March 11, 2020 | International, Land
By: Christina Mackenzie
PARIS – France's spectacular 72 percent jump in weapons' exports in the 2015-2019 period from five years prior is largely thanks to two companies: Dassault Aviation and Naval Group.
The first of those companies sold Rafale fighters to Egypt, India and Qatar, while the second has become the most successful exporter of warships in the world — if one includes orders — selling submarines to Brazil and India, frigates to Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, and mine-sweepers to Belgium and the Netherlands.
A report released on March 9 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute notes that “French arms exports reached their highest level for any five-year period since 1990 and accounted for 7.9 percent of total global arms exports in 2015-19.”
Diego Lopes Da Silva, a SIPRI researcher adds: “The French arms industry has benefited from the demand for arms in Egypt [which accounted for 26 percent of France's defense exports], Qatar and India [14 percent each].”
Both politicians and defense industry leaders in France have understood that without exports they cannot afford to provide France's own armed forces with the most innovative and high-performing weapons. Furthermore, buying weapons from the United States brings red tape, including requirement for congressional authorization on all foreign military sales, which can delay the process and some argue shackle France's sovereignty.
In the words of Hervé Guillou, the out-going CEO of Naval Group, “no European country can maintain the competitivity of its defense industry based on just its own domestic market.”
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By: Mark Pomerleau The Air Force wants to start a new program to develop a series of offensive cyber tools, according to the White House's budget request for fiscal year 2020. This project will provide advanced cyber warfare capabilities to the Air Force's cyber mission force personnel, who work on projects for U.S. Cyber Command. In the service's budget books, the program is named Cyber Mission Force Foundational Tools. “Activities within the program deliver operations-ready cyberspace superiority capabilities through the research, development, testing, evaluation, accelerated prototyping, demonstration and fielding of cyber technologies and capabilities," Air Force research and development budget documents state. “This program enables Combatant Commanders the ability to operate in and through cyberspace to manipulate, disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy targeted computers, information systems and networks.” In fiscal 2020, Air Force leaders want the program to expand on past efforts to produce a family of foundational tools, to develop additional tools and software factories and to deliver prototypes that are interoperable with Cyber Command's architecture. Cyber Command leaders have vowed that the services will no longer develop stove-piped tools or infrastructure for individual service use. The budget documents note that these foundational tools will be incorporated into the Air Force's Distributed Cyber Warfare Operations portfolio. “The DCWO portfolio enables delivery of cyber effects to Combatant Commanders to include cyber operational preparation of the environment, offensive counter-cyber, cyberattack, electronic warfare operations, mission planning, intelligence, cybersecurity products and services and Command and Control/Situational Awareness (C2SA) tools needed to attack enemy networks, telephony, Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS), command and control systems, and create cyber effects through the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS),” the document state. Budget documents note that the program leverages previous efforts from Cyber Command and the Air Force for foundational tool development and were funded in other programs. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/air-force/2019/03/20/the-air-force-wants-to-start-a-new-35m-offensive-cyber-program/