In the event of NATO entering the war against Russia, the Italian defense would have to be completely reorganized, starting from its top and command body.
If until the nineties of the last century the structures existed, or at least their establishment in emergency situations was envisaged, to allow the Armed Forces to face a conflict against the Warsaw Pact, in the last thirty years of peace these have been almost dismantled.
Under current conditions, the civil and military organization of the nation would not be in the slightest condition to be able to face the ordeal of intervention in a war conflict.
Below is a series of legislative and regulatory measures deemed necessary to prepare the country for war: First of all, the COVI (joint-force operational command) should assume full control of the direction of military operations in coordination with NATO. To do this, it should be able to give operational orders to the Armed Forces, with the respective Chiefs of Staff placed directly under the Chief of Defense Staff. The latter should be an army general, the only one able to hold the command in a conflict of an eminently terrestrial nature.
The territorial organization should be reinvented and placed under the direction of the carabinieri who have a command structure well branched out throughout the national territory. All the armed bodies of the state should depend on the territorial defense command, to be fully militarized (public security and civil protection) and to be assigned to the protection of installations, infrastructures and sensitive objectives against enemy sabotage actions and acts of internal subversion.
Army forces should be mostly concentrated in the operational component of mobile defense and employment abroad under NATO command, suitably reinforced by departments made up of conscripts. This should be restored and recruits assigned to training departments and the many schools still in existence. The mass of officers and non-commissioned officers in reserve positions should flow to these bodies, to be recalled to service and used as instructor cadres for recruits.
Il supreme defense council, directed by the President of the Republic, should be reunited on a permanent basis to give the necessary political-strategic guidelines to the COVI. A special inter-ministerial body chaired by a representative of the defense ministry should manage all supplies, imports and distribution of raw materials, including foodstuffs.
The general secretariat of defense should merge with the general directorates of the ministry of defense, in order to recover personnel and avoid unnecessary and harmful overlapping of competences. The general staff of the armed forces should become anemia and the personnel employed therein reassigned to the operational departments or to the general staff of the defence.
Civilian personnel employed in defense establishments, industries dedicated to the production of arms and those of transport companies (railways, ferries, bus lines, etc.), energy (electricity, gas and water distribution), telecommunications, postal and other services indispensable to the life of the nation should be militarized, with the placing of officers of the Armed Forces in central and peripheral directorates to control their activity.
Decree-laws limiting the freedom of individuals, of assembly, of opinion and of strikes should also be studied, ready for immediate enactment after due consideration. The information and security agencies (AISE and AISI) should report directly to COVI and the territorial defense command respectively, without prejudice to the control powers of DIS and COPASIR. The AISI should also take care of the control and possible censorship of the press and information organs in order to avoid the dissemination of classified news and anti-national propaganda.
The anti-aircraft components of all the armed forces should depend on an aeronautical command, including those of the Army and Navy, when not deployed abroad or at sea; even ships of greater tonnage, in fact, should integrate or constitute the air defense of the main coastal cities.
Given the poor operational efficiency of the army brigades, especially due to lack of logistics and modern weapon systems, each of them should form a tactical grouping of variable strength, in which to concentrate the most trained and motivated personnel and equipped with the most efficient means , possibly complete with ammunition and spare parts. The osmosis between brigades would also be desirable, in order to create groupings as ready as possible for combat and to be subjected to intense amalgam and inter-arms training in white and fire in polygons and simulators. The commanders of these groupings should be granted the faculty of selecting the personnel to be employed by them, of personally granting honors in the field to the most deserving and of punishing those responsible for failings with fines.
Also for disciplinary purposes, the military prosecution should detach a military tribunal with militarized personnel at each large unit command and the carabinieri component of the military police should be significantly reinforced, up to the strength of one company for each brigade of the operating army. .
As provocatively suggested, in addition to taking into account what comes to us from the chronicle of international war, finds full confirmation in the lessons learned from the national participation in the two world conflicts, in order not to enter into a hypothetical third party in the most inexperienced way.
FC
photo: taken from "The Three Eaglets" (1942)
