EU Military: Visegrad countries urge EU to build a common army

Hungary's Prime Minister Victor Orban has proposed an EU-wide force to secure its borders. Orban is meeting German Chancellor Merkel and leaders of Visegrad countries Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in Warsaw. 

Read more: Visegrad countries urge EU to build a common army | News | DW.COM | 26.08.2016

EU leaders vow to boost Europe's defence capabilities - by Adrian Croft

Euro Fighters above Libya

European Union leaders pledged on Friday to plug the gaps in Europe's military capabilities and strengthen its arms industry as austerity budgets threaten to damage both the continent's military capabilities and its weapons makers.

The leaders also pledged at a Brussels summit to try to boost the EU's role in tackling international crises now that the U.S. military focus is shifting to Asia, creating demand for a bigger EU security presence in Africa and the Mediterranean.

"Current financial constraints highlight the urgent necessity to strengthen European cooperation in order to develop military capabilities and fill the critical gaps, including those identified in recent operations," they said in the conclusions of the summit.

Security and the defence industry are scheduled to be a major item on the bloc's December 2013 summit, which will look at ways to strengthen the EU common security policy and to provide more resources for missions in conflict zones.

Many Western European countries have cut their defence budgets in response to the financial crisis, leading the EU's outgoing top military officer to warn in September that some EU states may be forced to scrap their air forces in a few years.

Europe's military deficiencies were exposed during last year's Libya campaign, when European states relied heavily on the United States for air-to-air refuelling, intelligence and surveillance.

Read more: EU leaders vow to boost Europe's defence capabilities - AlertNet

Europe must face reality of "America, the Exhausted Empire" - by Clemens Wergin

America’s power and worldwide influence depend largely on its military capacity to protect sea routes, support its allies and maintain regional balances. To accomplish this role over the past decade, America has reduced social services and expanded military capabilities to a far greater extent than has Europe. The old continent, on the other hand, built an over-the-top wealth-redistribution system while cutting back on military outlays, trusting that U.S. security policy would pull everyone else’s chestnuts out of the fire as it did in the Balkans.

Both sides of the Atlantic must now find a new balance. In view of a crumbling American infrastructure and an enormous accumulation of debt, Americans no longer understand why they must pay 75 percent of NATO’s costs and supply the majority of troops to foreign lands when Europe has a larger population.

The Libyan mission emphatically emphasized that imbalance once again. The European nations with the most ambitious foreign policies, i.e. France and Great Britain, have already reached the limit of their capabilities and are running out of ammunition after just a few months against a far weaker enemy. The current Europe is only able to fight its own battles on a limited scale — and that will have to change.

In the heyday of trans-Atlantic wrangling over the Iraq war, France’s President Chirac and Germany’s Chancellor Schröder wanted a multipolar world with a less powerful United States. As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.” A world in which American oversight influence is on the decline will be a far less friendly place. And it will be a place where Europe will have to either pay a steeper price to protect its interests or risk a precipitous decline and relegation to insignificance. 

For more: Watching America : » America, the Exhausted Empire

What NATO looks like in the age of European austerity - by Howard LaFranchi

NATO summit in Lisbon by announcing 150 additional Portuguese soldiers for Atlantic Alliance's deployment in Afghanistan, it was a surprise to the Portuguese people, who are coping with a growing economic crisis. It was also a small exception to a larger trend across Europe of severe cutbacks, including military deployments and defense budgets, even as the European Union solidifies its place as one of the world's top providers of international humanitarian and development aid.

What that trend portends, say a growing number of experts on US-European relations, is a scenario under which the United States is more and more the provider of hard power – or military force – for the North Atlantic Alliance, while Europe turns increasingly to the soft power assignments like training and institution-building that it appears to prefer.

Of NATO's European members, only France, Britain, and Greece reach the alliance's goal of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. And with Britain – along with France, one of Europe's last real military powers – set to reduce defense spending by 8 percent before 2015, the US-Europe divide is only expected to widen. Whereas a decade ago the US accounted for just under half of NATO members' defense spending, today the US share is closer to 75 percent – and growing.

A "diminishing appetite" in Europe for the kinds of jobs implicit in a mission like NATO's in Afghanistan is one explanation for the growing US-Europe "division of labor" in international interventions, says Charles Kupchan, a transatlantic expert at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington.

For more: What NATO looks like in the age of European austerity - CSMonitor.com

defpro.com: nEUROn Europe's unmanned combat aircraft taking shape

Unmanned nEUROn stealth combat aircraft

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nEUROn Europe's unmanned combat aircraft taking shape

On February 9, 2006, French defense procurement agency DGA, the program executive agency, named Dassault Aviation as prime contractor in charge of developing nEUROn, a European combat aircraft vehicle demonstrator. This signaled the active launch of the project.The AVE-C drone carried out a demonstration flight on June 30, 2008. Since this drone features a general design similar to nEUROn, this test helped confirm the likelihood of the new UCAV performing a successful automatic takeoff and landing right from its first flight.The maiden flight of nEUROn is scheduled for the end of 2011. Test flights will be carried out over a period of about 18 months, in France (Istres), then Sweden and Italy. 85% of the total budget has now been awarded to Industry by DGA, which acts on behalf of the six Partner States (France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece and Switzerland).In other words, not only is nEUROn beginning to take shape, but so is a real pan-European military aviation industry.

AP: European Africa Corps: EU Approves 3,000-Strong Africa Force - by Constant Brand

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European Africa Corps: EU Approves 3,000-Strong Africa Force - by Constant Brand

About half of the EU force will be French. Kouchner said the force has already received pledges of more than 2,500 troops from several EU nations. Poland and Spain pledged troops and planes at the EU talks Monday, while Ireland, Sweden, Poland and Belgium are expected to provide smaller contingents of 80 to 300 troops each, officials said.

Note EU-Digest: "This particular military involvement of the EU in Africa is a far better humanitarian or security initiative than having EU troops in Afghanistan or Iraq."

Rotorhub: Spanish Army’s first three Eurocopter Tigers arrive at their operational base

The Eurocopter Tiger

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Spanish Army’s first three Eurocopter Tigers arrive at their operational base

The Spanish Army’s first three Tiger helicopters have arrived at their final destination, the Coronel Sánchez Bilbao military base in Almagro, where they are to serve the Spanish armed forces. The Spanish Army will have 24 HAD Tigers at its disposal in due course; 18 Tigers are to be delivered in HAD configuration, and the other six – which are in HAP version – are to be retrofitted to HAD. In comparison to the original HAP version, the HAD Tiger features a Spike or Hellfire air-to-ground missile, an uprated engine ensuring an increased useful load, IFF system, electronic warfare system, and enhanced ballistic protection.

Oxford Mail: Rafs Eurofighter To Fly In For Festival - by Andrew French

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Rafs Eurofighter To Fly In For Festival - by Andrew French

The Eurofighter, built to replace the RAF's Tornado F3 interceptor aircraft, is about to enter service across the UK, and could be fully operational in just over a year's time. The arrival of the Euro- fighter at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock on Sunday, July 22, is a coup for the organisers.

Squadron Leader Andy Pawsey, the RAF Event Team's creative director and commentator for the show, said he expected the arrival of the Eurofighter at Blenheim Palace to be "very spectacular and very noisy". He said: "Without a doubt, the Eurofighter is the most formidable aircraft of its kind in the world today and it really does represent the future of the RAF for many years to come.

Compositesworld.com - Airbus A400M wing box is delivered

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Airbus A400M wing box is delivered

Airbus says the first center wing box for the A400M military transport aircraft has been delivered from the Airbus Nantes site in France to Seville in Spain, where it arrived on March 28. Deliveries of major structural sections for the first A400M military transport aircraft to the final assembly line in Seville, Spain, started at the end of 2006.Four center wing box structures are currently in production in the dedicated facility at the Airbus plant in Nantes, France. Firm orders for the A400M now stand at 192 aircraft.

The A400M programme is a direct result of a commonly expressed need by 8 European air forces for a new generation military airlifter. The scope of this initiative to specify and procure an aircraft of a common definition is unique and clearly points to the way forward in the domain of "smart procurement" for the armed forces of allied nations.The European Union (EU) is eagerly working towards establishing its own powerful armed forces, independent of American command structures and the new military transport—Airbus A 400 M—forms the heart of the European weapons programme.