Europe’s security conversation has changed. Defence readiness, military mobility, strategic autonomy and critical infrastructure protection are no longer separate policy discussions. They are connected parts of the same mission question: can Europe continue to function when pressure is applied across physical, digital and cognitive domains at the same time?
The European Union’s White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030 frames a new approach to defence, including closing capability gaps, strengthening the European defence industrial base and improving readiness for worst-case scenarios. The Council describes the objective as ensuring Europe’s defence readiness by 2030, including stronger deterrence and military mobility. European defence readiness — Council of the European Union
NATO’s definition of hybrid threats points in the same direction. Hybrid activity can combine cyber operations, sabotage, disinformation, coercion and other actions designed to create disruption or uncertainty without a conventional attack. NATO states that national resilience remains fundamental, while also recognising that hybrid actions can have collective-defence implications. NATO: Countering hybrid threats
That changes the meaning of readiness.
Readiness is not only the number of aircraft available, the resilience of a command network or the capacity to move forces across a border. It is also the ability of the systems supporting those activities to keep working when they are being probed, degraded or attacked.
A port may be essential to military mobility. A railway may move personnel, fuel or equipment. A power network may support a headquarters, a hospital or a communications node. A water system may be part of the operating environment for a defence site. A facilities-management network may control access, power, cooling and physical safety inside a secure building.
These environments are often managed by different organisations, acquired at different times and monitored by different teams. An incident that looks minor in one system can become strategically significant when it crosses those boundaries.
This is the readiness gap: the gap between protecting individual systems and understanding the interdependencies that make an entire mission possible.
The answer is not to treat every sensor, controller or connected device as a military asset. It is to recognise that cyber-physical systems can become operationally important even when they were never designed as part of a defence network.
Leaders should therefore ask three questions:
- Which civilian systems does our mission depend on?
- Which connected systems could interrupt safety, movement, supply or communications?
- How quickly could we identify a disruption, make a decision and continue operating?
A resilient Europe will not be defined only by stronger perimeters. It will be defined by the ability to understand what is happening across organisational and technical boundaries, prioritise what matters and act before a local incident becomes a national problem.
Closing thought
The next phase of European readiness must treat cyber and physical resilience as one operational problem. The infrastructure that supports defence is part of defence readiness, whether it carries a military label or not.
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