Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

The paper examines the role of Polish artillery in a multi-domain battlefield. It uses literature and doctrinal analysis to assess how integration across land, air, sea, space, cyber, and cognitive domains affects artillery effectiveness. Findings show that artillery is increasingly dependent on interoperability, information flow, and systemic resilience. The study highlights new threats and opportunities, including A2/AD development. It concludes that multi-domain integration, rather than firepower alone, determines future combat effectiveness.

This paper examines Stability policing as a key tool for strengthening national defense in contemporary hybrid threat environments. Using a qualitative approach that combines a literature review, comparative analysis, and a case study of Ukraine, it analyzes its role across the conflict spectrum. The findings show that Stability policing bridges the gap between military operations and law enforcement, enhances resilience, and enables accountability through battlefield evidence collection. The study highlights its strategic importance for countering hybrid threats and preventing security vacuums. It contributes by conceptualizing Stability Policing as a proactive and integral component of national defense systems.

This paper explores strategic communication as a key instrument for countering hybrid threats in contemporary democratic states. The author, drawing on conceptual analysis, policy documents and practical case studies, examines the role of strategic communication in strengthening societal resilience, shaping public narratives, and responding to information-based aggression. He defines hybrid threats as multidimensional and adaptive phenomena operating below the threshold of armed conflict, exploiting institutional, psychological and informational vulnerabilities. Simultaneously, he argues that strategic communication, when coordinated, credible and value-based, constitutes an essential component of national security policy. The analysis identifies four core functions – informational, preventive, coordinative and normative – and highlights challenges related to institutional fragmentation, analytical capacity, and ethical dilemmas. Based on the findings, the author formulates normative and practical recommendations for policymakers. He concludes that strategic communication is not only a reactive tool but also a proactive mechanism for narrative resilience and democratic integrity in the age of non-linear conflict.

The paper deals with the problems of the occurrence of aggression and aggressive behavior as a provoking cause of various injuries and the need to provide pre-hospital emergency care. Based on the analysis of professional literature, as well as on the basis of experience from practice, it can be stated that members of Emergency Rescue Service exit groups often encounter manifestations of aggression and aggressiveness when providing pre-hospital emergency care. The results of a retrospective observational study of the medical records of the Plzeň and Ústí regions in the Czech Republic are presented. We focused on the analysis and in-depth examination of the calls of ambulance groups to patients whose injuries were caused by aggression and aggressive behavior. This was in terms of the number of call-outs, the frequency of individual diagnoses, NASA score and urgency level, as well as the characteristics of the deployment of individual call-out groups, etc. Options for managing aggression and aggressive behavior are also presented, including an assessment of the potential risk of aggression and escalation. Attention is also paid to the issue of preparing the members of call groups to cope with this negative phenomenon, which has an increasing tendency in the conditions of providing pre-hospital emergency care. The paper deals with this issue comprehensively.

The Voluntary National Defense Service (VNDS) of Lithuania was established in 17 January 1991 and began to operate in a difficult political and economic situation in the presence of Russian military forces deployed in Lithuania. The VNDS was tasked with ensuring the security of important state and economic entities, assisting the police in maintaining public order and territorial defense, as well as carrying out intelligence tasks throughout Lithuania. The main aim of the paper is to analyze the creation of military intelligence by the VNDS and the tasks they conducted from 1991 to 1993. Various methods were used to analyze the VNDS: case study, historical analysis, comparative historical, document analysis, data analysis and statistical content analysis. The paper establishes that the VNDS intelligence gathering structure and its development was influenced by the intelligence tasks assigned to the VNDS. The case study also reveals that the main function of the VNDS staff consisted of intelligence information gathering. In 1991, according to the VNDS standby logs analyzed in this study, 56 percent of information registered by the VNDS staff consisted of intelligence information and this information was gathered across 82 percent of Lithuanian districts. According to the data gathered in this study, it was proven that the VNDS was conducting military intelligence from 1991 to 1993. The case study is even more relevant since the current day Lithuanian Armed Forces are returning to the national territorial defense model due to the changes in current geopolitical situation. In the future, the role of the National Defense Volunteer Force (the NDVF), equivalent to the previous VNDS, will increase significantly, as the Commander of the Lithuanian Armed Forces has appointed these forces to carry out intelligence tasks for military operations.