partners work together to increase production capacity, munitions storage, and capability integration.