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The article focuses on the concept of crowdsourcing in the social networking environment as a new phenomenon involving civilians in the intelligence process, enabling the use of their intelligence potential during armed conflict. Crowdsourcing of the civilian population is introduced by the example of NATO intervention during the first civil war in Libya. The article presents its use during the intelligence process at the strategic-operational level of command and control of the armed forces. It establishes its possible definition as a collection method of the intelligence process, and as a collection method which is disjunctively separable from similar intelligence collection methods.

The article deals with the method of application of evaluation tools, applicable for the evaluation of the preparedness assessment of undeclared headquarters and units of the Czech Armed Forces. As a part of the research there were analysed the approaches of the Czech Republic and NATO using of a comparative analysis supplemented by a structured interview. The results of the research confirmed the inconsistent approach to the application of standardized tools and methods for evaluation of units, which are not declared for the NATO and the EU Task Forces. Based on the results of the analysis and with the utilization of the best practice approaches, there was formulated an innovative approach to assessment of the required capabilities of all headquarters and units. The evaluation of these preparedness is carried out at the end of each Czech Armed Forces operational training cycle.

The text is dedicated to the analysis of the legal regulation of military wills in the new Civil Code (Law No. 89/2012 Coll.). It places it in a historical legal context. However, priority attention is paid to a detailed analysis of the current legal regulation and potential issues that this regulation brings. It also briefly mentions other options for last dispositions that a soldier could use. The legal regulation of military wills in the Civil Code can be characterized as very well conceived, reflecting the reality of foreign missions. The fact that it takes the form of a public document is also significant if the relevant requirements are met. However, the question is how the application practice of the courts will approach the adjustment.

The war in Ukraine has become a global issue that has been closely monitored and evaluated by military experts and the media since its beginning. The aim of this article is to point out some specific aspects of the development of the conflict in Ukraine in its initial stages. In the beginning of the article, the author deals with the surprising development of the so-called "special military operation", leading to a change in Russia's original plans. In the following parts, he discusses the way the forces of the warring parties are used in individual domains, applies the principles of warfare and discusses the possible causes of the operational failure of the Russian military forces. The article mainly uses data from open sources. Analysis, comparison, deduction and synthesis were used in its compilation. The overall intention of the author is to offer readers one possible view of the ongoing conflict and to motivate them to think about the nature and character of war.

The concept of strategic communications rose to prominence especially with the events linked to the Crimea annexation and Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. As such it has been mostly related to the reactive fight against disinformation and propaganda or other elements of the hybrid campaign. This paper aims to point to the much broader potential for the tool of strategic communications in support of goals in the realm of national security and defence, while it is understood as proactive efforts and specific mindset using the information effect to advance national interests. Based on the literature review, benefits of strategic communications beyond hybrid campaigns are identified also in the fields of foreign military operations, counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism, deterrence and crisis management. It describes the informational, particularly, the cognitive, dimensions of these security threats as well as of the measures to counter them.

The article deals with some military consequences of the departure of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union (Brexit). To assess the potential impacts on defence and security of EU, a structured approach involving several methods was used in the analysis, which combines a search of professional publications, factors sensitivity analysis and testing of hypotheses. Based on the analysis, it was evaluated that the departure of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the structures of the European Union will take place without significant impact in the military field and does not pose an immediate threat to the security and defence of EU member states. Nevertheless, in connection with Brexit, there is still a certain risk of negative impacts in this area.

This article deals with one of the most explosive areas of the world today, which is the Near and Middle East (NMEA) and especially the territory of historical Palestine, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (IPC) has been going on for a long time. The text deals primarily with historical and military factors and is written as a historical explanatory analysis. It focuses on the most significant historical events and explains the ways of functioning and the consequences of the processes that have been taking place there for a long time.

The article deals with the system of joint doctrine development in the Czech Armed Forces (CAF) focused on the operational level of command and control, including the implementation of the NATO doctrines into national conditions. Among others, it was found that the structure and content of the Czech doctrines are not systematically set. Allied doctrines are introduced either by rewriting them into the Czech version or by introducing them in the full English version. In both cases, it might cause inconsistency in military terminology. The Coordinating Committee as the only supervisory body does not have the authority to streamline the process of producing military publications. The most important paper recommendations include alignment of the Czech doctrinal framework with the NATO architecture, adoption of Allied doctrines in the English version including the national specifics, or redistribution of competencies within the processing group. Notwithstanding, the above-mentioned proposals, which indicated high impact, require crucial steps to be taken to implement them.

This paper aims to enrich professional discussion on future shape of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic (AFCR) and is linked to the preceding research and publishing activities of members of the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies (CBVSS) at the University of Defence. In its first part, it performs a historical tour to the year 2012 and highlights the reasons that the former leadership of the ACR led to the start of construction work on the concept of AFCR (KVAČR). Briefly describes the interconnection and the hierarchy of individual conceptual and strategic documents, the procedure works on them and summarizes the arguments supporting the need of KVAČR as such. The next section brings potential methodological approaches to the preparation of this document, using the method of the "9S", including practical examples, it renumbers basic strategic assumptions and priorities in various stages, bordered by years 2020 and 2025 as a prerequisite for formulating strategies for achieving this specific goal. Within the document, there is a short excursion into the field of long-term planning for major areas of skills, using their description of DOTMLPFI functional areas, including an example of using this methodology in project preparation of program funding. The recommendations formulated in the article are based on the authors' best experiences with the preparation of documents of a similar type in the years 2003-2013, the recommendations of experts from the broader security community of the Czech Republic, and recommendations of the Alliance. As such, it has been passed to the KVAČR processors at level of the General Staff of AFCR over the years 2013-2014.

The paper is focused on the area of defence sources in the Czech Republic. Within an analysis of the actual situation in military spending in the Czech Republic, some potential approaches are defined to enable the reasonable and transparent allocation of resources for national defence. Based on these approaches, three courses of action are derived in order to deal with current resources inadequacy and instability in defence.

The article is available only in the Czech language. For more information please contact editors.

The guarantee of national defense and the fulfillment of commitments to Allies is highly dependent on its financial source security. The economic recession, which began in 2008 in the USA, negatively affected public budgets. This recession was one of the causes of the reduction of planned defense spendings in the Czech Republic. This reduction caused the postponement of acquisitions, which were to be implemented both with regard to commitments to coalition partners and with regard to maintaining their own defense capabilities. Nowadays, current internal debt is still increasing due to neglecting inflation of military equipment, which is higher than inflation of ordinary goods. Currently, the defense ability is also affected by the pandemic of Covid-19, which caused a slowdown in GDP growth and public spending growth. For this reason, it has been several times postponed the commitment to achieve a rate of 2% of military expenditure of GDP by 2024 and the current plan to achieve it in 2027 is also endangered.

The article deals with the use of military police in combat operations during dominance phase.Itdescribes the place androleofmilitarypoliceas combat support units, analyzes experience from previous and ongoing operations and specifies the possible activities of military police during this phase. In conclusion it gives recommendations for the development of capabilities in terms of the activities performed and possible changes in organizational structures. The content of the article is based on thesis prepared by the participant of the 27th General Staff Course at the University of Defence.

Existing research about China and Taiwan deals primarily with bilateral relations, military doctrines, etc. They don't pay much attention to the consequences of the potential China-Taiwan war. The article examines conditions for emerging and activity of guerillas with paramilitant signs in the case of China's domination over Taiwan. The analysis is based on the present general, socio-economic, political, geographical, and technological environment. A substantial part of the analysis is also argumentation about the potential of urban guerilla. The article is based on data, pieces of information, polls and academic and analytical texts relevant to the main research questions. Those questions are the potential for emerging, sustainability, and effectiveness of guerilla. The article comes with findings, that argue the relatively high potential for the emergence of guerilla primarily because of the suitable environment in Taiwan and possible effectiveness and sustainability based on existing variables, which can however also limit this potential.

This article examines the needs and problems of the modern war veterans and identifies factors that may contribute to making them a  high-risk group. It uses data from two questionnaire surveys. The respondents were war veterans leaving active service and war veterans who left active service less than ten years ago. The analysis shows that participation in the mission has a negative impact mainly on the family and relationships, and that the most common problems on leaving active service are related to finances and finding a new job. Further, few factors have been identified that may contribute to a high-risky group: less than nineteen years of service, age under forty, having health restrictions due to active service and leaving service as a decision of the employer.

The European Union is interested in ensuring the security of African countries in the region of Sahel because some of the threats originating from this region can potentially endanger its member states. With the deteriorating situation in northern Mali, the EU has decided to become more active in this country through Common Security and Defence Policy missions. The aim of this article is to introduce and subsequently assess the contemporary policy of EU in Mali. Particular attention will be paid to the European Union Training Mission in Mali and European Union Capacity Building Mission in Mali, which have so far produced rather mixed results. The article will also focus on the EU strategy in the Sahel region and partly on the EU counterterrorist and counterinsurgency activities in Mali.

Research into the historiography of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction involves an excursion of the study of recent problems of Chemical Corps in the literature. Four basic periods were identified in the development of the theory of Chemical Corps and the concept of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. 1. The First World War and the foundation of Czechoslovakia as a period of changes in the principles of military leadership due to the existence of chemical weapons. 2. The period after the end of World War II, reflection on threats in the form of the development of Chemical Corps, the take-over of Soviet doctrine and military research objectives. 3. 1990s as a period characterized by an accent on the Gulf War, proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the introduction of new technical means of Chemical Corps. 4. Beginning of the 21st century and the threat of ultra-terrorism, the development of specialized capabilities of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defence, birth of the 9th Chemical Protection Company of immediate response and literary dominance of international security issues, which outweigh force protection problems in operations. The researched articles illustrate the originality of scientific thinking and the social contribution of scientific literature to the defense sector.

The paper deals with cyber security, cyber defence and operations in cyber space focusing on the department of defence. Tasks implied from the Czech Republic's, NATO's and European Union strategic documents and roles of participating subjects have been analysed. Four scenarios as another source of identified tasks were created and used to describe possible situations requiring cyber defence capabilities. The presented analysis is a prerequisite for specifying required capabilities, and a proposal how to assign roles, responsibilities and required capabilities.

The article deals with the topic of scenarios in relation to their significance, internal structure development and the way of elaborating scenarios following links to security threats and mission types. Article describes possible way of structuring set of scenarios reflecting security threats stated in The Security strategy of the Czech Republic and corresponding mission types. Main methodology exploited during the work with the topic of scenarios was document analysis, which resulted in finding, that scenarios don't enjoy appropriate attention in the defence resort of the Czech Republic, scenarios are not elaborated and thus not exploited. The article deals in the conclusion with propositions aiming at elaborating scenarios with purposefull internal structure, elaborating security threats and reflecting mission types.

The present article expresses the importance of the Zrínyi 2026 Hungarian government medium-term modernization program and its impact on military security in the region. Migration crisis, hybrid warfare treatments and withdrawal from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty were the main reasons for the enactment of the Zrínyi 2026 program. Comparing the Polish and Hungarian Defence Forces, the article analyses the significance of military security in Central Europe. The analysis explores organizational and legal changes and the purchase of armaments. The Hungarian program's objectives are to change not only the equipment but also the structure and organization. The Commander of the Hungarian Defence Forces was separated from the Ministry of Defence. The Hungarian program has declared the increase in the number of reserve forces to twenty thousand and the active duty personnel to roughly thirty-eight thousand. Due to the modernization the military forces will be equipped with new components.

This article deals with the Czech defence industry and its role in the defense policy of the Czech Republic. The basic goal of the text is a short introduction to abilities of the Czech defence industry and answering the question if and how it is able to fulfil the demand of the Czech defence sector for an armament and a military gear. Basic items needed for a military capability of soldiers on a field and the ability to develop and produce them at the Czech territory is mainly examined.

The article deals with providing situational awareness in operations at the operational level of command in the context of the information environment, the current nature of which significantly affects the execution of this capability. It examines the influence of three selected aspects - information overload, the expansion of advanced information technology and the growing importance of the cyber domain - on generating, maintaining and sharing situational awareness in planning and conduct of operations. It identifies and characterizes the respective sub-capabilities within the information area, necessary for operational headquarters to effectively provide situational awareness, and outline possible ways to develop these capabilities in terms of internal processes, technical equipment and personnel.

The article is devoted to the draft law on defence financing, which aims to oblige the government to allocate an amount of at least 2% of GDP to defence in every draft law on the state budget. During the inter-ministerial comment procedure, the Supreme Audit Office expressed doubts whether the draft means anything more than an unenforceable political commitment in relation to the Chamber of Deputies". The article convincingly demonstrates, with the help of legal argumentation and interpretation of the Constitution of the Czech Republic, the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as the established case law of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, that if approved, the Chamber of Deputies will also be bound by the Defence Financing Act when approving the state budget. To do otherwise would violate constitutionality.

Laser weapons have long been the subject of debate. The article discusses the potential adoption of laser weapons by infantry units and the future of small firearms. The text analyses these weapons in selected categories that subsequently support the evaluations and the conclusion. If miniaturisation is successfully managed, the comparison reveals an interesting paradox. While laser weapons and firearms do not rival each other as distinct functionalities, given the right conditions, they can actually complement each other and compensate for any disadvantages within their respective categories. Today's complex battlefield is placing ever greater demands on small arms, pushing conventional weapon mechanisms - combined with ammunition that guarantees accuracy and lower recoil, albeit at the expense of penetration - towards the limits of further possible advancement in technology. Improved passive individual protection restricts the wounding potential of pistol ammunition, reducing it to below 150 m for rifle cartridges, while guided ammunition tends to be prohibitively expensive. Under the right conditions, laser weapons could compensate for any of these drawbacks.

The aim of this article is to define leadership as a process required in the Czech Armed Forces. To this end, the nature of military leadership is first identified by analyzing similarities and differences of the widely accepted theoretical concepts (schools) of leadership, including approaches used in selected alliance armed forces. Based on the current state of affairs analysis, the components of leadership and the relationship among them are identified, as well as general conditions for their application. In accordance with the knowledge gained, a general leadership model of the Army of the Czech Republic is proposed.

The article describes attributes will influence character of modern warfighting and presents the basic approach to prepare commanders and leaders of "new generation". The operational environment describes determinants and characteristic of today's and future warfighting. Technological development as booster, change the tools and the procedures but not the nature of war. Level of training and leadership quality multiplies combat power. The key findings and recommendations support fundamental idea of ability to lead and manage hybrid systems in volatile multi-dimensional environment, using various tools and sources, appropriate to specific environment and specific tactical level mission, stressed in last chapter as result of this study. The article´s aim is support discussion, which directions we will adapt currently ongoing or newly creating study programs, preparing new generation of warriors - leaders.

The aim of the paper is to determine the extent of the use of strategic and decision-making analysis methods and the specifics and barriers of their practical application in the process of creating conceptual documents in the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic. In the qualitative research, a semi-structured questionnaire was created for the purpose of data collection and submitted to eighteen creators of the department's conceptual documents. The obtained data were evaluated by open coding according to the grounded theory, one of the methods of systematizing qualitative data. The results show that the methods are used, but informally or in a modified form - adapted to the specifics of the department. Barriers to the use of methods, are primarily the varying level of competence of the creators, the inappropriateness of certain methods for certain types of documents, time pressure or the preference for an intuitive approach. The ideal strategy seems to be a combination of the intuitive and rational approach.

The goal of this informative article is to comprehensively describe the causes of the formation and integration of cyber forces and information operations into the structure of the Army of the Czech Republic, including other significant connotations. The intention is not to present new scientific findings, but to point out the meaning of the existence of cybernetics and information operations as a necessary separate component of the Army of the Czech Republic capable of responding to the dynamic development of the security environment and the continuous development of modern technologies. The content and main arguments of this article reflect the transition from the classical form of warfare to the new platform, represented mainly by cyber space and a hybrid combination of a wide range of power tools with an emphasis on information operations.

The consequences of economic recession and their impact on national defence budgets can indeed heavily hamper the credibility of both NATO and the EU. A need for coping with budget restrictions and ongoing security crisis in the Ukraine re-opens the issue of common European armed forces as an effective tool for keeping security stability not only in Europe, but also around the world. However, the key issue is to what extent it is feasible to develop autonomous European armed forces operating independently of transatlantic allies, while there is a very strong NATO-EU interconnection in the area of military capability development.

The Bucha massacre raises the question of whether the Russian army predisposes its soldiers to unlawful violence against civilians. This article assumes that regardless of superior orders, perpetrators of violence must overcome the psychological barriers developed during socialisation. The psychological mechanism of "moral disengagement" allows soldiers to kill in combat and act violently on civilians. The duty of the armed forces is not only to prepare soldiers to fight and kill but also to prevent illegal violence. The case of the Russian army demonstrates how formal activities to prevent moral disengagement and violations of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) face insurmountable obstacles in the form of institutional culture and insufficient human capital.