CIAO DATE: 02/05/08
European Affairs
“Fortress Europe” Overtones Heard
Full Text
This piece is excerpted from comments by a non-EU participant (who could not be further identified) at a meeting of The European Institute Defense Roundtable.
If NATO is not the place to go for armaments cooperation, we should look towards the European Defense Agency (EDA) and the European Commission, especially on homeland security issues. I think this is an area which absolutely should be pursued. Of course, EDA’s first foray did not succeed: it was the effort with armored fighting vehicles. There was a study that found 23 different national armored fighting-vehicle programs in Europe. That is crazy. NATO is affected by this because allies are deploying to Afghanistan with different kinds of equipment and without common logistics, common supplies, and common ways to do maintenance. In Provincial Reconstruction Teams, with five or six different countries manning them, everybody’s got different gear there, so I hope that the EDA re-attacks on this issue of armored fighting vehicles, and also with similar types of situations. There is no reason why we should have this many different programs. And I think it is entirely within the prerogatives of the EDA and its board of defense ministers to tackle this. This is money wasted.
Recently I read the EU defense ministers’ statement on Europe’s “defense and technological industrial base study.” It was very well crafted, a worthwhile effort by the EU to come at this issue of harmonizing disparate programs, not at a programmatic level but at a strategic level. But as I read the document, it really got my blood boiling. As a defense ministerial communiqué, it had – and I saw it – a recognition of the need to try to get our hands around the technological base in Europe. But whose hands?
I saw fortress Europe in the document [titled A Strategy for the European Defense Technological and Industrial Bases]. In it, I read the paragraph, in particular, that starts identifying technologies, with its little subparagraph in there that screamed to me “fortress Europe.” [At this point, he referred to the communiqué’s heading about identifying key technologies]. It said:
“We need to identify, from a European perspective, the key defense technologies that we must seek to preserve or develop. Military capability need is the prime criterion, but we must also have regard to the needs of autonomy and operational sovereignty, and the need to sustain pre-eminence where this is economically valuable.”
At the same time, if well-intentioned governments come at it from the standpoint of pursuing teaming arrangements, then I think there is promise, there is a path to offset the decline in defense spending and the overall decline in capability. I also think that technology is moving on in ways that enable us to do more and different kinds of cooperation. Technology has evolved to the point where we can actually fashion a deployable battle management capability that different nations then can come to the fight and put their French Sam-T right next to the Patriot Missile Defense System, right next to the S300 that Greece has – you name it, it can be deployed. This is exactly the right path upon which we should be, and it is a path that I think the EU also is looking to pursue.
A good example is software-defined radios. Now NATO has been working on interoperability of communications systems for 50 years and we still haven’t fixed these interoperability problems. But from modern computing to the ability to use software to bridge wave form cultural differences – you name it – there is great promise.
For example, the software defined radio idea alone has got enormous potential for suddenly allowing units from different countries to all communicate on the same wave form. And you get, out of this whole mess about national crypto – and whose particular architectural standard we are working on – a CD-ROM. Whether it is NATO standard or EU standard, it is a CD-ROM: You put it in your computer, in your radio, and now you will be able to talk to whoever also has the same CD-ROM.
Whether you are first responders; whether you are on the commission side of the house, hospital, firemen, others that need to be able to interoperate in a domestic civil emergency kind of situation; or whether you are talking about getting NATO forces to be able to communicate better with the Pakistanis or Afghan national forces, or even with each other.
So again, I see great promise there. You are able to maximize – computers, computers, computers – the use of what you already have.
U.S Industry Also Chafes at Export Restrictions
This is an excerpt of an article by William Matthews in the U.S. publication, Defense News, on May 23, 2007.
Here’s something you might not have expected to find on the U.S. munitions list: toilets. But along with missile-guidance systems, night vision goggles, torpedoes, tanks, radars and nuclear warheads, the State Department requires a special license to export toilets if they are to be installed in military aircraft.
Zodiac of North America, the company that makes inflatable boats used by U.S. Marines, SEALs and special forces, found out the hard way.
The company also makes the kind of toilets that are installed in commercial airliners, said Jean-Jacques Marie, Zodiac’s president. But when Zodiac attempted to sell some overseas for use on military planes, the company learned it would need the same State Department approval as if it were selling bombsights.
Marie recounted his company’s experience during a gathering of U.S. and European business executives and government officials at The European Institute’s Transatlantic Roundtable on Defense and Security in May at which participants complained about restrictions they said hurt defense companies and keep the U.S. military from working efficiently with their allies… For Britain’s BAE Systems, which has a U.S. branch that employs 45,000 U.S. workers, U.S. trade restrictions mean engineers can’t be moved from one part of the company to the other without getting U.S. government approval, according to Peter Lichtenbaum, BAE’s vice president for regulatory compliance and international policy.
One result is that European companies are trying to design U.S.-made parts out of their products…
Mark Esper, vice president of the U.S. trade group, Aerospace Industries Association, suggested urging U.S. combatant commanders…to explain to Congress that it would benefit U.S. troops if U.S. allies were able to acquire night vision goggles, radios and other equipment now kept off limits by export controls.