European defence matters. Issue 06, 2014.
Date: 2014-11-24
Institutions: European Defence Agency
Subjects: European defence policy, serial publication

2014 Issue 06

A magazine of

European
Defence
Matters

Supporting EU
operations
overseas

Interview:
General de
Villiers, France's
Chief of
Defence Staff

Celebrating the
first ten years
of the European
Defence Agency

Nexter, creating new
references in defence

TITUS® is the last armoured vehicle designed by Nexter in
order to meet all the constraints of the modern hybrid warfare.
Continuing the famous long lineage, including Leclerc MBT,
VBCI and Aravis®, all combat proven in many theaters, Nexter
combined the best of its experience and technology to offer
to the tactical commander a full range of possibilities with
the multi role armoured vehicle of the XXIst century.

From APC to combat utility variants, from Peace Keeping
Operation to Counter Insurgency, TITUS® brings the technology
and the Nexter touch into the heart of the action.

www.nexter-group.fr

CONTENTS

Contents

Welcome

5 Director Eric Platteau and Editor-In-Chief
Guillaume Steuer introduce this edition of
European Defence Matters

European Defence News

6 EU Affairs

Pooled procurement of Carl-Gustaf ammunition
moving forward, EUFOR engineers improve
access to Bangui airport, EDA stages biological
reconnaissance and defence workshop, Law
enforcement and military combine efforts at first
European homemade explosives course,
Federica Mogherini appointed new head of EDA,
Successful completion of second EU personnel
recovery course in Hungary

9 Industry News

Land defence systems companies KMW and
Nexter in merger talks, Latvia to commission
surplus UK armoured combat vehicles, Saab
completes acquisition of Thyssen Krupp Marine
Systems, MBDA signs cooperation agreements
with Polish industry, Taranis UCAV demonstrator
flies in stealth configuration, Airbus Group and
Safran to revamp their space launcher business
with dedicated joint-venture

Ten years of EDA
12 Ten years of working together

To celebrate the tenth birthday of the European
Defence Agency, a unique book will be published
at the end of 2014.

16 Confronting Europe’s defence deficit

Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and
Foreign Affairs, King’s College London
20 What are the missing instruments to reach
another level of European defence?
Brigadier General (retd) Jo Coelmont, Senior
Associate Fellow, Egmont Royal Institute for
International Relations

© HB14 Public Affairs

Operations and projects

24 Supporting the fight

Support to European Union (EU) operations and,
more generally, to the Common Security and
Defence Policy has always been one of the core
missions of EDA

28 Building trust for multinational operations

A series of multinational exercises has been
organised this year to enhance interoperability
between European aviators
32 Raw materials: securing the supply

EDA is working to ensure that Member States will
have a guaranteed supply of the scarce raw
materials that provide essential structures and
components for complex battlefield systems

34 Fit for purpose

It has been almost a year since the Agency
adopted a new structure to improve its support
to Member States

Opinion
36 “A window on Europe”

Interview with Michal Wierciński, who has been
directly involved in drafting the first ‘National
Defence R&T strategy’ in Poland

38 “Cooperation can be envisaged in almost

every domain”
Interview with General Pierre de Villiers, French
Chief of Defence Staff

41 Pooling and sharing, the academic way

Interview with Hans-Bernhard Weisserth, Head
of the European Security and Defence College

Key Quotes

42 Key quotes and facts, index to advertisers

Publishing Director
Eric Platteau
Editor-in-Chief
Guillaume Steuer
Editorial
Tim Allan
Editorial Contributor
Philip Butterworth-Hayes
Design
Simon Smith Associates
Printing
Gemini Brighton, Unit A2
Enterprise Industrial Estate, Crowhurst Road
Brighton BN1 8AF, UK
This document is published on behalf of the EDA
by PMI Media Ltd in the interests of exchange of
information
Front cover and other images; EDA

Contacts
Eric Platteau
Head of Media and Communication
Guillaume Steuer
Media and Communication Officer
European Defence Agency
Rue des Drapiers 17-23
B-1050 Brussels
www.eda.europa.eu
Contact: info@eda.europa.eu

Advertising
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E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

3

CHOOSE SAMP/T
THE UNIQUE EUROPEAN EXTENDED
AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM

www.eurosam.com

WELCOME

A decade of
cooperation

“When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness”,
French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote.
In these times of global uncertainty about the defence and security challenges
lying ahead for the Western world it is perhaps wiser than ever to look back at
our common past in order to find answers to the tough questions we face

The story of defence cooperation in Europe is

a long and tortuous one. As we celebrate
the European Defence Agency’s ten year
anniversary this year, we took the opportunity to
reflect on this history in an exclusive book to be
published at the end of 2014, some extracts of which are
reproduced in this issue of European Defence Matters.

From the first attempts to create a European Defence
Community in the 1950s to the birth of Western European
Armaments Group in 1993 or the Independent European
Programme Group (IEPG) in 1976, one can only reflect that
the issue of European cooperation has always been taken
seriously by the defence community. Yet progress has
been slowed by shifting or unclear priorities and
achievements have been scarce, much to the detriment
of Member States who are today lacking some of the
critical military capabilities they need to achieve their
objectives.

The Agency was set up in 2004 to help us work better
together, learning from and building on the efforts of the
past. It was with great expectations that Heads of State
and Government approved the creation of EDA in July
2004: this high-level political support has made a real

difference and has provided a renewed impetus to
improve defence cooperation at a European level.

Over the years, the European Defence Agency has
remained true to its core mission: to support its Member
States in the development of their defence capabilities,
while strengthening the critical European defence
industrial and technological base. As we report in this
issue, many of our ongoing projects converge towards the
same objective: to provide support to EU operations
wherever and whenever they need. By providing satellite
communication services, contracting assistance, medical
support, or any other
form of assistance
(page 25), the Agency keeps doing its best to remain the
most reliable partner for Member States to turn to when
they feel the need for greater cooperation.

relevant

forget

Defence matters today, just as it mattered 10 or 60
years ago. As priorities change and new challenges rise,
the long road travelled by two
let us not
generations of supporters of European defence
cooperation, who went to great lengths to promote the
idea that we are ‘stronger together’. For it is in our
collective past that we might find answers to the new
threats and challenges emerging on the horizon.

Eric Platteau Head of Media and Communication Guillaume Steuer Editor-in-Chief

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

5

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

EU Affairs

© Lituanian MoD

Pooled procurement of Carl-Gustaf
ammunition moving forward
The European Defence Agency (EDA)

and Saab Dynamics AB have signed a
multi-annual framework agreement
for
types of
the provision of different
ammunition for the ‘Carl-Gustaf’ recoilless
anti-tank
framework
agreement will last five years and includes a
possible renewal of two more years, with an
estimated value of up to €50 million. The
agreement was finalised on 30 June 2014.

weapon.

The

This framework agreement comes under
a procurement arrangement between EDA

and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech
Republic, and Poland, agreed on 23 April
2013. Under this arrangement EDA acts as
the central purchasing body, taking the
leading role in the procurement procedure
for Carl-Gustaf ammunition in the framework
of EDA’s Effective Procurement Methods
(EPM) initiative.

EDA will also be in charge of managing
the framework contract to fully exploit the
effects of pooling demand.

This case presents useful opportunities

for pooling of demand due to the
communalities of the ammunition. Common
procurement was seen as the best option
by contributing Member States to benefit
from economies of scale, cost reductions,
and efficiency in spending. This solution
allows contributing Member States to
purchase ammunition according to their
national needs while coping with different
budget cycles. The agreement also allows
other EDA Member States to join the initiative
at a later stage.

EUFOR engineers improve
access to Bangui airport
Italian engineers from EUFOR RCA

Republic)

(Central
recently

African
completed

have
improvement
works on the access road to M’Poko
Airport in Bangui.

road currently under the control of EUFOR
forces.

The improvements will also benefit
thousands of internal displaced persons
living in the camps nearby M’Poko, assisted
by humanitarian organizations.

A specialist team using heavy vehicles
has repaired, in just a week, a part of the

6

(Source: EUFOR RCA)

© EEAS

www.eda.europa.eu

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

EDA stages biological reconnaissance
and defence workshop
Atotal of 40 participants from ten EU

Member States (the Czech Republic,
Germany, Spain, France, Hungary,
Italy,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland,
Portugal) and Norway participated last
summer in a workshop dedicated to biological
reconnaissance and defence in Warsaw,
Poland.

Biological threats are the most complex
area of chemical, biological, radiological and
nuclear (CBRN) defence. Addressing the
need for effective means of detection,
identification and monitoring for this type of
threats, the European Defence Agency is
conducting a significant number of projects
that were discussed during the workshop.

defence

A system approach to the future
capability
is
biological
integrating individual
under development,
soldier protection, non-specialist units
(tactical area protection), specialist units
(operational area protection) and system
integration. Also, participating Member

States presented their national biological
projects,
programmes,
developments and future expectations
concerning the biological challenge.

on-going

It was clear among participants that
biological issues are an important concern

among Member States and that the EDA forum
is a good place for discussion and to find new
opportunities for cooperation. Hungary and
Poland provided live demonstrations and
allowed participants to visit their second-
generation biological laboratories.

Law enforcement and
military combine efforts at
first European homemade
explosives course
Experts from civilian law enforcement

and disposing of different
types of
homemade explosives that can be found in
improvised laboratories, such as those of
criminals and/or terrorists.

and the military have taken part in the
first European Homemade Explosives
Training course which took place between 2
and 6 June in the Curragh Camp at the Irish
Department of Defence Ordnance School.

The course, run jointly by the European
Defence Agency and Europol, brought
together 28 experts from 16 different
countries.

training

The participants took part in highly
realistic
involving
homemade explosives, in order to improve
skills and to share best practices. The
training consisted of identifying, processing

scenarios

The cooperation between EDA and
Europol reflects the need for a combined
civil-military approach to the threat not only
of homemade explosives but the whole
counter improvised electronic device (C-IED)
spectrum.

This approach helps to ensure that there
are clear lines of communication between
the two and the need to share skills and
experiences among military and civilian law
enforcement agencies.

The course forms part of EDA’s
comprehensive approach to tackling IEDs.
These efforts include areas such as the
counter-IED technical exploitation lab Level
Two Multinational Technical Exploitation
Laboratory (MNTEL) which
has been
stationed in Afghanistan since 2011, a
Manual Neutralisation Techniques Category
B programme, for which the first exercise
was held in Vienna between 1 and 12
September, the Joint Deployable Exploitation
Analysis Laboratory (JDEAL)
initiative –
which is due to start operations in
November 2014 – as well as other ongoing
C-IED related activities and projects.

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

7

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

Federica
Mogherini
appointed
new Head of
EDA

On 30 August 2014, the European

Council officially appointed Federica
new High
Mogherini
as
Representative of the Union for Foreign
Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-
President of the European Commission,
therefore becoming the new Head of the
European Defence Agency.

the

She will succeed Catherine Ashton, who
had been appointed High Representative in
November 2009. Following the vote of
consent of the European Parliament on the
new Commission, Federica Mogherini
should remain in her new position until 31
October 2019.

In addition to heading the Agency and
Federica

leading its Steering Board,

Mogherini will lead the European External
Action Service (EEAS) and chair meetings of
EU foreign ministers.

Federica Mogherini had been appointed
in February 2014 as Minister for Foreign
Affairs and International Cooperation by
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. A
member of the Democratic Party, she was
first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in
2008, then re-elected in 2013.

There she was a member and Secretary
of Committee 4 – dedicated to defence
issues – and also a member of the Italian
delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe and of Committee 3
on Foreign Affairs.

On 1 August 2013 she was elected

Successful completion
of second EU personnel
recovery course in
Hungary
Atotal of 22 participants from ten

nations (Belgium, Germany, Hungary,
Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, United
Kingdom and Sweden plus Norway and the
United States) attended the second
Personnel Recovery Controller and Planner
Course (PRCPC) over
in
Veszprém, Hungary.

the summer

This intensive two-week course – held
for the first time at the Hungarian Air Force
Air Command and Control Centre (ACCC) –
aims at enabling participants to prepare,

8

such as

plan and execute personnel
recovery
operations. Previous course participants and
indeed all of the instructors have gained
operational personnel recovery experience
in various operations
the
International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF)
in Afghanistan, Operation Unified
Protector (OUP) in Libya and Operation Serval
in Mali. “This course is indeed very helpful for
our operational planning. The instructors are
very experienced and motivated”, said
course participant Captain Gábor Krenács

© European Council

the Italian Delegation to the
Chair of
Parliamentary Assembly of NATO. She also
coordinated the Inter-Parliamentary Group
for Development Cooperation.

Federica Mogherini is also a member of
the Institute for Foreign Affairs (IAI), the
Council for the United States and Italy and a
fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the
United States.

Network

Leadership

She is involved with the Council of the
European
for
Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-
Proliferation (ELN) and of the Group of
Eminent Persons (GEM) of the Preparatory
Comprehensive
the
Commission
for
Nuclear-Test-Ban
Organization
Treaty
(CTBTO).

from the Hungarian Air Force.

The initiative to standardise personnel
recovery training emerged from the Project
Team Personnel Recovery in EDA at the end
of November 2010. Peter Round, Capability,
Armament & Technology Director at EDA,
stated: “I am most grateful that Hungary
agreed to offer this opportunity and hosted
it so successfully at its Air Command and
Control Centre’s facilities. This initiative has
made a significant contribution to personnel
recovery capabilities in Europe.”

www.eda.europa.eu

Industry News

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

© KMW

Land defence systems companies KMW
and Nexter in merger talks
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and

and more than 6,000 employees”, according
to an official release.

Nexter Systems recently announced
the signature of an agreement to
combine the two groups under the umbrella
of a joint holding company, thus creating “a
Franco-German defence technology group
with a current annual turnover nearing €2
billion, an order book of around €6.5 billion

Pending

legal
governmental
approvals, the alliance could enter into force
early in 2015.

and

Both companies have described this
joint-venture project as a decisive step “for
the consolidation of the defence technology

industry in Europe”. They stressed that their
product portfolios and regional presence on
the world market “complement each other”.
While KMW is famous for building the
Leopard 2 main battle tank, Nexter is the
French Leclerc
the
manufacturer
equivalent as well
(Armoured
the VBCI
Vehicle for Infantry Combat).

of

Latvia to
commission surplus
UK armoured
combat vehicles
The UK Ministry of Defence announced

surplus

Combat

this autumn that it had agreed to sell
Vehicle
123
Reconnaissance (Tracked) armoured vehicles,
or CVR(T), to the Latvian Army. This sale
intends to demonstrate UK support to its Baltic
NATO allies while allowing Latvian Armed
Forces to increase their military capabilities.

According to an official MoD release,
Latvian operators will be able to “better

transport infantry, reconnaissance teams, air
defence sections and mortar fire controllers”,
with the new equipment providing “vital
battlefield capabilities including ambulances,
armoured command vehicles and armoured
recovery vehicles”. Worth €49 million, including
overhaul and refurbishment, the sale was
announced alongside the Wales NATO summit.
These vehicles were previously used by
British forces who deployed them in Bosnia

© UK MoD

and Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan. They
became available to foreign customer
following the 2010 Strategic Defence and
Security Review (SDSR) in which they were
identified as surplus equipment as part of a
wider restructuring of the Armed Forces. Three
of the vehicles already took part in a parade to
celebrate the 24th anniversary of
the
Declaration of the Renewal of Independence
in Valmiera, Latvia, on 4 May 2014.

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

9

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

Saab
completes
acquisition
of Thyssen
Krupp Marine
Systems
In a move aimed at strengthening its

position as a provider of naval systems,
company
Saab
Swedish
it had completed the
announced that
acquisition of the Sweden-based Thyssen
Krupp Marine Systems AB (TKMS AB,
formerly known as Kockums) shipyard.
Renamed Saab Kockums, this new activity
has been integrated into the company’s
Security and Defence Solutions area.

defence

Reflecting on the acquisition, Saab
president and CEO Håkan Bushke stated that
it will make its company “a complete

supplier of naval military systems” and will
keep providing a “strong local presence in
Sweden
and
warships”.

concerning submarines

Detailing the activity of TKMS AB, Saab
said that it currently had approximately 850
employees and that it supplied systems and
products to the navies of Sweden, Australia
and Singapore. During the financial year
2012/2013, the company reported sales of
approximately €185 million. According to
Saab, the cost of the acquisition amounted
to €37 million.

© Saab AB

As early as June 2014, Saab and the
Swedish Defence Materiel Administration
(FMV) had signed a letter of intent regarding
the Swedish armed forces’ underwater
capabilities. The acquisition of TKMS AB
ensures Saab will be able to provide its
domestic customer with unrestricted
access to the knowledge and intellectual
properties
“continued
development, production and maintenance
in the underwater sector
for both the
Swedish and the international markets”, an
official release published 22 July states.

needed

for

MBDA signs cooperation
agreements with Polish
industry
European missile manufacturer MBDA

recently signed two letters of intent
(LoI) with Polish companies Mesko
and Pit-Radwar as part of the future ‘Wisla’
medium-range air and missile defence
programme.

These aim to reinforce MBDA’s presence
in the country through close technological
and industrial partnerships, ahead of a
possible purchase of the Aster surface-to-
air missile system by the Polish armed
forces.

The LoI signed with Mesko offers an
extensive cooperation on Aster 30 Block
One missile equipment, as well as
involvement in the development of the new
Aster Block 1 NT (New Technologies) missile.

10

“Advanced

The scope of this potential cooperation
“starts from the production of main
equipment for the missiles and continues
through to the final assembly line”,
according to MBDA which announced the
signature at the MSPO military exhibition in
Kielce, Poland, on 2 September.
technologies

as
warhead, booster and servo actuators will
be transferred to our Polish partners, as well
as missile maintenance and training”, the
manufacturer added. Similarly,
the LoI
signed with Pit-Radwar aims to transfer
technology and know-how in the field of
missile uplink receiver equipment on both
the Aster 30 and the Aster 30 Block One NT
versions of the missile.

such

© DGA EM

www.eda.europa.eu

EUROPEAN DEFENCE NEWS

Taranis UCAV
demonstrator
flies in stealth
configuration

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and

BAE Systems announced during the
summer that the Taranis Unmanned
Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator had
successfully completed a second phase of
testing in which the aircraft flew in a fully
stealthy configuration, making it “virtually
invisible to radar”, the British company
underlined in a release.

This new round of testing followed an
initial series of flights during which the basic
aerodynamic configuration of the Taranis –
considered by BAE Systems as “the most
advanced aircraft ever built by British

engineers” was validated. Once this was
completed, the team “changed all antennas
on the aircraft to signature control variants
and the air data boom on the nose of Taranis
was removed”, BAE Systems explains.

“Following these modifications, Taranis
used a specially-designed system which
allowed the aircraft to generate a full set of
flight data, without the use of an external
probe or boom”, the aircraft manufacturer
adds.

Taranis also used a cutting edge
communications system to ensure it was
able to stay in touch with its mission

© BAE Systems

commander without giving away its position
to the enemy.

In order to jointly prepare the next
generation of combat aircraft, the French
and UK defence ministries signed a two-
year agreement at the Farnborough airshow
on 15 July to conduct a two-year €150 million
cooperative study for a Future Combat Air
System (FCAS) demonstration.

This will build on the experience gained
with the Taranis and the equivalent French-
led Neuron demonstrations to establish
common requirements for a potential future
unmanned combat air system.

Airbus Group and Safran
to revamp their space
launcher business with
dedicated joint-venture
The announcement came as a surprise

in

to many: this summer, Airbus Group
and Safran announced their intent to
join forces in space launcher activities by
creating a 50-50 joint venture dedicated to
that business. By strengthening their
relationship in this domain,
the two
companies want to be better armed to
“propose a new family of competitive,
versatile and efficient space launchers, to
serve both commercial and institutional
needs”, a joint press release stated.

The launch of the future Ariane 5 ME
and Ariane 6 launchers is at the core of this
new industrial setup, aimed at increasing
sector competitiveness and providing
customers with more
cost-efficient
solutions. The two companies will each be

attributed a key role based on their legacy
Germany,
France
activities
combining expertise in the launcher
systems from Airbus Group as well as
propulsion systems from Safran.

and

By signing this memorandum of
understanding,
the two manufacturers
intend to fulfill two major objectives: first, to
develop and accelerate entry-into-service
of the Ariane 5 ME launcher as a logical
evolution of Ariane 5, with an improved
upper stage based on the Vinci engine;
second, to further develop the future Ariane
6 launcher in a jointly agreed configuration
able to fulfill a range of missions as
expressed by the European Space Agency,
national agencies, Arianespace as well as
military and civil satellite operators.

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

© ESA

11

TEN YEARS OF EDA

To celebrate the tenth birthday of the European Defence

Agency, a unique book will be published at the end of 2014
and officially unveiled during a special event to be held in
Brussels in December. The result of several months of research
conducted by the Agency, it will offer an exclusive insight into
European defence matters.

Divided in three main sections, the book aims to provide readers with
an overview of European defence cooperation history and
achievements, seen through the lens of the Agency. In a first chapter,
we will review the long and difficult road to European defence
cooperation, from the very first attempts of the late 1940s until the
birth of the European Defence Agency in 2004. To that end, our
editorial team has put a lot of time and effort into retrieving original
sources and conducting interviews with some of the key actors
behind these early cooperative efforts.

A second movement will be dedicated to showcasing some of the
Agency’s most successful or promising projects and efforts. Because
history is not only a succession of dates and events, the dozen of
‘success stories’ put forward in the book will shed a different light on
a decade of EDA activity. From Counter-IED to remotely air piloted
systems, air-to-air refueling or cyber defence, we will go through
some of the past achievements and future milestones of the Agency.

In the third section, we have tried to gather a wide selection of
independent views from key government, industry and academic
experts sharing their analysis, advice and concerns about the way
forward in European defence matters. More than 15 Prime Ministers,
Ministers of Defence, Chief Executive Officers and leading
researchers have agreed to contribute to this first-of-its kind book,
excerpts of which are published for the first time in this edition of
European Defence Matters.

Ten years
The idea of a collective European defence is

as old as the story of European integration
itself. From the ashes of the Second World
War, it wouldn’t take long to see an incredible
idea emerge: what if European countries, busy
stitching their wounds after half a decade of
devastating conflict, could start cooperating on defence
issues and promote peace together?

Iconoclastic as it sounded at the time, the idea
was nevertheless at the heart of some of the very first
post-Second World War treaties that were drafted to
banish any possibility of war from the continent. But
these first small steps towards European defence
cooperation were soon to be overshadowed by a much
more ambitious endeavour. In the summer of 1950,
Jean Monnet, then General Commissioner of the French
National Planning Board, expressed his will to organise
European defence on a supranational basis, an
initiative inspired by French foreign minister Robert
Schuman’s plan for establishing the European Coal and
Steel Community (ECSC) that would eventually come
into effect in 1952. At the same time, the United States

12

www.eda.europa.eu

TEN YEARS OF EDA

of working together

of America was also asking its European allies to plan
for the rearmament of West Germany.

The proposal for what was known as the European
Defence Community (EDC) was submitted by French
Prime Minister René Pleven to the National
Assembly in October 1950. It called for the
creation of a European Army to be placed
under supranational authority and to be
funded by a common budget. A European
armament and equipment programme
would be drawn up and carried out under
the authority of a European Defence
Minister, who in turn would operate under a
European Defence Council.

The ambitious idea was supported by
most Western countries. Although sceptical
at first, the United Kingdom also gave its
agreement to the initiative. However a devastating blow
was dealt to the European Defence Community in
August 1954 when the French National Assembly
refused to ratify the Treaty, refusing even to discuss the
matter. France’s position met with considerable

René Pleven

consternation in Western Europe and the United States,
not least because this rejection came from the very
architects of the EDC plan.

Founded in February 1976 by the European members

First session of the European Convention

of NATO, the Independent European Program Group
(IEPG) was envisioned as an international coordinating
body whose main mission would be to foster
cooperation on armaments procurement.

Using the IEPG as a forum for annual discussions,

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

13

TEN YEARS OF EDA

out goals

the defence ministers of the 13 member nations
Iceland excepted)
(all European members of NATO,
field of
in the
set
military
requirements,
system concepts, and
collaboration.

and targets

Western European Union (WEU). [...] At the meeting of
the WEU Council of Ministers in Rome in May 1993,
participants agreed on a number of organizational
aspects of
the transfer,
which were subsequently
adopted formally by the
Council at 13.

The Western European
Armaments Group (WEAG)
was born. Growing to
19 Member States by
2000 (Austria, Belgium,
Czech Republic, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany,
Italy,
Greece, Hungary,
Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and
the United Kingdom), it would live on until 2005.

Their objectives were
three-fold: to strengthen
the
of
contribution
European allies to the
of
defence
common
the NATO alliance;
to
improve the European
technological base; and
to balance US-European
defence trade. The IEPG
set out to conduct a number of studies, such as the
European Aeronautical Cooperation Study and the
European Defence Industry Study.

Agreement of the declaration at Maastricht

The declaration agreed by the Western European
Union Ministers in Maastricht on 10 December 1991 called
for further examination of the possibilities for enhanced
cooperation in the field of armaments, with the aim of
creating a European Armaments Agency.

At their meeting in Bonn in December 1992, the
Defence Ministers of the 13 IEPG countries decided
upon the transfer of the functions of the IEPG to the

The birth of an Agency

Established by the European Council in December
2001 following the Laeken Declaration, the European
Convention (also known as the Convention on the Future
of Europe) was a body intended to include the main EU
‘stakeholders’ in a major brainstorming exercise about
the future direction of the European Union.

Its final purpose was to produce a draft constitution

14

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i

i

s
e
v
h
c
r
a
n
o
s
s
m
m
o
C
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a
e
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o
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u
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©
s
e
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for the EU to finalize and adopt. [...] Running parallel to
that political roadmap, some major aerospace and
defence companies in Europe started lobbying for a
strong armaments agency that would be able to
overcome the shortfalls of all previous initiatives in that
domain. “One of the main eye-openers was the pullout of
some partner nations from the A400M programme”,
Michel Troubetzkoy, then EADS (now Airbus Group)
senior-vice president in charge of European affairs for
the aerospace and defense group, recalls.

Rapidly joined by French defence electronics
company Thales, EADS started its lobbying effort
towards EU representatives and especially the nascent
Convention to sell the idea of what was then referred to
by the industry as a ‘European Security and Defence
Research Agency’.

This bold move from industry representatives partly
contributed to the creation of a dedicated ‘Working
Group on Defence’ within the Convention in September
2002. Chaired by Michel Barnier,
then European
Commissioner in charge of Institutional Affairs for the
European Commission in addition to his Regional Affairs
portfolio, its official mandate included investigating “the
possibility of setting up an arms agency whose tasks
(research, development, acquisitions) and operating
methods would have to be studied in detail”, while
acknowledging that “there [was] in fact currently no
cooperation on armaments at Union level”.

to

the

and

Political

“The time was right”, Christine Roger, former French
Ambassador
Security
Committee(PSC) who at the time was heading Michel
Barnier's private office in the European Commission and
the
was directly involved in the proceedings of
Convention Working Group on Defence, recalls. “Member
States all seemed willing to move forward, the industry
wanted it as well – there was a wide range of good
reasons to make this new Agency a reality. It was a
simple idea and a good one”, she sums up. In its final
report, the Convention working group laid out some of
the foundations of what would become the European
Defence Agency we know today – although the final
name wasn’t
“The setting up on an
intergovernmental basis of a European Armaments and
Strategic Research Agency was supported by many in
the Group”, the official document stated.

there yet.

The European Defence Agency comes online

The Convention officially finished its work in July
2003 with the publication of a Draft Treaty establishing
a Constitution for Europe. But running parallel to the
Convention effort, Member States representatives were
also busy preparing the European Council that would
in June 2003. In its final
take place in Thessaloniki
conclusions published in June 2003, the Thessaloniki
Council made it clear that a new European Defence
Agency was on the agenda and would soon become a
reality. “The European Council [...] tasks the appropriate

TEN YEARS OF EDA

Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council addresses the annual conference of EDA

bodies of the Council to undertake the necessary
actions towards creating, in the course of 2004, an
intergovernmental agency in the field of defence
capabilities development, research, acquisition and
armaments”, the final declaration stated.

The next step would be to actually set this new
Agency in motion. Nick Witney, who would become the
first EDA Chief Executive in 2004, played a central role in
that process. The consensus around the Agency was
clearly still there, notably between Paris and London.
“This may sound surprising now,
considering that relations between
the two countries really became
tense after
the strong French
opposition to the Iraq campaign in
2003. However, there was a clear
agreement between London and
Paris that an Agency would be a
good thing and that we would make
it happen, even if there was no clear
understanding at the time of what
the exact role of the Agency should
be, or its position on the institutional
grid”, Nick Witney recalls.

“The time was right,
Member States all
seemed willing to move
forward, the industry
wanted it as well – there
was a wide range of
good reasons to make
this new Agency a
reality. It was a simple
idea and a good one”

A number of draft paragraphs
were submitted to Member States
and went back to the Agency
Establishment Team (AET) between
May and June.

By the middle of June the text was sent to the Relex
group of the Committee of Permanent Representatives
(COREPER), in charge of drafting the Joint Action that
would officially create the European Defence Agency.
On 12 July 2004, the European Council formally adopted
this Joint Action, turning the Thessaloniki and the
Convention promises into reality.

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

Opinion:
Confronting
Europe’s defence
deficit

Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs,
King’s College London

European states are increasingly incapable

of defending their own interests militarily. This
including: the
is so for multiple reasons,
proliferation of potential
threats to those
interests; the increasing unwillingness of the
United States to contribute to addressing them; the
rising cost of military equipment and falling defence
budgets. Recent interventions in Libya and Mali have
underlined all
shortcomings
of
defence capabilities.

too clearly the
European

complexity and uncertainty’.

In their near abroad, the optimism provoked by the
Arab spring quickly gave way to concerns about
emergent regimes and the significant potential for
instability to the south. Military intervention in Libya has
helped produce an anarchic land governed by warlords,
awash with both militias and weapons and increasingly
used by affiliates of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as
a base of operations. Syria has
descended into brutal civil war.

of

“What is clear, however,
is that shifts in global
economic and political
power will have
profound implications
and must be factored
into calculations
underpinning any
European foreign and
security policy worthy of
the name”

Europe is suffering from a
‘defence deficit’, best defined as
the gap between the military
capabilities possessed by its
states and those required to
defend their interests. This deficit
stems in no small part from the
fragmentation
European
defence into 28 separate, national
EU’s
policies.
defence
infamous ‘democratic deficit’
is
generally viewed as a result of
the transfer of too much power to
the Union. In contrast, the defence
deficit stems from the reluctance
of nation states to do more at the
European level. It is a consequence of the absence of
effective collaboration within the EU rather than an
excess of it.

The

The rapid spread of Islamic
State represents a threat both in
terms of the stability of the region
and the potential for jihadis to
cause trouble in the west itself.
To the east, meanwhile, Russia
annexed by force the territory of
a state that, until recently, had
genuine
EU
aspirations
membership. Tensions following
the subsequent downing of a
Malaysian civilian airliner show
few signs of abating, as the EU’s
feel
eastern
and
increasingly
exposed.

vulnerable

members

to

Nor are European interests
confined to the neighbourhood. Its trade is global, with
Asia accounting for 28% of it, as opposed to the 25%
constituted by the United States. Continued prosperity
thus depends on the maintenance of secure trade
routes. Open sea-lanes are a particular priority, as 90%
of European trade is transported by sea. Yet, no one can
be sure whether the emergence of rising powers will
lead to a sustained challenge to the rules and
institutions governing the liberal international order.

Equally, it is impossible to predict the degree to

The Defence Deficit

It is the international environment that generates
a need for military
capabilities. And in the
contemporary international system, Europeans confront,
in the words of the EU’s own High Representative for
‘increased volatility,
Foreign and Security policy,

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

expects Europeans to play a greater role in ensuring the
security of their neighbourhood.

Unfortunately, Europeans are currently unable to do
this. Their militaries increasingly lack critical capabilities,
as spiralling costs put full spectrum militaries beyond
their reach. Amongst smaller EU states, this has already
led to the appearance of capability gaps. As for Britain
and France, their recent deal jointly to build and operate
aircraft carriers illustrates that a similar
logic is
beginning to apply even to them. Few if any European
governments are in a position to launch major new
programmes alone, as the costs are too high and
national markets cannot provide sufficient orders.

The austerity policies introduced as a result of the
economic crisis have not helped. Some smaller member
states have initiated reductions of over 20% in defence
outlays – Lithuania cut its defence budget by 36% in
2010. Medium-sized member states announced cuts of
between 10% and 15%, whilst Germany and the UK
settled on reductions of around 8% to be implemented
over a period of several years.

Beyond the problems caused by falling defence
the

spending,
consequence of the fragmentation of European

declining military

capacity

is

“Not only have governments
failed to collaborate
effectively over procurement,
but they have generally
made decisions over which
capabilities to cut without
prior coordination with, or
indeed notification of, their
partners”

which China’s new found assertiveness will
lead to
greater tensions or even conflict within Asia – by
miscalculation or design. What is clear, however, is that
shifts in global economic and political power will have
profound implications and must be factored into
calculations underpinning any European foreign and
security policy worthy of the name.

There is no shortage, then, of challenges that might
crucially affect, if not European survival, then at least
European interests. In the past, the solution was to rely
on the US to take the lead in addressing them.
According to an analysis by the NATO Secretary General,
the share of the NATO defence burden falling on the
United States has increased from 63% in 2001 to 72%
today. The average defence spending of America’s NATO
allies was 2.0% in 2000 and had slumped to 1.5% by
2007. In contrast, the United States spends 4.6% of its
GDP on defence.
However,

the kind of dependence to which
Europeans have become accustomed, whilst never
equitable, is no longer viable. President Obama has
made it clear both that he will not lightly commit
American forces to foreign military adventures, and that,
as a consequence of his ‘rebalancing’ to Asia, he

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

defence between twenty-eight national defence policies.
Each national military is separately trained, equipped and
supplied, generating significant inefficiencies. Even when
European forces act together – as is
the norm when force is deployed –
incompatible
and
doctrinal differences continue to
hamper effective collaboration in
theatre.
In

equipment

the

armaments
spawns
The majority

sector,
striking
fragmentation
inefficiencies.
of
national defence budgets is spent
on national armed forces equipped
with nationally produced weaponry
(around
defence
all
in Europe is bought
equipment
domestically). Consequently, Europe
does not enjoy the economies of

80% of

“Europe continues to
lack the ‘key enablers’ –
air-to-air refuelling
capacity, intelligence
surveillance and
reconnaissance and
satellite
communications”

scale from which the US benefits.

Member states in 2009 were undertaking 89
different weapons programmes – in contrast to 27 in the
US. The European Commission estimated the cost of
barriers between national defence markets as over
€3 billion per year.

The problems bedevilling European armed forces
have been all too evident during recent interventions. For
all the talk of the US ‘leading from behind’, the Americans
provided more than double the personnel made
available by the next highest contributor in Libya. Despite
fighting a chronically weak military there, Europeans
found themselves reliant on US Tomahawk missiles,
drones and electronic warfare aircraft, without which the
mission may well not have succeeded. Air sorties had to
be reduced as states operating F-16s tried and failed to
obtain additional munitions – again, the Americans had
to plug the gaps.

Little wonder that senior figures have been moved

to comment on the potentially disastrous consequences
of Europe’s military fallibilities. Former Secretary of
Defence Robert Gates warned of Europe facing
“collective military irrelevance”, while the NATO Secretary
General has similarly warned that “if European defence
spending cuts continue, Europe’s ability to be a
stabilizing force even in its neighbourhood will rapidly
disappear”.

Cooperation and its Limits

Whilst the fragmentation of European defence
structures remains an obvious source of inefficiency,
member states have failed to take practical steps to
aggregate their capabilities effectively at the European
level. This is not through lack of rhetorical effort.
Since the creation of the EU’s Common Security and
Defence Policy in 1999, member states have produced
a plethora of statements of intent, capability targets,
and ‘headline goals’.

Yet rhetoric has not resulted in action. Strikingly,
Europe continues to lack the ‘key enablers’ – air-to-air
refuelling capacity,
intelligence surveillance and
reconnaissance and satellite communications – serially
identified in numerous EU reports over the years. Whilst
some member states have engaged in limited pooling
and sharing of military equipment – the Dutch and
Belgians have agreed to joint naval
training and
maintenance – they remain in general stubbornly
reluctant to buy military equipment abroad - only nine
European procurement programmes valued at over
€1 billion are collaborative.

Nor have these same member states provided the
EU with real competence to ensure greater liberalisation
of the European arms market.

Meanwhile, defence continues to be used by many
governments as a means of propping up inefficient yet
economically important national champions in a manner
that has been largely outlawed in civilian sectors for

The average defence spending of America’s NATO allies was 1.5% of GDP in 2007. The United States spends 4.6% of its GDP on defence

© US Navy

© US Department of Defense

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

some years. Indeed, not only have governments failed
to collaborate effectively over procurement, but they
have generally made decisions over which capabilities
to cut without prior coordination with, or
indeed
notification of, their partners.

European governments, in short, continue to act as
if the defence deficit did not exist. A continued faith in
American protection, a belief in the sustainability of
Europe’s relative security, and a reluctance to engage in
strategic thought about potential threats to European
interests characterise the political leadership of many
member states.

Such complacency partly explains their reticence
about seeing the European Union gain any real authority
over the defence sector. It also stems, however, from real
pressures that militate against collaboration. In the first
place, governments are inherently reluctant to share
control over their defence policies. Relying on others for
security is a risky business, particularly when, as in the
European Union, member states have widely different
conceptions of the nature of the threats confronting
them. In addition, strong political pressures work against
the rationalisation of domestic defence structures that
effective intra-European collaboration would require.
Given a choice between, on the one hand, the short-term
sacrifice of economic capacity in the name of long-term
solutions to potential security problems or, on the other,
small scale, piecemeal cuts that may – gradually but
imperceptibly – erode crucial capacities, governments
understandably choose the latter.

For all the military problems generated by the
existence of numerous small-scale national defence
industries, they generate politically valuable jobs and
skills.

The Long Road to Strategic Awareness

Europeans are increasingly unable to tackle even
local security threats that might affect their interests.

The fragmentation of European defence between 28
national defence policies, each increasingly ill-equipped
for the needs of modern expeditionary warfare, has
helped foster this ‘defence deficit’. Attempts to plug the
deficit via enhanced collaboration within the European
Union have so far achieved very little. The EU remains
something of a spectator when it comes to the
important defence decisions made in national capitals.
Given the constraints upon national political leaders,
it is relatively easy to understand why, regardless of the
significant incentives for greater defence collaboration,
this remains elusive. Ultimately, however, Europeans
need to address the defence deficit rather than waiting
until it becomes apparent via failure in theatre.

As a first step, Europe’s most senior political figures
must enhance their collective strategic awareness. They
must acknowledge the threats they face and the
profound limits on their ability individually to address
them. To date, most governments have failed
systematically to consider their own security interests.
Better coordination between them would reveal a
broad convergence between them over the challenges
they confront.

Similarly, national capitals must together consider
the military capabilities at their disposal. At the very
least, such a review might help prevent the acquisition
of capabilities that Europeans collectively do not need,
or the cutting of capacity that is in short supply in
Europe as a whole. Greater transparency between
member states on issues including potential budget
cuts, national defence strategies, national procurement
planning and future capabilities plans would be a
useful first step.

An explicit acceptance by member states of the
inadequacies of the current situation is the irreplaceable
first step in any process of addressing the defence
it will persist and, ultimately,
deficit. Failing this,
undermine their ability to defend their own interests.

PA2 was a planned aircraft carrier under development by Thales Naval France and DCNS for the French Navy

© DCNS

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

Opinion:
What are the missing
instruments to reach
another level of
European defence?

Brigadier General (retd) Jo Coelmont, Senior Associate Fellow,
Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations

defence as well, pragmatism may well be key to
generating more ‘political will’.

Being able

on

was

“The European
Investment Bank (EIB)
can provide solutions.
To fit national budget
requirements the EIB
could receive, through
EDA, down-payments
upfront and develop
particular payment
schedules”

At St Malo in 1998, France and the UK jointly concluded
that only at
the EU level could they regain their
sovereignty and set up crisis management operations
of
the magnitude that was
needed for Yugoslavia. At first, the
focus
gathering
capabilities and identifying (still
persisting) military shortfalls. In
the
2003, working groups of
Convention focused on the more
aspects. With
institutional
Treaty Member
the
Lisbon
themselves,
States
the
unprecedentedly,
institutional
blocks
to reach another level of European
defence. However, a heap of
blocks can only be turned into a
robust construction if you have an
architect, an entrepreneur and a
bank, in particular when you have to accommodate some
27 (or more) different customers (with provisions for more
to join over time and for others to opt out and back in).

building

gave

all

Looking towards the Lisbon Treaty, the short

answer is: none. Yet we are, rather urgently,
in need of ‘another level of European defence’
and the European machinery clearly is not living
up to the expectations of public opinion as
voiced in all of the Member States. ‘A lack of political will’
is the usual answer given to explain (or justify) this
discrepancy. That answer is a bit
too easy, and worrying as well,
because expressed by practitioners
and politicians alike it amounts to
fatalism. So, something must be
missing.

Political will

is about being
‘willing’ as well as ‘able’. Difficult to
call
for action without means.
Difficult to invest in capabilities, vice
versa, without the will to use them.
At the European Union (EU) level,
there is some political will and there
are some military capabilities. The
real
the
imbalance between objectives
and means.
It provokes political
hesitation and leads to a degrading of European defence,
at the risk of ultimately destroying solidarity.

stumbling

block

is

A lack of pragmatism may well explain all this.
Pragmatism was crucial to all of the policies developed
so far within the EU, from right after the Second World War
up to now, to line up the Member States, to defend their
values and interests, and to ensure that Member States
remained relevant by, in fact, restoring their sovereignty
by pooling it. And this led to solidarity. In the area of

The architect

When building up capabilities for European defence,
the indicated architect, capable of drawing up an overall
plan that is affordable, meets the needs of all involved and
EDA is best placed subsequently to negotiate with

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

“With the Lisbon Treaty Member
States gave themselves,
unprecedentedly, all the
institutional building blocks to
reach another level of
European defence”

© European Parliament

constructors and to ensure follow up (life cycle support)
is the European Defence Agency (EDA). The architect
coordinates. Those who have to reach consensus and
invest are indeed the EU Member States but, after all, they
are at the helm of EDA, through the steering board. It is
interesting to note that on occasions the EU Commission
can be a customer and a financing agent. The architect
links everything together.

The entrepreneur

To build the military capabilities needed by Member
States and the dual-use assets needed by the
Commission, you need of an industry, which in turn needs
an adequate industrial and economic environment. To
forge the latter, all required institutional EU instruments
exist. The Commission has a lot of expertise in this field,
but is not the only actor. Indeed, this is not exclusively
about ‘the force of the internal market’, but rather about
the international market.
It is about intercontinental
industrial cooperation while at the same time establishing
a certain level of European autonomy.

All this goes across and above the traditional
intergovernmental – supranational
lines. EDA is best
placed to bridge some of these aspects, being aware
both of the practical outcomes pursued by Member
States and the structural approaches pursued by the
Commission.

It is difficult to underestimate the challenges ahead.
The time has come to develop a kind of European Foreign
Military Sales system. This debate ranges beyond the
classic issues, such as research and development (R&D)
and provisions for government to government contracts.
A bank is needed as well.

The bank

Harmonising Members States’ demands, often a
prerequisite for industry to launch a project, is far from
easy. Funding arrangements for R&D and,
later on,
streamlining payment schedules of participating Member
States are important stumbling blocks. The European
Investment Bank (EIB) can provide solutions.

To fit national budget requirements the EIB could
through EDA, down-payments upfront and
receive,
develop particular payment schedules that could be
stretched even over the entire live cycle of a given item
of military equipment. Moreover,
it is worthwhile to
examine whether Member States’ expenses related to
such programmes could not be lifted from EU restrictions
on national budget deficits. The instruments are there, the
policies remain to be developed.

Becoming willing

It is rather difficult to convince Heads of State and
Government to invest together with partners in any
military project, if the answer to the question “What would
we do together?” sounds like “We agreed to disagree on
strategy”.

A strategy may not be an institutional instrument per
se. However, it is in the first place an organising principle,
and of utmost importance to security and defence issues.
In the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) we have a
concept, mainly focusing on collective defence. At the EU
level, with the 2003 European Security Strategy, the focus
is on crisis management, in particular on ‘how’ to conduct
such operations: ‘comprehensively’.

However, for Member States, the will to act together

in a particular military operation can only stem from

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

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TEN YEARS OF EDA

Operation Atalanta is the first military operation undertaken by the European Union Naval Force

© Belgian Army

a common interest, from a consensus not only on the
‘how’, but also on who is to do what, when, where, with
which means and, above all, on a common understanding
on the desired political outcome. If such a consensus
goes well beyond a single operation, leading to a series
of EU operations as recently witnessed, it is signalling that
a broader common strategy is in the making.

Moreover, a series of on-going events have forged a
more common understanding of the threats, ranging from
our Southern to our Eastern borders up to the Arctic.
Economic interests are henceforth also commonly
considered, as proven by Operation Atalanta.

A European Maritime Strategy has been agreed upon.
Most Members States are even profoundly convinced
Europe has to gain a level of strategic autonomy, which
starts in its neighbourhood, broadly defined (and not
limited to it). There is also a growing consensus that, in
order to maintain solid relations with our principal partner,
the US, a sense of urgency is required.

And finally, there is the common conviction that in
our current geopolitical environment, Europeans will in
the future be more and more called upon to take the lead
in military missions, be it the context of the EU, NATO, or
even the United Nations (UN), depending on the crisis at
hand. It is fair to say that at present, based upon a broad
consensus within the EU and the Member States, we are
swiftly turning from ‘disagreeing on strategy’ to a ‘de
facto’ strategy, while at the same agreeing (for well-
known domestic reasons in some Member States) not to
discuss this issue too explicitly. The latter may be a
justifiable temporary solution in order to keep on board
as many Member States as possible. The fact is that all
preconditions to become able and willing are now
fulfilled within the EU.

Towards a pragmatic, permanent and structured
cooperation

The time is ripe to bring European defence

cooperation to another level by making use of existing
EU instruments. The key is to address the identified
strategic military capability shortfalls and to finance this
effort by doing away with redundancies. Such an
endeavour requires a kind of permanent and well
structured cooperation, centred on harmonising national
requirements and taking part in EDA programmes, both
on a voluntary basis. It is clear that the criteria of such a
Permanent Structured Cooperation in Defence (PESCO)
are quite different from the ones identified back in 2003
during the work of the Convention. It is no longer about
a select group (a ‘directoire’) fulfilling some higher
quantitative criteria. The main criterion now is about the
together. Pragmatism and
willingness
inclusiveness will be key. EDA is to streamline such
a cooperation.

act

to

Conclusion

Pragmatism is probably the missing catalyst to reach
another level of European defence. The time has come to
forge a whole new kind of permanent structured
cooperation between Member States, mobilising the
Council, the Commission, the EIB, and in particular EDA, a
key instrument of the Members States and at the same
time an agency uniquely well placed within the EU
institutions. The long hailed adagio of the ‘bottom-up’
approach has shown its limitations. It has been proven
that overall coherence, efficiency and affordability also
require solid ‘top down’ steering and instruments.

If not all Member States are (yet) ready to join this
endeavour, a group, as inclusive as possible, is to be
established. A sense of urgency is justified. In security
and defence, the main threat to Europe is to lose its Allies
and partners, because of its relative weakness, due to
fragmentation and a (no longer persistent?) reluctance
of Member States to use to the full extend the
instruments of cooperation and solidarity they have
themselves created at the EU level.

22

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

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Operation Althea
Launched on 2 December 2004, EUFOR Althea
has contributed to the maintenance of a safe
and secure environment in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Its main objective is to provide
capacity building and training for local armed
forces while maintaining a safe and secure
environment in the country.

Seventeen EU Member States are contributing
to the operation, as well as five partner
nations. Under the ‘Berlin Plus’ arrangements,
Althea is carried out by NATO Supreme Allied
Commander Europe (SACEUR) as operation
commander. The common costs of the
operation, which has a mission strength of
about 600 personnel, are €10.3 million and
paid through contributions by EU Member
States to the Athena financial mechanism.

www.eda.europa.eu

OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

Supporting
the fight

Since the creation of the European Defence Agency in 2004, support to European Union
(EU) operations and, more generally, to the Common Security and Defence Policy has
always been one of the core missions of EDA. With many ongoing missions around the
globe, this support matters now more than ever. In this article, we review some recent
developments in that domain

the

European

They are the eyes and ears of the

troops deployed in Bosnia and
Herzegovina as part of EUFOR
Althea,
Union
operation launched in December
2004 to maintain a safe and secure
environment in this region of the world. Flying
day and night over the country in a privately-
owned
crew
surveillance
intelligence
composed of a handful of
experts is keeping a watch on the ground
below, thanks to an array of airborne sensors
able to map the terrain as requested by
operation commanders.

aircraft,

a

Based in Sarajevo International Airport,
the aircraft and its crew are critical to the
success of Operation Althea, maintaining a
constant vigil on any developing situation
that might be disruptive to the European
peacekeeping effort.

Contracting assistance

This Air-to-Ground Surveillance and
Reconnaissance (AGSR) capability has
been operational for some time as part of
EUFOR Althea. But in order to ensure that this
critical service will be maintained for the
coming years, the expertise of EDA has been
recently called upon by the operational
headquarters in order to provide assistance
with the contracting of a new phase of AGSR
work in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Earlier this
year, Claude-France Arnould, EDA Chief
procurement
signed
Executive,
arrangement with General Sir
Adrian
Bradshaw, Operation Commander of EUFOR
Althea. Under this arrangement, the Agency
assumes the lead role in administering the

a

procurement procedure on behalf of the
Althea commander.

stations. The actual service is expected to
start in January 2015 in Sarajevo.

The event was of significant importance,
as this was the first time EDA has ever signed
a procurement arrangement directly with an
EU mission. Reflecting on the arrangement,
Claude-France Arnould stressed that this
cooperation would “help highlight
the
expertise and added value EDA can bring in
the field of procurement”. General Bradshaw
also commented on the event: “The decision
to use the expertise from EDA in this
procurement for Air to Ground Surveillance
services for Operation Althea is, of course,
based on EDA’s technical knowledge in this
field. Another advantage will be to benefit
from the lessons learned in conducting such
an arrangement between the operation and
the EDA directly,
in order to establish the
necessary procedures which will potentially
enable closer cooperation between our
organisations in the future”.
specifications
technical
on
provided by EUFOR Althea commanders,
experts from EDA have worked out ways to
improve the existing contract and provide the
end-users with the ‘best value for money’
AGSR service. The requirements of
this
‘turnkey’ service called for the contractor to
provide as many as 500 flight hours per year,
as well as taking care of the analysis of the
data collected by the sensors of the aircraft.
While the tender did not specify a particular
platform, it required the aircraft to be able to
carry day/night electro-optical sensors with
imaging and full-motion video capabilities, as
well as the ability to downlink the intelligence
to ground
gathered in “near

real-time”

Based

And

“As part of the procurement arrangement
signed with EUFOR Althea, the European
Defence Agency was eventually required to
provide a recommendation on the best
bidder, with the actual contract award
decision remaining in the hands of the
operational command”, Carmen Parrilla, EDA
Project Officer in charge of this initiative,
underlines.
first
this
experience with EUFOR Althea could be
repeated elsewhere, based on future Member
“Flexibility is one of our
States’ needs.
strongest advantages here. We can support
Member States when they need it most, for
instance in the management of complex
procurement procedures or when they are in
the deployment phase of a new service
during the build-up of a new operation”,
Carmen Parrilla says.

successful

Counter-IED

The AGSR story is only one of many
examples of how EDA can help its Member
States face the challenges they encounter on
existing and future theatres of operation.
Another key milestone was reached earlier in
2014 when the EDA-developed Multi National
Theatre Exploitation Laboratory (MNTEL) came
back from Afghanistan to the Netherlands
after a successful three-year deployment in
Kabul. Launched in 2010,
this ambitious
European
aimed
project
capabilities in the field of Counter-IED
exploitation – the art of analysing Improvised
Explosive Devices found in the field in
order to better defeat them in the future.

enhance

to

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

“The fight against IEDs
has long been an
overarching issue for EU
Armed Forces operating
abroad as well as
civilian actors involved
in security operations,
and the MNTEL really
helped saving lives out
there”
Joerg Hillmann, EDA
Head of Land & Maritime
Domain Unit

Italy,

The project, led by France and supported by
Austria,
Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Poland, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, the
MNTEL project was funded through EDA’s
operational budget.

Built by Spanish company Indra and
delivered to EDA in mid-2010, the deployable
laboratory was quickly sent to Afghanistan
where it started operations in July 2011 at
Camp Warehouse in Kabul, the operations
centre for
International
the multinational
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – which also
allowed the MNTEL to prove its worth in a NATO
environment. It was then redeployed at Kabul
International Airport in March 2013, before
leaving the country in the first half of 2014.
“During its three years of operation in
Afghanistan, the MNTEL processed more than
6,000 different IEDs that were forensically
examined in the lab”, Joerg Hillmann, EDA Head
of Land & Maritime Domain Unit, explains. “The
fight against
IEDs has long been an
overarching issue for EU Armed Forces
operating abroad as well as civilian actors
involved in security operations, and the MNTEL
really helped saving lives out there”, he adds.
The Agency’s work in the field of Counter-
IED might provide further support to EU

operations in the future. In May 2013, while the
MNTEL was still deployed in Afghanistan, a
new programme called the Joint Deployable
Exploitation and Analysis Laboratory (JDEAL)
was initiated under Dutch leadership. The aim
of the project is to establish a permanent IED
exploitation training facility in the Netherlands,
staffed by a permanent multinational team,
but also to build on previous successes by
procuring two additional deployable labs that
would be made available for use in future
contingency or peacekeeping operations. A
proliferating threat by nature, IEDs are indeed
found in many crisis areas around the world,
which indeed calls for the development of a
flexible solution that could be rapidly deployed
in support of EU missions around the world.

Support from space

While the Agency’s efforts in the field of
Counter-IED illustrate the need to be present
on the battlefield next to the ground troops,
support to operations can also come from a
much more distant location. With its EU
Satcom Market initiative (previously known as
EU Satcom Procurement Cell or ESCPC), the
European Defence Agency also aims to
its
improve the operational efficiency of

Member States for EU operations and
missions.

Satellite communications have become
crucial to the success of modern operations,
and their potential uses are plentiful: they
allow theater commanders to maintain a link
with their headquarters, they provide welfare
services to the troops deployed and they also
ensure that remotely piloted air systems can
be controlled from a ground station installed
several
thousand kilometers from the
battlefield. Some of these services can
sometimes be provided by government-
owned military satellites, but this resource is
so scarce that most of the ‘non-strategic’
satcom demand is answered by commercial
satellites (Comsatcom).

Since the signature of the original project
arrangement in 2012, ten countries have
initiative:
joined the EU Satcom Market
Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Italy, Luxemburg, Poland, Romania and the
United Kingdom. The purpose of the project
it aims to provide wireless
is simple:
connectivity solutions between European
units on the ground and their headquarters,
as well as other related services. The main
advantage for Member States is that by

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“The decision to use EDA’s
expertise is, of course, based
on the Agency’s technical
knowledge in this field.
Another advantage will be to
benefit from the lessons
learned in conducting such
training for other EU operations
in the future”
Brigadier General
Christos Drivas, EUFOR RCA
Chief of Staff

pooling demand through common off-the-
shelf procurement, they might find a more
flexible way of buying Comsatcom bandwidth
that they would have by using a purely
national approach.

As of late 2014, almost €2 million worth of
orders have been passed through the EU
Satcom Market’s procurement cell, with
several Member States using it in direct
support of their operational commitments. In
the meantime, additional countries have
shown their interest in joining the club. “This
shows that contributing Member States can
benefit from easier access to ComSatCom
capabilities in order to fulfill their national
needs or to enhance their contribution to
CSDP missions”, Jure Bauer, EDA EU Satcom
Market officer, stresses.

While the first framework contract was
awarded in September 2012 for a period of
three years, a new tendering procedure will
later be launched in order to award a follow-
up contract by September 2015. “The EU
Satcom Market could evolve with a wider
range of customers in mind: national armed
forces of course but also CSDP military
operations and civilian missions”, Jure Bauer
explains.

Going cyber: support to EUFOR RCA

Even if it is now widely acknowledged that cyberspace has a become a domain of
warfare of its own, armed forces worldwide are still working hard to build up a proper
training syllabus for their personnel to tackle the critical issue of cyber defence.

To address that shortfall, the European Defence Agency has recently organised a series
of ‘cyber awareness’ seminars in support of operation EUFOR RCA (Central African
Republic).

Taking place in the operational headquarters facilities of Larissa, in Greece, in the second
half of 2014, they were designed to raise situational awareness of each staff member of
the operational headquarters in terms of cyber operations, while informing them about
the development and establishment of EU capabilities in that domain. It was the first time
the European Defence Agency ever provided this type of support to an EU mission.

In total, 150 staff from EUFOR RCA benefitted from the training. “Cyber defence is high on
our agenda”, Brigadier General Christos Drivas, EUFOR RCA Chief of Staff, commented
following the training sessions. “The decision to use EDA’s expertise is, of course, based
on the Agency’s technical knowledge in this field. Another advantage will be to benefit
from the lessons learned in conducting such training for other EU operations in the
future”, he added.

The three seminars, that were conducted with support from the EU Military Staff and the
Tallinn Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, also provided the opportunity to
exchange views on the next steps to be taken in order to enhance the cyber defence
capabilities of operation EUFOR RCA as well as other EU-led military operations.

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

Building trust for
multinational operations

A series of multinational exercises has been organised this year to enhance
interoperability between European aviators. Our reporters travelled to the Netherlands,
Bulgaria and Portugal in order to witness progress being made under the auspices of
the European Defence Agency

“

avoid

potentially

Train like you fly, fly like you train” has

been a long-time motto of military
aviators. To keep flying crews at the
highest level of operational readiness
deadly
and
surprises on the battlefield, training has always
been treated as a priority by armed forces
worldwide. But flying hours don’t come cheap,
and in times of budgetary pressure most
European countries sometimes struggle to
provide their crews with the desired amount of
training time. Moreover, modern military
operations have been mostly conducted by
coalition forces in recent years, thus increasing
the need for interoperability between European
flying units.
the European
In 2014 alone,
Defence Agency has organised three major

training events which all aimed at enhancing
European capabilities and interoperability
through multinational aircrew training.

Tankers together
Air-to-air

refuelling (AAR) aircraft, also
known as tankers, have long been a precious
asset for battlefield commanders. Indeed, the
fighter-bomber sorties that a
number of
country or a coalition is able to generate on a
daily basis is directly linked to the number of
AAR refuelling aircraft that will be put in the air
to provide the former with the fuel they need to
conduct their missions. “Today Europe is able
to field around 40 tanker aircraft of 10 different
types while the US currently fields 550 tankers
of four types, which is a clear indication of the

European shortfall
Laurent Donnet, EDA Programme Manager.

in this field”, explains

To address this shortfall, AAR was
endorsed in 2011 by the European Defence
Agency Steering Board as one of the initial
eleven Pooling & Sharing projects. And during
the European Council meeting of December
2013, the work on AAR was recognised as one
of the four key capability projects for EDA to
increase its effort on.

Taking place from 31 March to 11 April 2014
at Eindhoven airbase, in the Netherlands, the
first European Air-to-Air Refueling Training
(EART) exercise was developed by the
European Defence Agency – in close
cooperation with the European Air Transport
Command (EATC) and Dutch armed forces – to

28

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

© Bulgarian Air Force

EATT14 gathered more
than 450 participants,
19 crews and 10 transport
aircraft coming from five
different Member States.
More than 100 sorties
were flown

optimise the use of existing assets through
multinational cooperation. Tankers from
Germany, the Netherlands and Italy met on the
Dutch airbase for
the event which was
organised on the back of ‘Frisian Flag’, a large-
scale tactical exercise gathering dozens of
combat aircraft every year, which offers a
realistic operational environment.

“This provided the tanker crews with a
great opportunity to train in realistic AAR
combat scenarios”, Laurent Donnet stresses.
“In the first week alone, 15 sorties were flown
and more than 135 tons of fuel offloaded”, he
adds. “Crews also built up knowledge of the
characteristics of aircraft used by other EU
countries, while flying sorties in the morning
and afternoon allowed them to practice their

quick turnaround procedures”. The next edition
of EART is expected to take place in Spring 2015
in Eindhoven.

Bulgaria calling

Launched in 2011 and now gathering 19
Member States as well as Norway,
the
European Air Transport Fleet (EATF) partnership
was intended from the outset as a way to
enhance cooperation in the field of military air
transport through innovative methods and
projects, with the overarching objective of
increasing European capabilities in that
domain.

Enhancing

interoperability

between
European airlift crews and harmonising training
procedures are two important elements of

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

that global effort. From expeditionary missions to
crisis management, air transport is an essential
enabler that allows European countries to fulfill
their responsibilities across the globe.

With an ever increasing number of these
operations being carried out jointly, there is a
clear need to pool
resources and share
knowledge as well as best practices between
countries. And while the fighter community has
had numerous joint training activities for years,
from the Tactical Leadership Programme to Flag
and NATO exercises in European airspace, the
lacking a
air transport community was still
similar tool in Europe.

This was the rationale behind the creation
of the European Air Transport Training (EATT) in
2012. Also organised in close cooperation with
the EATC, the third edition of EATT took place in
Plovdiv, Bulgaria, from 16-27 June. It gathered
more than 450 participants, 19 crews, and 10
transport aircraft of five different types coming
from 10 different countries: Belgium, Bulgaria,
Czech Republic, France, Germany,
Italy,
Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and Norway.
Fighter aircraft and airborne early warning
capabilities were provided by Greece, while
observers from Austria, Finland, Hungary,
Portugal, Romania, Sweden, UK, and USA also
attended the event. General-Major Konstantin
Popov, Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force,
commented: “This successful exercise required
detailed planning, good understanding of our
common goals and true interoperability
between participating crews”.

Tailored to match the training objectives of
the participating air forces, EATT14 saw more
than 100 sorties flown by participating crews,
accounting for a total of 150 flying hours. More
than 40 tons of cargo as well as over 100
paratroopers were dropped over the course of
the training event, which was the largest to
date. Despite a difficult first week due to severe
weather conditions, missions were resumed on
the second week with increasingly complex
scenarios and training objectives including
airdrops, low-level flying and night operations.

The way ahead

After the success of EATT14, Portugal and
the UK have expressed their intent to join the
next event to be held in Portugal in 2015 (EATT
15). But in parallel to the EATT series of
exercises, the European Defence Agency has
also initiated (in close cooperation with EATC)
a European Advanced Airlift Tactics Training
Course (EAATTC) to provide crews with a
comprehensive training syllabus relying on

Laurent Donnet

© Chavdar Garchev

Andy Gray

© HB14 Public Affairs

© Bulgarian MoD

30

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European-designed tactics and procedures.

The first EAATTC course took place 21
September – 3 October in Zaragoza, Spain,
where a first class of six crews and 29 students
successfully graduated. Three similar courses
will be organised in 2015 in Bulgaria, France and
Spain, and the establishment of a permanent
European training centre is currently being
discussed. Eventually, EAATTC should become
an alternative to the US Advanced Air Transport
Training Course (AATTC) initiative, a rendezvous
that has been attended for decades by airlift
crews from the US and allied nations. However,
European Member States are now seeking
different ways to provide their crews with this
much-needed training. EAATTC is the perfect
answer to that rising challenge, with European
air forces now able to benefit from a high-level
training closer to their home bases, thus saving
the cost of a return trip across the Atlantic.

Rotors over Portugal

The largest helicopter exercise organised
this year in Europe, Hot Blade 2014 also sought
to provide European rotary-wing crews with a
common training environment in order to
enhance interoperability and to pool resources
in order to practice large-scale joint and
combined missions that would be hard to
organise by a single Member State. This
multinational event is a direct output of the
Helicopter Exercise Programme (HEP), signed
by twelve Member States in November 2012 for
a period of ten years.

Twenty-five helicopters coming from six
different nations took part in Hot Blade 2014
from 16-30 July. For the third year in a row, the
event was hosted by the Portuguese Air Force
on Ovar airbase, in the vicinity of Porto. A total
of 827 hours were flown during 362 aircraft
sorties. “All training aims were met with the
assistance of a small team of highly qualified
tactics instructors coming from the sister
Helicopter Tactics Instructors Course (HTIC)
programme”, Andy Gray, EDA Helicopters
Programme Manager, points out. Large-scale
Composite Air Operations (COMAOs) were flown,
with each nation taking a turn in leading the
mission. The exercise involved light, medium
and heavy transport helicopters, but also
tactical
Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets
in the form of a P-3C Orion maritime patrol
aircraft; and up to ten F-16 fighter aircraft from
the Portuguese Air Force. In total, more than
3,000 military personnel were involved in
the exercise.

transport

aircraft;

OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

© HB14 Public Affairs

was extremely positive. Senior national
representatives confirmed that the experience
of working together with other nations and
practicing large-scale joint and combined
missions just could not have been achieved by
these
working alone. They agreed that
exercises are truly enhancing the helicopter
capability within Europe.

to

“We

keep

trying

improve
interoperability between our Member States’
helicopter crews, because there is a very
good chance that they will have to work
together on the same battlefield in the years
to come – and we truly
mean working together,
national
integrating
capabilities
a
into
multinational coalition,
not
the
just
deconfliction that has
been used in the past”,
Andy Gray sums up.

Designed to move
around Europe in order
to experience different
operating environments,
the Helicopter Exercise
Programme will travel to
Italy in June 2015 for
Italian Blade, which will take place on Viterbo
airbase, about 80 kilometers north of Rome.
Early in 2016, Finland will host exercise Cold
Blade,
focussing on the challenges of
operating in Arctic conditions. Then, in autumn
the same year, Belgium and the Netherlands
will
jointly host Black Blade, dedicated to
special operations.

As agreed by participating Member States
in 2012, the events organised as part of the
Helicopter Exercise Programme are already
scheduled until 2022.

Which means that there are still plenty of
opportunities to share experiences and
develop best practices, building trust today
amongst European partners for the battlefields
and conflicts of tomorrow.

The largest helicopter
exercise organised this
year in Europe, Hot Blade
2014 also sought to
provide European rotary-
wing crews with a
common training
environment in order to
enhance interoperability

The

Enhancing interoperability and joint
operations, Hot Blade 2014 also provided some
participating countries with an opportunity to
fulfil their own national training objectives in an
appropriate
Dutch
environment.
detachment benefitted from the ‘hot and high’
conditions found in Portugal to prepare for the
deployment of their CH-47 Chinook helicopters
to Mali. Major Alphons Jacobs, commander of
this year’s Dutch Hot Blade detachment,
explains: “This exercise has allowed us to fulfil
several training objectives. First, we’re working
in a multinational environment, which is always
good for our cooperative
skills. Secondly, we
are able to familiarize
our crews with ‘hot and
environments.
dusty’
prepare
Finally, we
for
forthcoming
our
detachment to Mali later
this year”. To achieve
these objectives,
the
Royal Netherlands Air
Force brought
three
Chinooks to Hot Blade
2014, including a recent
CH-47F model.

role:

Ground troops also
“A particularly
played an important
pleasing aspect of this year’s exercise was the
participation of infantry from Netherlands and
Germany”, Andy Gray explains. “One of the
reasons I am so focused on aircrew training is
that on operations we place our soldiers in
each other’s aircraft. We need to make sure
that all crews in a coalition, no matter what flag
they have on their uniform, are capable of
completing
and
the mission
competently”. The event also attracted interest
from non-European countries such as Brazil,
which sent a small team of observers to
Portugal to attend the exercise.

safely

Positive feedback

The immediate feedback from the exercise

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Raw materials: securing
the supply

EDA is working to ensure that Member States will have a guaranteed supply of the
scarce raw materials that provide essential structures and components for complex
battlefield systems

Advanced radars, military jet

engines, secured radios... These
state-of-the art capabilities used
by European armed forces on the
battlefield are essential to the
success of modern operations. But even
more critical, and often overlooked, are the
raw materials necessary to build them, as
well as the companies which specialise in
turning them into the high-performance
metals and alloys needed by the defence
industry. And these raw materials may not
always be as readily available as one might
assume.

Tackling the problem

Early in 2014, the European Defence
Agency (EDA) organised two workshops on
that topic. “The sustained availability of
many raw materials is coming increasingly
Inge
under pressure,”
in the
Ceuppens, EDA project officer

according

to

“Criticality can be defined by
five main parameters. The
importance in the process
of products; the scarcity of
a specific material; its
geological position; its
geological concentration
and the cost of extraction
and transformation”
Inge Ceuppens,
Project Officer, European
Synergies and Innovation
directorate, EDA

32

Synergies

European
Innovation
directorate. “Europe is dependent on foreign
supplies and that may raise concerns”.

and

The problem is certainly not new. “During
World War Two the lack of
tungsten
prevented the German Army from fielding
enough Tiger battle tanks”, Christophe-
Alexandre Paillard explains. Deputy Director
of
the French Délégation aux Affaires
Stratégiques, the expert recognises that the
two EDA workshops acted as a real eye-
opener for some of the countries involved.
“It was great to have everyone around the
table and to exchange our views on this
critical topic at EU level”.

Today, only a small number of EU
countries have the policy and the know-how
to ensure that their supply of raw materials
is secured. By getting their act together
through an EDA initiative, Member States
could benefit from a shared assessment of
the potential vulnerabilities of their supply

and of the impact that a shortage of a given
material would have on their defence
activities. The two workshops mentioned
earlier have already shown there was a real
interest from the Member States. They also
allowed discussion to take place with
industry, a very important actor in the field.
“Data concerning the use of raw materials is
with defence companies”, Inge Ceuppens
points out.

Specific needs

is

The defence industry is an important
consumer of these raw materials, but it does
not match the commercial sector in terms of
quantities: defence sector needs are only
expected to account for about 5% of the total
demand in the coming years. But if supply
economic
calculated against
risk
importance when it
to civil
comes
technologies,
this criteria is much less
relevant for the defence sector, where the
is a more suitable
strategic context
parameter that needs thorough evaluation.
For some materials, such as rare earth
elements (REE), the risk of supply disruption
is very real. The production of REE (mining as
well as refining and processing) is heavily
geographically-concentrated. China is a
single-source market and meets more than
90% of the world demand. To a large extent,
Europe lacks these resources on a
commercially viable basis. Also, the recycling
of REE on a commercial scale is not highly
in this context, an
developed in Europe:
industrial group such as Rhodia (the Solvay
group) plays a key role in preserving
European know-how in transforming and
recycling rare-earth elements.

Dramatic effects

Compared to the civil sector, defence
applications sometimes demand materials

www.eda.europa.eu

OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

that are of higher purity or quality,
characteristics that in some cases can only
be obtained through a very specific process
of
transformation mastered by a few
strategic companies and small/medium
sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. And the
shortage of a specific component could
have dramatic effects on the defence
industry’s ability to produce the military
equipment
that end users need in
operations.

Take combat aircraft, for instance. “The
aircraft propulsion industry is a major
consumer of rhenium, a material that is
largely used for the manufacturing of hot
sections on advanced fighter engines”,
Christophe-Alexandre Paillard points out.
Without rhenium, even the most modern
stealth aircraft would have a hard time
leaving the factory without restructuring the
existing procedures.

Need another example? Part of the rare-
earth category, neodymium has become the
go-to material used to build the powerful
magnets needed by modern wind turbines.
These do not only serve civil purposes: as
the energy demand increases on the
battlefield, they are also used to provide
troops on the ground with an alternative
source of energy when oil becomes difficult
to dispatch. “Today, about 97% of the total
rhenium production comes from China”, the
French expert says. “This is the kind of reality
that European Union (EU) countries need to
take into account when reviewing the status
of their defence industry”, he stresses.

Defining the criticality

As it has already done with a great
number of projects, EDA is now offering to
help Member States in identifying and
quantifying which raw materials are critical,
as well as potential weaknesses in their
supply chain. “Criticality can be defined by
Inge Ceuppens
five main parameters”,
explains. “The importance in the process of
products; the scarcity of a specific material;
its geological position;
its geological
concentration and the cost of extraction and
transformation”.
October

has
EDA
commissioned a study that will
look
precisely at these issues. Defence industry
data will be collected and analysed in order
to make an assessment of the criticality of
the materials used for defence technologies
The assessment of
and equipment.

2014,

the

In

i

x
u
a
n
n
o
M
d
v
a
D
©

i

CFM International CFM56 jet engine still with blades made with 3% rhenium

n
o
o
h
p
y
T
r
e
t
h
g
i
f
o
r
u
E
©

Eurofighter’s new CAPTOR active electronically scanned array radar

criticality will be comprehensive, meaning it
will not only look at the source of extraction
but covers criticalities in the entire supply
chain, with a special focus on the processing
industry.

The identification of the raw materials
specific to the defence community will be
done through a ‘bottom-up’ approach by
starting from the list of materials and then by
checking in which technology or applications
it is used by the defence industry. Once a
comprehensive view has been obtained, it
will be possible to compare the results of the
Commission’s Report on Critical Raw
Materials for
the EU, of May 2014 that
identified a list of 20 materials that are critical
for the civil sector.

EDA’s intention is to work with the
European Commission in order
to draw
recommendations and plan for actions to
secure raw materials for defence. The end-
goal is for the EU to be able to mitigate the
existing vulnerabilities. Because one thing is
for certain: the issue largely spreads beyond

national borders, and the future of European
defence might very well depend on a shared
understanding of the issues at stake.

Inge Ceuppens is an EDA project
officer in the European Synergies and
Innovation directorate. Before joining the
Agency, she worked at DG Connect in the
European Commission, and at the U.S.
mission to the EU.
Christophe-Alexandre
Paillard is Deputy Director with the
French Délégation aux Affaires
Stratégiques (DAS) in charge of raw
materials, energy technologies,
cyberscurity, competitive intelligence, and
Latin America within his department. He is
also a senior lecturer on international
issues and economic warfare and has
published books and articles on
economics, defence industries, energy,
and strategic minerals.

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OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

Fit for purpose

It has been almost a year since the Agency adopted a new structure to improve its
support to Member States. This new set-up is built around three operational
directorates, as we explain in this issue of European Defence Matters

a

Since 1 January 2014, the European

Defence Agency has been operating
under
new organisational
structure, marking a significant
change from the set-up that was
adopted at the creation of the Agency in July
2004. “Thanks to this new organisation taking
into account recent evolutions, we are able to
better anticipate and serve the needs and
interests of our Member States”, stresses
Claude-France Arnould, EDA Chief Executive.
“Our structure allows us to facilitate the
prioritisation of tasks while reacting rapidly to
potential new developments and requests”,
she adds.

Three operational directorates

How exactly is the Agency structured to
address the multiple challenges of defence
cooperation in Europe? Its operational
functions are divided into three directorates
(see infographic), which together aim to cover
the entire lifecycle of a military requirement
from its early identification,
research &
technology work, development, acquisition,
and through-life support.

The Cooperation, Planning & Support (CPS)

directorate addresses the through-life of
capabilities, from priority-setting to in-service
support, which constitutes two thirds of
the total cost of a capability. A key driver for
priority-setting is the Capability Development
Plan, on the basis of which Pooling & Sharing
projects are identified and managed.

The in-service support phase includes
areas that enable interoperability such as
military airworthiness, standardisation and
certification, as well as education and training.
Defence industry analysis and cooperative
opportunities, identified by the CPS directorate
through its Codaba (Collaborative Database)
initiative, reinforce the comprehensive picture
required to decide on priorities. The directorate
also supports CSDP operations and missions.
and
Technology (CAT) directorate prepares the
programmes of tomorrow by bringing together
the Agency’s work,
in all
domains: air (drones, air-to-air
refuelling,
airlift), land (counter-IED, armoured systems,
camp protection), maritime (surveillance, mine
counter measures), information technology
(cyber defence, communication systems, etc.)
as well as the joint domain (mobility, medical,

including R&T,

Armaments

Capability,

The

transport and ammunition). This directorate’s
mission is to maximise synergies between the
capabilities, armaments, and research &
technology areas. Top priority is given to the
major programmes highlighted by the
December 2013 European Council, namely
satellite
refuelling,
air-to-air
communications and cyber-security.

drones,

A third directorate facilitates interactions
between Ministries of Defence and the EU
policies that have implications for the defence
sector, as well as supporting technology
insertion through innovative research. Called
European Synergies and Innovation (ESI),
it
ensures complementarity of defence projects
with EU programmes such as SESAR, Horizon
2020, or
the European Structural and
Investment Funds (ESIF).

Addressing space policy and green energy,
the ESI directorate also focuses on market and
industry policy efforts where a close
relationship with the European Commission is
required, such as security of supply and dual
use
European
Commission putting together a range of
proposals in the field of defence, there is a
growing need for a consistent dialogue

technologies. With

the

34

www.eda.europa.eu

OPERATIONS AND PROJECTS

STEERIng boARD CHAIRED by THE HEAD oF THE AgEnCy

CHIEF ExECuTIvE

DEPuTy CHIEF ExECuTIvE

STRATEgy & PolICy

MEDIA & CoMMunICATIon

AuDIT

CooPERATIon, PlAnnIng
& SuPPoRT

CAPAbIlITy, ARMAMEnTS
& TECHnology

EuRoPEAn SynERgIES
& InnovATIon

CoRPoRATE
SERvICES

• Early identification of

requirements

• Planning through Capability

Development Plan

• Pooling & Sharing

• Education and training

• Military airworthiness

• Standardisation and

certification

• Future programmes

preparation

• Air

• land

• Maritime

• Joint

• Information superiority

• Interaction between MoDs

and Eu policies

• Innovative research promotion

• Synergies with Eu

programmes (Horizon 2020,
SESAR, structural funds…)

• Space policy

• Market and industry policy

• green energy

• Contracting

• Finance

• Human Resources

• Infrastructure

• IT

• Security

between the European Commission and the
Ministries of Defence.

Finally, as part of the re-organization
process, the Corporate Services Directorate
(CSD) was strengthened and optimised in order
to take on new challenges, reinforcing its
position as a real business partner of the other
three directorates. In close coordination with
them, it acts as the Agency’s backbone by
providing management and control of the
available resources in a healthy environment,
while developing new approaches towards
their development.

Greater engagement

This re-organisation should allow for
greater engagement by EDA Member States in
the Agency’s work and should ensure that, in
the medium to long term, full use of EDA’s
assets is made. A key asset is EDA’s flexible
approach, with the vast majority of projects
being launched by small groups of Member
States expressing similar interests and needs.
EDA is also improving transparency and
information sharing with Member States. The

different communities (national armament
directors, research & technology points of
contacts, etc.) continue to receive EDA meeting
agendas, steering board updates, supporting
documentation and other material based on
their areas of
the
directorate from which the information
emanates. Member States receive on a regular
basis the list of EDA experts and their exact
portfolio, in order for them to identify the correct
point of contact.

regardless of

interest,

Meanwhile, a number of meeting formats
allow Member States to engage with each
other on a regular basis through EDA, helping
to build a comprehensive defence community
in Europe. EDA reconciles top-down guidance
given by Defence Ministers, who meet in the
framework of the Steering Boards at least twice
a year to give guidance, supported by NADs,
Capability Directors and R&T directors; and
bottom-up approach, with different working
groups and formats to identify areas of interest,
align positions and improve expertise across
EU Member States.

In this regard, EDA arranges: points of

contact (PoC) meetings, facilitating interaction
between the Agency and Member States’
representatives;
Integrated Development
Teams (IDTs) supporting six main capability
domains; Project Teams (PT) bringing together
Member States’ experts in specific capability
areas; Capability technology groups, or
CapTechs, working on collaborative research &
technology projects (12 in total); Ad Hoc
Working Groups are sometimes established to
work on specific initiatives and can eventually
be turned into a Project Team. Finally, Member
States willing to carry out specific activities
can also set up a dedicated programme or
project group.

In operation for almost a year, this new
structure provides the Agency with a
comprehensive set of tools to address current
and future cooperative activities. However,
lessons learned and shared with EDA
stakeholders will ensure that the Agency
remains flexible and ready evolve in order to
achieve its first and foremost objective:
supporting Member States in their effort to
improve European defence capabilities.

E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

35

OPINION

“A window on
Europe”

Michal Wierciński has been directly
involved in drafting the first ‘national
Defence R&T strategy’ in Poland. Here he
reflects on his experiences and the main
lessons learned from Poland’s involvement
in the European Defence Agency’s (EDA)
research and technology (R&T) Cat A
programmes

What are the main reasons behind Poland’s
involvement in EDA projects and initiatives?
There are three main objectives steering
Poland’s involvement
in the Agency’s
programmes and projects. The technological
aspect is the most important one.

from commonly

Thanks to EDA’s R&T initiatives, we can
benefit
developed
technologies. It is worth emphasising that
through EDA programmes we can access
better technologies than if we develop them
only on a national level.

to increase the level of

Secondly, we are fully aware that if we
want
the EU
technological non dependency, the only way
to do so is through collaboration.

Today common R&T efforts are not only an
opportunity, they are a must. Finally, EDA
provides our entities with a lot of networking
opportunities, which are then able to
strengthen their position on the European
Union (EU) market. In that sense, the Agency
really acts as an open window to the rest of
Europe.

In which programmes were you most
involved?

The Cat A programme on Force Protection
was an important one for Poland. We were the
second largest financial contributor, providing
€10 million to the common budget. This

programme was an excellent training ground
not only for the Polish Ministry of Defence
(MoD) but mainly for our entities that were
involved in 14 out of 18 common projects.

Force Protection is a great example of the
added value brought by EDA programmes to
research entities. Thanks to the projects’
selection procedure, they got access to
information on more than 900 potential
contractors from 20 EDA Member States.

Poland is also quite involved in the
Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) Cat A
programme…

Yes, and we found out that the ‘umbrella’
approach used for this programme is very
beneficial from a national perspective. In UMS
it was completely up to us to decide where to
invest. Therefore, projects we do participate in
are fully in line with our national priorities.
Moreover, these projects are complementary
to our national research efforts in the maritime
mine counter measures domain. This feature
is missing in the classical Cat A programmes.
Overall, the flexibility offered by the UMS
programme was very convenient for Poland.
We therefore welcome the fact that this
approach is now being implemented in the
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Detection
and Joint Advanced Networking in Urban
Scenarios (JANUS).

www.eda.europa.eu

© Polish MoD

Dr Michal Wierciński works
in Poland’s Ministry of
national Defence as a
principal advisor to the
national R&T director.
He is a member of all
management committees
overseeing Cat A
programmes and is the
national point of contact
for R&T issues

36

OPINION

Project CARDINAL (one of the Force Protection programme projects). Date: October 2012.
Place: 10th Army Tank Brigade, Świętoszów, Poland

© Polish MoD

So far, what are the main lessons learned
from your involvement in EDA initiatives?

We found that Cat A programmes are an
excellent tool for low Technology Readiness
Level (TRL) technologies, usually up to level 3 or
4. This is a great way for scientists to propose
very innovative solutions. However, from our
national perspective, we’ve also learned that
the lower the TRL, the higher the risk of
disconnect between the project and the end
user’s needs. Since linking R&T results with end
users is one of the three key goals addressed
in our National Defence R&T strategy (2011)
we consider this feature of classical Cat A
programmes as the main weakness.

How would you rate the relations between
researchers and soldiers in EDA projects?

End users are usually focused on short-
term operational goals and don’t have the time
or willingness to be involved in research

activities. However, if they are approached in a
proper manner, they can provide very valuable
and stimulating contribution in various phases
of research projects, i.e. user requirements,
system design, or testing and evaluation.
Moreover, after some demonstration and
workshops conducted within Force Protection
projects, we found out that it is also very
beneficial and informative for them to take part
in these types of activities.

What do your research entities think of EDA
initiatives?

Those who already participated in at least
one common project consider EDA R&T initiatives
as an excellent platform for improving their skills
and competences. EDA projects opened a
window for them to wider European cooperation.
Moreover, EDA projects are very good references
for potential new research opportunities in
both civil and defence sectors.

© Kongsberg

The Polish defence
R&T budget
Poland spends about EUR 83-84 million
annually on its defence and security
R&T. Of that amount, EUR 75 million is
authorized by the National Research
and Development Center (NCBiR),
whose steering committee is chaired
by the National R&T Director. The
committee consists of seven people
including four nominated by the MoD.
The MoD itself spends around EUR 8 to
9 million annually on purely defence
R&T initiatives. Half of this amount is
spent on EDA R&T projects.

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37

OPINION

“For each military intervention that
takes place in an international
framework, interoperability is key.
Interoperability is as crucial as the
ability of men to work and fight
together. This capability must also
be prepared in peacetime”

38

© EMA

www.eda.europa.eu

OPINION

“Cooperation can be
envisaged in almost
every domain”

general Pierre de villiers was appointed French Chief of Defence Staff in February 2014.
In this interview with European Defence Matters he shares his views on European
defence cooperation and reflects on the progress being made by the French armed
forces in the introduction of new equipment

Biography
1956: Born in Boulogne, France

1975: Saint-Cyr military academy

1999: Commander of the Mechanised
infantry battalion of the Leclerc
Brigade in Kosovo (KFOR)

2004: Deputy head of the Prime Minister’s

military staff

2006-2007: Commander of Regional

Command – Capital in Afghanistan
(ISAF)

2008: Head of Prime Minister’s military

staff

2010: Vice Chief of Defence Staff

2014: Chief of Defence Staff

General, do you remember your first contact
with the European Defence Agency?

I have been aware of EDA since its creation
in the summer of 2004. However my first direct
contact occurred when I was Vice Chief of the
Defence Staff, an appointment I held for four
years from March 2010 to February 2014. My
position there carried responsibilities in the
capability domain, an area in which EDA is also
involved.

In these times of budgetary pressure, it
seems harder and harder to maintain the
same level of capability for European armed
forces. What do you expect from an Agency
such as EDA in that context?

Budgets remain under pressure but it is also
worth highlighting the current fragility of the
international and strategic context.
The
increasing level of threats very close to Europe’s
borders challenges our common capacity to

cope with them.
In this serious and quite
unprecedented context, our first obligation is to
fulfill the choices we have made for our defence.
The budgetary difficulties make it necessary
to find new solutions in order to fill the gaps in
budgetary programming. We have to find
pragmatic solutions which enable us to meet
operational requirements at the lowest possible
cost. With regard to these obligations, I can see
conducting
advantages
three main
programmes in cooperation with partners.

in

First, share the design, development and
industrialisation costs but also possibly share
the costs of employment and support. The
objective is to obtain together a capability that
we could not develop alone and to get it at the
lowest possible cost.

Second, strengthen the bonds between
partner States. As the field of defence is one of
the fundamental prerogatives of the State,
cooperation here demonstrates a strong will to
get closer to others, and, on a long-term basis,
convergence of doctrine, operational know-how,
and the structure of defence industries are all
part of this.

Third and finally, facilitate operational and
logistic interoperability, a subject which could
pave the way for future capability pooling or
sharing in the field of operations, individual and
collective training, as well as support. This
aspect of
interoperability is of paramount
importance for us within the military.

The style of cooperation can therefore vary
and EDA can play the role of ‘architect’. The
European Satellite Communication Procurement
Cell (also known as the EU SATCOM Market), in
which the EDA is involved, is an example of
successful cooperation. I am also thinking of

cooperation on projects linked to in-flight
refueling.

In your opinion, which capabilities could
benefit most from increased cooperation
between European Member States?

I think that the starting point of all efficient
cooperation is sharing a common vision and
having common interests. Each country’s
defence is not envisaged in the same way
when the risks and threats are assessed
differently. From a pragmatic perspective, the
funding of common projects must also be in
line with the benefits expected by the various
parties. Each instance of cooperation must be
adapted to meet the specific requirements and
operational needs which led to its initial launch.
Having said that, cooperation can currently be
envisaged in every domain, except some ‘niche
capabilities’
linked to the heart of our
operational or technological sovereignty.

For all other capabilities, because of the
cost of modern armament programmes and
the increasingly multinational nature of defence
industries, cooperation has to be seriously
to fill European
considered, especially
capability gaps.
It must be systematically
sought for all capabilities which are essential
but which cannot be obtained at national level,
industrial
financial,
for
expertise reasons.

technological or

is

A significant part of our
excluded,

investment,
deterrence
conducted in
cooperation with various European partners:
for instance, FREMM (the European multi-
mission frigate), Tiger and NH 90 helicopters,
A400M and the Meteor missile amongst
others. Moreover, the component parts of

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39

OPINION

© SIRPA Terre Image

© Armée de l’Air

© DCnS

© Kristofer Sj

© Airbus group

© A Doumenjou

actively

programmes

these
encourage
cooperation: it’s the case for, amongst others,
electronic systems, communications and
mounted weapons.

that ensures it can adapt to future challenges,
is an important topic. Within the French system
this is under the authority of the Director of the
Procurement Agency.

capabilities (payload capacity and range for
the A400M, weaponry systems for the FREMM)
will provide significant added value for our
forces.

in

an

Based on the feedback from recent
operations, do you feel the need for
increased cooperative training? Were you
happy with the outputs of EDA-supported
exercises that were joined by French forces?
For each military intervention that takes
framework,
international
place
interoperability is key.
Interoperability is as
crucial as the ability of men to work and fight
together. This capability must also be prepared
in peacetime. With this in mind, I also think that
there are some opportunities for sharing in the
field of individual and collective training. The
ability of our various armed forces to react
swiftly, as well as their ability to work together,
are facilitated by receiving appropriate
operational
EDA-supported
exercises, in liaison with EUMS, are therefore
highly relevant, working coherently and in
coordination with those conducted by other
organisations,
in particular NATO Allied
Command Transformation. The efforts of EDA
must be complementary and converge with the
existing initiatives in order
to avoid any
redundancy. The European Air Transport Training
exercises chime with this approach and are
particularly useful to our Air Force. Indeed, we
participated in the last exercise, organised in
Bulgaria in June.

training.

The

Do you think today’s defence industrial base
is well-structured to fulfill your operational
needs? What should be the role of EDA in
this respect?

Preserving the defence industry, at a level

I personally deal with the operational
aspects: equipment and weapon systems must
meet the requirements at the point when they
are delivered to our forces. I therefore expect
proactivity from the defence industry and an
appropriate balance between the price and the
performance of equipment.

From a general viewpoint, the search for
strategic autonomy in the provision of capability
requirements of our armed forces is essential,
and it could be argued that it is the price of our
freedom. I can nonetheless see that in this
domain,
not
impossible.

cooperation

European

is

Recent years have been marked by the entry
into service of a new generation of
equipment such as the A400M, the FREMM
frigates or the VBCI (Armoured Vehicle for
Infantry Combat). Do they perform as
expected? Did they bring changes to your
military concepts?

to

considerably,

You are right; from the infantryman to the
equipment has been
submariners, our
modernized
a
thanks
procurement process that works. We are very
satisfied with this new generation of equipment.
The VBCI and Rafale are now combat-
proven (in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, and now
Central African Republic). Our evaluation
process has already emphasized their
considerable added value.

Regarding FREMM and A400M, it is maybe
too early to draw conclusions as they have not
reached Initial Operating Capability (IOC). But
current testing is proving that their technical

Within the logistics domain,

there is
another example of which we are extremely
satisfied, namely the new Heavy Multi-Purpose
Logistic Truck (PPTO – including an armoured
version),
that was deployed in Mali and
considerably improved our force protection.

The recent Loi de Programmation Militaire
(LPM, or military budget law) provided a new
model for the French armed forces, both in
terms of size and of capabilities. What are
the new priorities? Do you need to rethink
the way you procure defence equipment?

Translating the White Paper into the reality
of the LPM requires the clear definition of the
budget allocated to the various equipment
projects within the armed forces. The major
armament programmes which appear in the
LPM are those that France needs for its
defence, and that provide a comprehensive
model for the armed forces. The LPM has
been carefully developed, and the planned
equipment
is complementary with one
another. Each element plays an important role
within this coherent project. The complete
achievement of the LPM within the defined
timescales will ensure that defence remains
a proactive and versatile tool for use by the
state.

In terms of equipment, the main focus of
the LPM is on nuclear deterrence, operations
using conventional equipment, the operational
training of the armed forces, infrastructure
and initial studies related to future spending.
With this, France has what it needs to meet its
ambitions until 2025.

40

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OPINION

Pooling & Sharing, the
academic way

The European Security and Defence College is set out to improve
academic training capabilities for the global Common Security and
Defence Policy (CSDP) community. Hans-bernhard Weisserth, Head of the
ESDC, sits down with European Defence Matters to discuss the College’s
missions and perspectives

The European Security and Defence
College was established in 2005. What
are its main missions and objectives?

The ESDC is a ‘network college’, which
means that it relies on existing training
capabilities provided by a large number of
national institutes, colleges, academies
and universities – in total, around 70 such
entities form part of our network. Our main
mission is to build on those training assets
to provide Member States and EU institutes
with personnel that have the right level of
knowledge on CSDP matters in the larger
context of CFSP. Through our network
institutes but also by using our own EU
premises and staff in Brussels, we deliver
training to a wide audience of diplomats,
police and military personnel as well as
civilians involved in European defence and
security affairs. Just like the European
Defence Agency, our job is clearly about
Pooling & Sharing existing capabilities!

another country’s officer school in order
to receive training on subjects of
common interest. I personally recognised
that the new generation of officers joining
the armed forces today are growing up
with a European mindset. We will further
promote this for the development of a
common European defence.

What is the way ahead for the ESDC?

“Just like the
European Defence
Agency, our job is
clearly about Pooling
& Sharing existing
capabilities!”

to

We are currently intensifying our
support
crisis management
operations by providing training to the
civilians who have to deploy to a EU
mission and to improve our capacities in
this field. Meanwhile, we will also provide
national academies with an IT platform
that will increase their exchanges with
other Member States’ institutes. Our job
is and will remain about providing EU
personnel with the best academic
training available on European security
and defence matters. At the same time,
we want to help them realise that the
crises of today and tomorrow will not be solved purely
through military means, but following a real and effective
comprehensive approach and using the complete toolbox
available to the European Union.

What type of courses do you deliver?

We are trying to cover the whole spectrum of CSDP
activities, which means we offer various levels of training to
the students. Some courses are meant to provide a general
overview on CSDP matters and issues to an inexperienced
audience, but we also deliver specialised training in support
of future EU leadership, specialised staff (military and civilian
planners, crisis managers…) or personnel involved in various
policy fields (space, cyber, armaments cooperation, etc.).

A few years ago you set up a new project called ‘Military
Erasmus’. What is the scope of this initiative?

It started as in 2008 under the French presidency of the
EU. The idea was to provide cadet officers with an opportunity
to be immersed in a cooperative environment early in their
careers. A first common module took place in Portugal in
2009. We are now about to set up a ‘European month’ during
which a number of Member States could send their cadets in

Key figures
• Since 2005, about 7,000 people

have benefitted from training provided by the ESDC

• A total of 70 institutes form part of the ESDC network

• Around 40 different training activities are organised

every year

• The ESDC has the capacity to provide training to

1,500 people every year

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E U R O P E A N D E F E N C E M AT T E R S Issue 6 2014

41

Key Quotes

Page 15
“The time was right... Member States all seemed
willing to move forward, the industry wanted it as
well – there was a wide
range of good reasons
to make this new
Agency a reality. It was
a simple idea and a
good one”

Page 36

Christine Roger, former
French Ambassador to the
Political and Security
Committee(PSC)

Page 18

“Thanks to EDA’s R&T initiatives,
we can benefit from commonly
developed technologies. It is worth
emphasising that through EDA
programmes we can access better
technologies than if we develop
them only on a national level”

Dr Michal Wierciński, principal advisor
to the National R&T Director,
Ministry of National Defence of Poland

Europe does not enjoy the economies of scale from
which the US benefits. Member states in 2009 were
undertaking 89 different weapons programmes – in
contrast to 27 in the US. The European Commission
estimated the cost of barriers between national
defence markets as over €3 billion per year.

Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and
Foreign Affairs, King’s College London

Page 31
Twenty-five helicopters coming from six
different nations took part in Hot Blade
2014. A total of 827 hours were flown
during 362 aircraft sorties

Page 22
“The time is ripe to bring European defence
cooperation to another level by making use of
existing Eu instruments. The key is to address the
identified strategic
military capability
shortfalls and to
finance this effort by
doing away with
redundancies”
Brigadier General (retd)
Jo Coelmont, Senior
Associate Fellow, Egmont
Royal Institute for
International Relations

Page 25

“Flexibility is one of our strongest advantages
here. We can support Member States when they
need it most, for instance in the management of
complex procurement procedures or when they are
in the deployment phase of a new service during
the build-up of a new operation”

Carmen Parrilla, EDA Project Officer

Page 28

“Today Europe is able to
field around 40 tanker
aircraft of 10 different
types while the US
currently fields 550
tankers of four types”
Laurent Donnet, EDA
Programme Manager

Advertisers index

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