Military - In brief (13)
01 March 2005
Germany: Commission supports MEADS. The German parliament's budgetary commission has approved participation in the Medium Extended Air Defence System (MEADS) removing the final obstacle to the multinational $19 billion programme. Germany can now join Italy and the US in design and development of the system. MEADS will replace the Patriot low- to high-altitude air defence system in the US and Germany and the Nike Hercules medium- to high-altitude system in Italy. MEADS is a defensive missile system against incoming ballistic missiles and makes participation in overseas military interventions less risky. As a slight concession to the German Green Party (a member of the ruling coalition) some conditions to MEADS participation were agreed. So will a civil crisis prevention group of the foreign ministry get EUR 10 million and will the Bundeswehr discontinue the use of sub-munitions with a dud rate of over one percent? The US is funding 58% of the MEADS programme, while Germany is providing 25% and Italy 17%. The contract is awarded to MEADS International, a consortium of Lockheed Martin from the US, EADS/LFK from Germany and MBDA-Italia. After design reviews and flight tests delivery of the MEAD systems should begin in 2014.
Jane's Defence Weekly 27.4.05 (Joshua Kucera and Martin Bayer)
EU: EU looks at protected defence markets. The latest meeting of the European Defence Agency's (EDA) steering board, composed of national defence ministers and EU officials has formally responded to the European Commission's September 2004 green paper on defence procurement. The latter says two new EU policy instruments are needed. One is a so-called interpretative document to define when Article 296 (the article of the EU treaty that shields a huge range of military supplies from competition). The other would be a EU directive to apply rules of competition to the union defence market for non-296 transactions. In a statement the EDA lends its support to both instruments but hints at a big problem, namely the lack of transparency in member states practices in the Article 296 area. The EDA sees a directive as a longer term solution and will in the meantime explore the possibilities for a voluntary regime for the European defence marketplace.
Defense News 7.3.05 (Brooks Tigner)
EDA takes charge of European defence research groups. The European Defence Agency (EDA) will absorb the activities of Europe's two main collaborative defence research and armament groups within the next year. The EDA steering board agreed that the agency should take over all armaments and defence research contracts of the Western European Armaments Organization (WEAO) and the Western European Armaments Group (WEAG). The two research entities belong to the near-defunct Western European Union. WEAG's armaments activity never reached the level expected and will be closed down in May. The nine-year old WEAO however has been more active. It oversees some 40 defence research projects worth approximately 200 million euros. The incorporation in EDA will take place from now till the first quarter of 2006. The value of WEAO's work equals about 5% of all collaborative defence research in Europe.
Defense News 22.4.05 (Brooks Tigner)