MBDA books record orders amid European air-defense rush

Sur le même sujet

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  18 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  U.S. Air Force Entertains New Design To Replace F-16 | Aviation Week Network

  The U.S. Air Force chief of staff envisions a 4.5-generation, or fifth generation “minus,” as the F-16 replacement.

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  17 octobre 2019 | International, Autre défense

  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/

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  2 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  First KC-46 delivery stalled by Mattis’ departure

  By: Valerie Insinna ASHINGTON — Boeing won't be delivering the first KC-46 tanker to the Air Force in 2018 as planned, due to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' surprise ouster from the Pentagon, a source told Defense News on Monday. The Air Force had intended to accept the first KC-46 by the end of December and was awaiting signature from Mattis, which would finalize the delivery plans, Reuters first reported on Dec. 20. However, later that day, Mattis announced that he would step down from the top Defense Department post in February, and just three days later, President Donald Trump tweeted that Mattis would wrap up his work as secretary of defense by the end of 2018. With sweeping changes in leadership at the Pentagon imminent, a decision on KC-46 was pushed out, a source close to the program told Defense News. The situation was further complicated because Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan — who by the end of Dec. 31 will temporarily take over Mattis' role as defense secretary — is a former Boeing executive and must recuse himself from all decisions involving the company. Boeing declined to confirm that the delivery would not take place on Dec. 31. “KC-46 remains a top priority and we look forward to delivering tanker aircraft in partnership with the Air Force,” said Kelly Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement to Defense News. The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The delay is a blow for Boeing, which had promised to deliver the first tanker by the end of 2018 after a string of missed delivery dates stemming back to August 2017. “We continue to make steady progress toward final certification of the KC-46 tanker,” Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in an October earnings call. “We are working with our U.S. Air Force customer toward completing all the steps required to deliver the first tanker aircraft this quarter." The company has now racked up more than $3 billion in pre-tax charges on the program, as it is responsible for any costs beyond the $4.9 billion fixed price contract value originally awarded in 2011. Boeing officials are hopeful that the Air Force will be able to move forward with delivery after a set of meetings in early 2019, one source said. But at the moment it is unclear who will authorize the KC-46 delivery with Shanahan barred from the process, though it may fall to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson or to Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. The Air Force plans to buy 179 KC-46s throughout its program of record. McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas is set to become the first installation to receive the new tankers, and training for pilots and boom operators has already begun. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/12/31/first-kc-46-delivery-stalled-by-mattis-departure