By Pierre Tran

Paris – France and the U.K. signed Feb. 18 contracts with MBDA for development of next generation cruise and anti-ship missiles, with the weapons due to enter service by 2030, the European missile builder said in a statement.

The long awaited agreement for work on risk reduction was significant, industry executives said, backing a rare case of industrial cooperation between France and the U.K., which have gone through a time of tension between president Emmanuel Macron and prime minister Boris Johnson.

“The United Kingdom and France have confirmed the launch of the preparation works for the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon (FC/ASW) program, after the signature today of a government agreement and associated contracts by the French Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) and the British Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), MBDA said.

“These preparation works will focus on the co-ordinated development of a program of next generation deep strike and heavy anti-ship weapons,” the company said.

No details of the budget and development time were available.

The agreement signed by the procurement offices was a sign of “drop in tension” between Britain and France, a defense executive said, the start of a welcome change in political relations between the two nations.

There was a “return of dialog,” reflecting greater European cooperation sparked by the crisis in Ukraine, the executive said.

President Emmanuel Macron called Boris Johnson to brief the British prime minister before he flew to Moscow for a Feb. 7 summit meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in a bid to defuze the Ukraine crisis. That call to Johnson was among those the French head of state made to leaders of allied nations, including two to U.S. president Joe Biden.

The Ukraine crisis helped move the project along but was not the “trigger” factor, a second executive said. There was need to resume work on the project, and on the British side, there was a particular perceived threat from China.

The teams of the two partner nations had been ready to work on the risk reduction phase but had to wait six months due to lack of French political will, the second executive said. A return of political backing allowed the procurement chiefs — rather than the ministers — to sign the intergovernmental agreement.

“That was the right level,” the second executive said.

A chill in relations was seen when the French armed forces minister, Florence Parly, pulled out of a meeting with her British counterpart, Ben Wallace, last September.

That ministerial meeting was due to be held one week after the U.K., Australia and the U.S. announced a plan to build nuclear-powered attack submarines for the Australian navy under the AUKUS agreement.

A memorandum of understanding on the MBDA development work had been due to be signed at that ministerial meeting, which the French minister had scuppered.

The AUKUS project sank a project for Naval Group, a French shipbuilder, to design and build a diesel-electric attack submarine for Australia, in a deal estimated to be worth some €30 billion (US $34 billion).

France imposed a hold order on relations with the UK, as British officers played a key role in opening talks between Canberra and Washington, after the Australian navy switched interest to sailing nuclear-powered boats instead of conventional submarines.

Australia changed its procurement plan due to a heightened perception of threat from China, after picking in 2016 Naval Group for studies for the Australian Navy’s Attack class of boats.

The MBDA contract for cooperative development opened up a new phase in an Anglo-French replacement for the Scalp-Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, and Exocet and Harpoon anti-ship weapons.

“It will assess two complementary missile concepts, expected to be fielded at the end of the decade: a subsonic low observable concept and a supersonic, highly manoeuvrable concept,” MBDA said.

The development work follows MBDA’s studies in the FC/ASW concept phase, which had a budget estimated at €100 million.

The planned weapons will be a “game changing capability” to hit hardened targets on land and at sea, at very long distance, beating air defense systems in “increasingly contested battlespace environments,” the company said.

There was risk of two classes of next generation European cruise missiles, a third defense executive said, with the MBDA FC/ASW missiles potentially competing with remote carriers from Airbus.

If the Airbus remote carriers were just electronic jamming, loitering systems, there would not be direct competition with MBDA missiles, the executive said, but arming the former system would effectively split the market for long range weapons.

Remote carriers are a key part of the European project for a Future Combat Air System, backed by France, Germany and Spain. Airbus is prime contractor for the RC, with MBDA and Thales as industrial partners.

Airbus displayed a full scale model of an RC at the 2019 Paris air show.

Featured graphic: Photo 26270027 © Pavel Kusmartsev | Dreamstime.com

By Pierre Tran

Paris – Germany has yet to decide on whether to buy the F-35 fighter jet, but a decision will be made later this year, a senior German parliamentarian said Feb. 21.

“There’s no decision yet, but we will decide this year,” the parliamentarian told reporters, here. “There is a clear urgency.”

A replacement of the “obsolete” Tornado fighter jet flown by the German air force set the timing and need for a potential order for the F-35, which was certified to carry U.S.-built nuclear bombs, part of the Nato deterrence, the parliamentarian said.

An order for the F-35 could be made alongside purchase of Eurofighter jets for conventional operations, particularly electronic intelligence, the parliamentarian said.

Asked why an order for the Rafale was not possible, the parliamentarian said the French fighter lacked certification for U.S. nuclear bombs, ruling out that aircraft. It was interesting to note that when the Tornado was built in the 1970s, there was no problem for a European fighter to be certified to carry U.S. nuclear weapons, the parliamentarian added.

On French concerns on an order for the F-35 cutting the German budget for the Future Combat Air System, the parliamentarian said that would depend on the number of F-35s to be bought.

Airbus builds the German Eurofighter Typhoon, while Lockheed Martin is prime contractor for the F-35. Airbus signed Nov. 11 2020, a German contract for 38 Eurofighters under a project dubbed Quadriga.

Britain, Germany, and Italy ordered the swing-wing Tornado in the 1970s, and those partner nations – plus Spain – are backers for the Eurofighter Typhoon. France dropped out early in the Eurofighter project to pursue its Rafale program.

There was a more general problem with European defense projects, the parliamentarian said, pointing to differences in French and German timetables for maritime patrol aircraft.

There were some in Paris who criticised Berlin’s order for a fleet of P-8 Poseidon aircraft, seen as effectively ditching the project for a maritime airborne warfare system (MAWS), and pulling out of an MK3 upgrade to the Tiger attack helicopter.

The German coalition, led by the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), has said there would be a review of government policy, seen as opening the door to procurement of the F-35. The coalition partners are the  environmentalist Green party and pro-business Free Democrats.

That policy review by the government led by the Social Democrat chancellor, Olaf Scholz, marked a change in direction from a previous coalition led by the Christian Democrats, with the then chancellor Angela Merkel at the helm. The Social Democrats had been the junior partner, until the elections last September reversed that balance of political power.

The previous center-right administration had ruled out the Lockheed Martin F-35 and considered the Boeing F/A-18 or Eurofighter as replacement for the Tornado, due to be withdrawn around 2030.

The previous government’s opposition to the F-35 could be seen in the removal in 2018 of the German air chief of staff, who had expressed preference for the F-35.

In France, the prospect of a German order for the F-35 has sparked concern, as that was seen as cutting funds for the FCAS, which has a new generation fighter at the heart of the program. France, Germany and Spain back the FCAS, with Dassault as the prime contractor on the new fighter. The French family-controlled company is in dispute with the German Airbus unit over intellectual property rights and leadership of key program elements.

A Russian-Generated European Crisis

Putin formally said Feb. 21 Donetsk and Luhansk, the two disputed territories in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine, were republics and independent from Kyiv, sparking sharp denunciations in the West and in the U.N.

Shortly after Putin’s recognizing those two Russian-controlled separatist areas across the border in Ukraine, Moscow sent in troops and armor in as “peacekeepers.”

“There is a Russian crisis, not Ukraine crisis,” the parliamentarian said the day before the effective annexation, with Russian president Vladimir Putin taking a “revisionist” approach.

That approach consists of Putin seeking to reshape the status quo in Eastern Europe, where nation states have aligned with Nato and their Western European allies, after having been held under direct control by the Soviet Union.

A key East European partner for France was Poland, the parliamentarian said, with a relaunch of the Weimar Triangle, which brings France, Germany and Poland into close cooperation.

The Baltic nations – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – are also key actors in the Russia crisis, taking a highly negative view of Moscow.

The threat from Putin extended beyond Ukraine, the parliamentarian said, raising a “real challenge for Europe,” such as cyber attacks. European governments were poorly prepared and there was a need for enhancing resilience.

Sanctions Against Russia

The U.K. has drawn up a list of sanctions against Russian companies with shares trading in the London financial center, the City, and Russian oligarchs with large property holdings.

London is reported to be a money-laundering capital, with wealthy Russians facing allegations of corruption or those close to the Kremlin holding £1.5 billion ($2 billion) in U.K. property, The Times, a British daily, reported Feb. 18, drawing on a report by Transparency International, a campaign group.

In the House of Commons, a senior member of parliament and former BBC journalist, Benjamin Bradshaw, asked defense minister Ben Wallace, why under the current prime minister not a single Unexplained Wealth Order had been issued, not a single Russian national holding a golden visa had been named, and “why does he think we have been so slow at tackling Russian dirty money in London.”

The UK passed in 2002 the Proceeds of Crime Act, which included unexplained wealth orders, which allowed the seizing of property without having to prove crimes had been committed, relying on civil standards of proof rather than criminal law.

Britain adopted in 2008 golden visas, which speeded up applications to be a UK resident for those who had £2 million. Some 2,500 such visas have been issued to Russians, out of a total of more than 12,000 golden visas, daily The Guardian reported Feb 20.

The British parliament’s joint intelligence and security committee said in 2020 that the golden visa scheme “was welcoming oligarchs with open arms,” and remained open after the alleged poisoning by two Russian GRU agents in 2018 of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian  intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England.

Featured graphic: Photo 237245721 © Kontakt5956 | Dreamstime.com

by Pierre Tran

Paris – President Emmanuel Macron’s Feb. 7, 2022 flight to Moscow could be seen as the doves’ diplomatic attempt to defuse the crisis over Ukraine, a counterbalance to the hawks dispatching troops and weapons to warn off Russian forces massed on the border with its neighbor.

Macron spent five hours in talks behind Kremlin closed doors with Russian president Vladimir Putin, with the French head of state flying the next day to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and then on to Berlin to see German chancellor Olaf Schulz.

The French aim was to “de-escalate” the crisis rising from Russia gathering some 130,000 troops and armor on the border with Ukraine, previously part of the former Soviet Union.

Moscow may have denied any plan to invade Ukraine, but there is deep concern Moscow will order a military move, such as seen in 2014 by seizing the Crimean Peninsula and Donbas region, eastern Ukraine.

Macron had assumed the role of peace broker, carrying the badge of French political leader, as he may hold the six-month rotating presidency of the council of the European Union, but he knew he had no mandate to speak for the 27-strong EU. And France may be a NATO member, but Paris also had no remit to speak for the transatlantic alliance.

Macron had actively taken up the role of the nation’s top diplomat, spending precious political time in search of a peaceful solution to a perceived Russian threat on an East European nation. France is due to go to the polls in April, and Macron has yet to declare candidacy in the election for the five-year tenancy of the Elysée president’s office.

That diplomatic whirlwind may well have been a French drive, but it may also be seen as part of Macron’s wider mission of boosting the role of Europe in world politics, his pursuit of the concept of European strategic autonomy, including a military capability, separate from NATO and Washington.

Among the points Macron and Putin agreed at the Moscow summit was resumption of talks over the territorial dispute in Donbas under the 2015 Minsk agreement. Officials from France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia met Feb. 10, but the four members of the Normandy format came away with little to show for resolving the low-level conflict in the region.

Macron also discussed a new security order for Europe at the Moscow summit, as Russia has demanded a roll back of the NATO membership and missiles deployed around Russia. France has urged grave caution but has not advised French nationals to leave Ukraine, pointing up a distinct approach from at least 30 other nations, which afternoon daily Le Monde reported Feb. 14  have told nationals to leave the country.

Paris insists on an independent verification of threat, a cornerstone of its pursuit of strategic autonomy. France has its own intelligence gathering means on land, sea, air and in space, and will have access to intelligence gathered and shared by NATO partners.  That independent approach could be seen in the decision by the then President Jacques Chirac to stay out of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, a decision which bruised relations between Paris and Washington for years.

After the Moscow meeting, the Russian spokesman disputed media reports that Putin had assured Macron that there would be no further military moves around Ukraine.

Russian intelligence agencies reportedly have a common practice of recording events, perhaps prompting the question whether there is a recording of that high-level exchange of views, perhaps resolving who said what and when.

Reinforcing Eastern European NATO States

The UK defense minister sparked controversy after the Sunday Times reported Feb. 13 that Ben Wallace said there was a “whiff of Munich in the air.” British authorities sought to play down that remark, which implied Russia might play the role of Adolph Hitler, the BBC reported the following day.

NATO was undergoing brain death, Macron told The Economist in 2019. But the crisis seems to have sparked something of a cerebral recovery, with NATO members rallying around to show support for Ukraine, which seeks to join the military alliance.

A first batch of U.S. airborne troops landed Feb.4 in Germany, part of a 2,000-strong deployment to Poland and Romania, with 1,000 soldiers moving from Germany to Romania.

The UK was sending 350 Royal Marines to Poland, adding to the 100 army engineers already there, helping to strengthen the border with Belarus.

Germany was sending 350 more soldiers to Lithuania, reinforcing the some 600 German troops already there and accounting for around half the battle group.

Russia has drawn a red line against NATO ever accepting Ukraine as a member, and it remains to be seen whether the alliance will accept Kyiv’s application, which would pledge  collective defense in the event of an attack.  Russia has demanded a NATOretreat from its borders, with weapons and troops pulled out of former Soviet bloc states which joined the Atlantic alliance after 1997. Moscow has also called for the NATO withdrawal of intermediate-range missiles from Europe, and recognition and autonomy of the Donbas region.

Russia has issued Russian passports to Ukrainians in the region, underlining its territorial claim.

U.S. president Joe Biden has clearly said there would not be armed conflict with Russia, which would spell another world war. The Western partners, including the European Union, have pledged to take severe economic sanctions if there were a Russian invasion.

Europe vs Putin

After the Kyiv meeting, Macron flew to Berlin, allowing a late working dinner with Scholz and the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, bringing together the three leaders of the Weimar Triangle, the cooperative group of France, Germany and Poland.  “Our common goal is to avoid a war in Europe,” Scholz said.

Scholz was just back from meeting Biden in Washington for talks. Before Macron flew to Moscow, he twice called Biden, and called Duda, UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Putin, Scholz, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, and Zelenskiy, clearing the ground for the meeting with Putin, The Economist said on social media.

That was a departure from Macron’s previous meetings with Putin, notably in 2019 at the Brégançon medieval fort, the French official holiday retreat on a Mediterranean island, and in 2017 at the Versailles palace, west of the capital. The Elysée reportedly did not brief Western allies before those meetings.

“These more than five hours of talks make us realise how different the Putin of today was to the Putin of three years ago,” said a French source briefed on the Moscow talks, Reuters reported. The Russian leader spent most of the time “rewriting history from 1997 on.”

Putin told the BBC that he had been forced to moonlight as a taxi driver in the 1990s as he earned so little after the collapse of the USSR.

“Sometimes I had to earn extra money,” Putin said. “I mean, earn extra money by car, as a private driver. It’s unpleasant to talk about to be honest, but unfortunately that was the case.”

Putin’s remarks were in the BBC documentary film, Russia, Latest History, which aired Dec. 12 2021.

Putin worked for the KGB intelligence service and resigned after the 1991 coup against president Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin went on to work with Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of St Petersburg.

Putin reportedly used the familiar French “tu” rather than the more formal “vous” form of address when he saw Macron at the meeting. Macron had declined to agree to give a Russian request for a DNA sample for a Covid test, which meant the meeting was held at a long table, sparking many visual jokes on social media.

A View from Latvia

The Latvian deputy prime minister and defense minister, Artis Pabriks, told Feb. 7 the German Marshall Fund of the United States, that while the US informed Latvia and the other Baltic states on US negotiations and plans with Moscow, it was not clear the Latvian government had been informed of  Macron’s “talking points” before he flew to Moscow.

Macron made a call Feb. 5 to Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins, before the meeting with Putin, the list from The Economist on social media shows.

Are those who are negotiating with Putin “representing the West or are they mediators between the West and Moscow?” Pabriks said, adding that Russia’s demands extended beyond Ukraine, and Moscow was seeking expansion against the West, Europe, the U.S. and Canada.

Pabriks evoked the then UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the 1938 Munich agreement – and referred to the film Munich: The Edge of War which recently started showing on Netflix. Macron should have flown to Kyiv first and discussed the “concessions” before going to Moscow, Pabriks said.

Franco-Russian Ties

France has strong links with Russia. That can be seen in the then leader of the Free French forces, Gen. Charles de Gaulle, sending French pilots to fly alongside the Russians on the Eastern Front in the Second World War.

Those French air force pilots formed a squadron, dubbed Normandie-Niemen, flew Yakovlev Yak 1 fighter planes 1943-45, and supported Russian troops in the battle of Kursk. Moscow  awarded the French squadron the distinction of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The present Normandie-Niemen squadron flies Rafale fighter jets from Mont-de-Marsan air base, southwest France.

In 2011, the then president, Nicolas Sarkozy, backed a controversial sale worth €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) of two Mistral class helicopter carriers to the Russian navy, with options for two more.

The Baltic nations, the U.S., Ukraine, and other central European allies criticized that deal, which stood to boost Russian force projection.

Sarkozy’s successor, François Hollande, cancelled the Mistral carrier deal in 2015 and repaid Russia €948 million, comprising €893 million for building the two warships and €55 million for adapting Russian equipment for fitting on the vessels.

The French authorities declined to pay the French shipbuilder, Naval Group, an estimated €200 million payment for building the two warships, Vladivostok and Sevastopol, which were later sold to Egypt.

Featured Photo: Flags of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine. Normandy Format meeting on eastern Ukraine. Credit: Bigstock

See also the following:

President Macron and Defense: En Même Temps