How well can Austria defend itself? 15 of 23 indicators are below the minimum target.

The Monitor is an attempt to draw as broad a picture as possible of Austria's capacity to defend itself, grounded in the idea of resilience. In doing so, we face a fundamental trade-off: defence capability is complex and comprises a wide range of military, governmental, economic and societal factors. At the same time, the Monitor is meant to remain understandable, transparent and manageable. It therefore cannot provide a complete picture of reality.

We see the Monitor above all as a starting point for an objective discussion about what Austria needs for comprehensive defence capability – and which steps still have to be taken. In this, it builds on the Austrian Defence Lab's declaration of 26 October 2026. Comments, criticism and suggestions for developing the Monitor further are expressly welcome.

What the Monitor does not cover

The Monitor uses only publicly available information. This deliberately limits what it can say. Some factors that are central to defence capability cannot be meaningfully assessed because no sufficiently reliable public data exist. Other areas are deliberately not shown, or only in little detail, where publication could allow conclusions about specific weaknesses or capabilities of Austria.

One example is maintaining the state's ability to govern in a severe crisis (‘continuity of government’), which is internationally regarded as one of the basic prerequisites of state resilience. The same applies to parts of Austria's intelligence and cyber capabilities and to certain aspects of military mobility and logistics. In precisely these areas, a detailed public account of existing capacities, vulnerabilities or bottlenecks can itself be problematic in security terms.

For this reason, the Monitor also contains more input than output indicators. A state's available resources and capacities – such as personnel, systems or reserves – can usually be captured more easily in public than the question of what concrete military or governmental performance they actually produce in a crisis or in the event of defence. Yet it is precisely this readiness and sustainability that would be particularly relevant for a complete assessment.

A deliberate selection

Moreover, not every area that is relevant in principle needs an indicator of its own. The Monitor concentrates in particular on fields where there are deficits, a need for development or a relevant political debate. Capabilities that, by current assessment, work soundly and whose performance is the subject of broad expert consensus are in some cases not shown separately. Current examples are public warning systems and essential parts of the drinking water supply.

Even within the areas included, the Monitor does not claim to depict every capability at the level of detail that would be technically possible. Where a more detailed analysis would be interesting from an expert point of view but of limited necessity for the overall picture, or problematic for security reasons, we deliberately use broader indicators.

Scenarios and targets

Ideally, a complete assessment of Austria's defence capability would start from concrete threat and deployment scenarios and derive from them which capabilities and capacities Austria needs under different conditions. Important groundwork for this already exists: for example, the scenarios and planning assumptions surrounding ‘Unser Heer 2030’ and numerous public debates and analyses since the start of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.

Such scenario-based capability planning is complex, however. Depending on the assumptions about the threat, warning time, duration of a conflict, international support or Austria's specific role, very different requirements arise. Developing these scenarios robustly within the Monitor and deriving quantitative targets for all indicators from them would go well beyond the project's current scope and ambition.

We have therefore initially opted for a more pragmatic approach. Depending on the indicator, the minimum and optimum values are based on the Armed Forces' development plan (Aufbauplan), existing Austrian objectives, comparison with structurally similar states and countries regarded as international pioneers in individual areas. The derivation is disclosed for each indicator.

In a future version of the Monitor, we would like to add scenario-based requirements to this methodology. This would allow us to answer more precisely not only which capabilities Austria needs in the abstract, but what would actually suffice under concrete crisis and conflict conditions.

Transparency of the assessment

For each indicator, we disclose what is measured, which data are used and how the respective minimum and optimum values are arrived at. The targets set are therefore not unquestionable requirements but reasoned reference values. They too are meant to be part of the discussion and can be developed further as new findings and better data become available.