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March 27, 2024 | International, Land

Pakistan unveils aircraft and rocket programs, parades military tech

The country displayed new equipment including the Haider platform, the first locally produced, Chinese-designed VT-4 main battle tank.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2024/03/27/pakistan-unveils-aircraft-and-rocket-programs-parades-military-tech/

On the same subject

  • A compromise is needed on trans-Atlantic defense cooperation

    October 17, 2019 | International, Other Defence

    A compromise is needed on trans-Atlantic defense cooperation

    By: Hans Binnendijk and Jim Townsend The incoming European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will need to work with Washington to defuse a quietly simmering trans-Atlantic defense cooperation issue that, if left unsettled, could do more long-term damage to the NATO alliance than U.S. President Donald Trump's divisive tweets. The United States for years has sought to stimulate increased European defense spending while minimizing wasteful duplication caused by Europe's fragmented defense industry. Europe has finally begun to deliver: Defense spending is up significantly, and the European Union has created several programs to strengthen its defense industries. But in the process, the EU has created a trans-Atlantic problem. These advances in Europe could come at the expense of non-EU defense industries, especially in the U.S. The European Defence Fund, or EDF, established in 2017, is designed to support the cooperative research and development efforts of European defense industries, especially small and mid-sized firms. Three eligible companies from at least three EU countries need to apply in a coordinated fashion to receive project research and development funding, which can be up to a 100 percent grant for the research phase. Plans call for spending about $15 billion between 2021 and 2027 to strengthen Europe's defense R&D and stimulate innovation. Model projects include the Eurodrone and ground-based precision strike weapons. A second related EU program, Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, also inaugurated in 2017, focuses more on efforts to foster defense cooperation among subsets of European states. Initially envisioned in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, PESCO is an effort to develop a more comprehensive European defense consistent with EU's common foreign and security policy needs. Thus far, 25 of 28 EU nations have signed up, with 34 modest cooperative projects agreed to by the European Council. The EU estimates that the inefficiency caused by the lack of adequate defense cooperation costs its members between $25 billion and $100 billion annually. These new EU programs, designed to pool and share scarce defense resources, are intended to help address that problem. But the exclusivity of these approaches favor the defense industries of EU members, and the hostile Trump administration rhetoric toward the EU is only supercharging this controversy. President Trump's negative attitude toward NATO and European leaders has undercut European confidence in American trans-Atlantic leadership and strengthened a call in some European capitals for European “strategic autonomy.” Part of this autonomy is developing a more capable and independent European military supported by a stronger European defense industry. A stronger European military capability is a goal shared on both sides of the Atlantic, but not at the expense of defense cooperation. While European leaders understand that they are probably decades away from real, strategic autonomy and military independence, they are shaping the EDF and PESCO approaches to protect European defense industry by being fairly exclusive of U.S. or other non-EU defense industries. This has U.S. defense officials worried. A May 2020 letter to the EU from two senior U.S. officials stated their “deep concern” about the programs' regulations. While current EDF and PESCO programs are small, U.S. officials are worried they will set precedents and will be a model for more ambitious European defense cooperation in the future. They fear not only that U.S. industry will be cut out, but that two separate defense industry tracks will be established that will undercut NATO interoperability and promote further duplication. Some U.S. officials have threatened U.S. retaliation unless changes are made. EU officials respond that these criticisms are excessive. They note that some American defense firms established in European countries will be eligible, that there is nothing comparable to the “Buy American Act” in Europe, that plenty of trans-Atlantic cooperative projects can take place outside of these two EU programs, that the PESCO projects will be guided by both EU and NATO requirements, and that over 80 percent of European international defense contracts go to U.S. firms anyway. They also note that a deterrent to U.S.-EU defense cooperation is that U.S. arms transfer control regulations create potential American restrictions on the sale to third countries of any U.S.-EU cooperative weapons systems that contain U.S. technology. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who seems caught in the middle, has supported both EDF and PESCO, so long as the results fill NATO capability gaps and do not lead to further duplication. Flexibility will be needed on both sides of the Atlantic to defuse this issue before it becomes too difficult to manage. Some opportunities for third-country participation will be needed. Possible approaches to level the playing field include focusing on modifying PESCO, which is still under development in the EU. One suggestion is to create a “white list” of NATO nations not in the EU (such as the U.S., Canada, Norway, post-Brexit United Kingdom and Turkey) that might be invited to participate in selected PESCO projects on a case-by-case basis. This would at least set a precedent that PESCO does not completely exclude third countries. And it would strengthen EU-NATO defense links. Additionally, formal procedures might be established for closer cooperation between the PESCO project selection process and NATO's defense planning process. This will help avoid duplication and identify at NATO those areas where NATO nations outside the EU could cooperate on PESCO projects, The U.S. might also consider amending its arms export control legislation to waive the third-country transfer review requirement for the export of U.S.-PESCO joint projects if the sale would be made to a country to which the U.S. would have made a similar sale. EU internal negotiations on EDF are finished, and changes will be hard to make. Plus, EDF provides R&D funding grants that use European financial resources. While some $118 million in U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funds go to European firms, that is about 3 percent of DARPA's budget. So the U.S. might ask for some modest reciprocity from the EDF. But more constructively, DARPA and the EDF might co-fund R&D for joint U.S.-EU projects. The United States has much to gain from a strong European defense industry. Europe has much to gain from cooperation with the U.S. defense industry. All NATO allies need to stimulate defense innovation to compete effectively with Russia and China. Both sides of the Atlantic have much to lose if this issue further disrupts NATO's already shaky political equilibrium. Hopefully von der Leyen's experience as a former German defense minister will help her to understand the urgency and to find a solution to this problem. Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and formerly served as the senior director for defense policy on the U.S. National Security Council. Jim Townsend is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and formerly served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/10/16/a-compromise-is-needed-on-trans-atlantic-defense-cooperation/

  • OMFV: Army Team Won’t Compete For Bradley Replacement

    September 21, 2020 | International, Land

    OMFV: Army Team Won’t Compete For Bradley Replacement

    SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR Industry and Congress were deeply skeptical of the Army's suggestion to enter a government design team in the OMFV competition. Now the Army has backed off. WASHINGTON: The defense industry, Congress, and thinktanks breathed a unanimous sigh of relief at the Army's latest announcement on the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program. In an email to reporters Thursday afternoon, the Army said it would no longer seek to enter its own design team in the OMFV competition, a controversial plan it had suggested in a draft Request For Proposals in July. “The whole purpose of publishing a Draft RFP was to elicit feedback from our industry partners. We take their feedback seriously,” the Army's armored vehicle modernization director, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman, told me. “We won't always agree — and must act in the best interest of our soldiers — but we will always listen.” Thursday's announcement is the latest twist in the decades-long struggle to replace the Reagan-era M2 Bradley, a heavily armed and armored troop carrier. It also suggests the notoriously bureaucratic and inward-looking Army acquisition system is finally starting to take defense contractors seriously when they say something is a bad idea. “The only surprising thing here is that the Army may have actually taken into account and listened to the over 500 industry comments received,” said Bill Greenwalt of thinktank AEI, a former Hill staffer who spent years reforming military procurement. “I expect they got an earful.” While the Army's announcement Thursday said it was still “carefully reviewing and analyzing industry comments (over 500 in total) [for] the next few weeks,” the message from industry on the government team seems to have been so strong the service didn't want to wait any longer to take action. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/09/omfv-army-team-wont-compete-with-industry-for-bradley-replacement/

  • Safran garde l'objectif d'une entrée en service opérationnel du Patroller en 2021

    March 3, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    Safran garde l'objectif d'une entrée en service opérationnel du Patroller en 2021

    Par Michel Cabirol Safran garde l'objectif d'une entrée en service opérationnel du Patroller en 2021. L'armée de Terre est de son côté plus dubitative. Le pari est ambitieux, voire audacieux mais pourquoi pas... Après le crash début décembre d'un drone Patroller peu avant sa livraison à l'armée de Terre, le directeur général de Safran Philippe Petitcolin a pour "objectif de ne pas impacter la mise en service opérationnel (du drone Patroller, ndlr) en 2021", a-t-il expliqué jeudi lors de la présentation des résultats 2019 de Safran. Après avoir trouvé rapidement la panne - un sous-système défaillant -, Safran a pu poursuivre les tests du Patroller avec un pilote à bord (avion dronisé) puisqu'il est dérivé de la plateforme en carbone fabriquée par l'industriel allemand Stemme. Le Patroller était initialement attendu dans les armées fin 2018. Un calendrier compromis ? Dans l'armée de Terre, on reste plus prudent, voire pessimiste sur le calendrier de projection du Patroller en opérations en 2021 à la suite du crash. Et ce d'autant que le calendrier était déjà tendu. "Il y a la nécessité de revoir certains développements non majeurs", explique-t-on à La Tribune. Résultat, le Patroller doit être non seulement livré à l'armée de Terre mais également maîtrisé par les équipages ainsi que les équipes de maintenance. Conclusion, le calendrier semble "compromis", estime-t-on. En outre, ce que ne maîtrise pas Safran, c'est la longueur de l'enquête de sécurité du BEA-É, le bureau enquêtes accidents pour la sécurité de l'aéronautique d'État (anciennement BEAD-air). Interrogé par La Tribune, le BEA-É, qui dispose de 11 enquêteurs, a précisé que l'enquête avançait "à un rythme normal" sans "difficulté". Les enquêtes du BEA-É s'étalent sur une durée de moins d'un an, entre neuf et dix mois en moyenne. Il enquête également sur l'accident des hélicoptères au Mali entraînant la mort fin novembre de 13 soldats français. close volume_off Un premier système devait être remis à l'armée de Terre Le crash sur la commune de Saint-Mitre-les-Remparts à proximité d'Istres (Bouches-du-Rhône), qui n'a pas fit de victime, s'est produit lors d'un vol d'essai mené à partir de la base aérienne 125 d'Istres en vue de sa livraison à l'armée de Terre. Le drone tactique était opéré par les équipes de Safran Electronics & Defense. "Des investigations sont en cours pour déterminer les causes de cet incident", avait réagi à chaud Safran Electronics & Defense, qui développe le Patroller pour le compte de l'armée de Terre. Le premier système (5 avions et deux stations sol) devaient être remis d'ici à la fin de l'année à l'armée de Terre, qui devait mettre en service le Patroller début 2020. Un deuxième système devait être livré en 2020. Au total, l'armée de Terre doit recevoir cinq systèmes et vingt-huit drones tactiques de ce type à l'horizon 2030, selon l'ancien chef d'état-major de l'armée de Terre, le général Jean-Pierre Bosser. Le Patroller sera la "rolls" de l'armée de Terre. Équipé d'une boule optronique gyrostabilisée dernier cri, ce drone tactique vise à répondre aux missions de renseignement au profit des unités tactiques de l'armée de Terre en leur offrant une capacité de surveillance, d'acquisition, de reconnaissance et de renseignement (SA2R). Ce système d'observation est capable de détecter, d'identifier et de localiser, de jour comme de nuit, dans un champ atteignant presque 360°, tous les éléments observés sur une portée de 150 km (14 heures d'autonomie). https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/safran-garde-l-objectif-d-une-entree-en-service-operationnel-du-patroller-en-2021-840810.html

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