After the Fighter, the Tank: Franco-German Arms Cooperation Slips Again

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
10/26/2026

By Pierre Tran

PARIS – France has scrambled to limit the damage after its chief of the defense staff told parliamentarians Oct. 8 that partner Germany has pulled out of a landmark project to build a new heavy tank and uncrewed vehicles, known as the main ground combat system (MGCS).

There was talk of Berlin and Paris focusing instead on a land-based combat cloud linking the two armies, seen by defense specialists as a plan B. The scaled-back land systems deal revived memories of how Germany bailed out of building a new generation fighter (NGF) with France, and switched to an air combat cloud as part of the planned European future combat air system (FCAS).

“The outcome isn’t good,” the French chief of staff, air force general Fabien Mandon, told the defense committee of the National Assembly, the lower house.

“We had hoped to build a future tank in cooperation with the Germans, but unfortunately, we have to acknowledge that the Germans have withdrawn from the project,” he said at the parliamentary hearing on the 2027 defense budget.

The military glass appeared half full, as French and German army officers had worked together on the tank studies, but the industrial glass for arms companies looked half empty.

“It’s not a complete failure – it’s an important decision by Germany, but our land forces have worked together for several years to determine what a future main battle tank should look like,” the air force general said. “It wasn’t a waste of time. But from an industrial standpoint, this isn’t good news.”

Mandon appeared to have flown into political flak. The chief of the defense staff (Chef d’état-major des armées, or CEMA) is a former pilot of the Mirage F1CT fighter and has flown 144 combat missions.

The French armed forces minister, Catherine Vautrin, and her German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, told television reporters the next day that the tank project was alive and well and going ahead. The ministers were visiting Le Haillan, a space and defense industrial site near Bordeaux in southwest France, on Oct. 9, while German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier made a farewell state visit to Paris.

That ministerial message came soon after the chief of staff clarified his remarks to parliament, with his office posting a press release on the social platform X. The general’s statement went out just before midnight in type so small it was hard to read, a French reporter said on a private message circuit.

There were military and ministerial efforts to contain the damage, but defense specialists said the chief of staff had confirmed what had been suspected, namely that diverging industrial and commercial interests had undermined an attempt to boost European cooperation.

French President Emmanuel Macron made the pursuit of European autonomy and sovereignty a hallmark policy of his two five-year terms. That call for a strong Europe gained fresh momentum with the reelection of President Donald Trump and his review of U.S. forces based in Europe, while placing commercial interests first.

Macron’s time as French head of state and commander in chief comes to an end May 2, when the second round of elections for the next president is due to be held.

The MGCS tank is intended to replace the French Leclerc and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks, with the former expected to be withdrawn from service around 2037.

Meanwhile in air combat, France has earmarked €628 million in next year’s spending, to develop a “Super Rafale” F5 version, business daily Les Echos said in a video report. Work to upgrade the Rafale to a more capable F5 standard could be launched in December if the 2027 budget bill is passed, with up to €3 billion for eventual orders.

The F5 work would develop technology to help France build its “future combat aircraft,” the national alternative to a European new generation fighter in the FCAS project, cancelled by partner nations France, Germany, and Spain.

Lack of Alignment

“It’s always complicated,” a consultant said, when asked about lessons learned on the Franco-German tank project. Except for a few cases, there have been difficulties in aligning political, operational and industrial requirements on the main platforms, and in that respect the main ground combat system resembled the future combat air system.

The problems of alignment included different versions of the Tiger attack helicopter, lack of common military space satellites, and limited cooperation on warships, the consultant said.

The main assets for MGCS were tanks, autonomous armored vehicles, and new effectors, while a new fighter had made FCAS a standout project for European cooperation.

The MGCS program appears to be moving towards a combat cloud.

“That is far from the initial scope but at least it will allow German and French armies to interconnect, share and organise a tactical situation, and allow other armies beyond these two countries, even with different assets, to cooperate,” the consultant said. “That is not too bad.”

A defense specialist said Germany’s withdrawal from the new MGCS tank was “entirely predictable from the start. France has lost 10 years.”

Germany enjoyed a “quasi monopoly” on the tank market in Europe, and was developing a new version, Leopard 3, for that market, the specialist said.

Apart from the German builder, then Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and now KNDS Deutschland, there had been other tank builders in Europe, the specialist said.

BAE Systems in the U.K. sold control of its tank business to Rheinmetall, a German arms company.

In Italy, Rheinmetall was building tanks for the Italian army. The former Italian partnership Fiat Iveco-Oto Melara built the Ariete tank in the 1990s before closing the line.

In France, there had been “political blindness,” the specialist said, with the administration, chief of staff, and Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) procurement office failing to draw up a plan B for MGCS.

Poland, meanwhile, has bought South Korea’s K2 tank from Hyundai Rotem.

A French corporate pitch for the elusive plan B could be seen at the Eurosatory land weapons trade show, where the KNDS stand showed a prototype model of “Capint,” an intermediate capability tank proposed to the French army. The concept tank used a German-built Leopard 2 chassis and a French-built uncrewed gun turret, armed with a 120mm Ascalon smoothbore cannon. That would be an interim solution to tide the French army over until delivery of an MGCS tank, now pushed back to the late 2040s.

MGCS had been due to deliver a new tank and related uncrewed vehicles in 2035, but delivery was first pushed back to 2040 and has now slipped toward the end of the 2040s.

France has not ordered the Capint, and there was concern in military and political circles over the use of a German-built chassis, website MetaDefense reported, adding that France was heading for a general election in a few months, which would cast doubt on any decision.

Military Retreat, Ministerial Riposte

The French chief of staff’s clarification on his remarks in parliament came in a late-night statement to the press, in which Mandon said the situation had not changed since parliament’s approval of the update to the 2024-2030 military programming law.

“The industrial offer made in early 2026 was incompatible with the replacement of the present tanks, needed by 2037, and the German side had also chosen to launch a national study to replace the Leopard 2 tank,” the general said in the statement.

The MGCS entry into service has been pushed back to the end of the 2040s, he said, and France has opted to launch an “intermediate capability,” drawing on the most modern technology and open to fitting “innovative functionalities” of the MGCS on an incremental basis.

“Effectively, even though postponed, this program is being pursued and maintains a major interest re-centered on development of a greater connectivity, collaborative combat, automation, and robotics,” he said.

The French defense minister said the following day, “We would like to say, with my colleague, minister Boris Pistorius, how much the MGCS remains a live project.”

In France, the Leclerc tank would come to the end of its operational life in 2035-37, she said.

“That is why we need an intermediary tank,” she said, adding France was working with Germany on the MGCS, which was a new generation tank with important functions.

The German minister backed up his French counterpart with effusive support for MGCS.

“Project MGCS is not over, it is not dead, no-one has put an end to it, on the contrary,” he said.

“This is a flagship project in Franco-German cooperation in the domain of land systems,” he said. “I am very happy there has never been any ambiguity on this subject. We both know how important this project is.”

There might have been problems in the past, but lessons had been learned.

The German minister added, “Yes, there have been in the past projects which did not come to fruition, in which we made mistakes. But the main thing is that we draw lessons from our mistakes…that is why MGCS is absolutely not threatened and constitutes a major project of the future for our two nations, for our two armed forces.”

Germany pulled out of the new fighter project in June at the Berlin air show following a dispute between the French prime contractor Dassault Aviation and German partner Airbus Defence and Space over leadership in building the fighter. That left France and Germany focusing on a combat cloud for military aviation, cutting back the FCAS project, which had previously carried an estimated price tag of some €100 billion including the fighter.

A Price Seen Too High

An industrial offer to build a technology demonstrator for the MGCS tank was worth billions of euros, the defense specialist said.

The consultant said the French and German authorities, which worked through the Combined Project Team, did not enter into negotiations with industry on a proposal submitted in early 2026 for the first phase of MGCS. The industrial joint venture, MGCS Project Company, submitted its offer following a request for proposal for the first phase.

The project company comprises KNDS France and KNDS Deutschland, Rheinmetall, and Thales, each holding an equal share of the company. The company is based in Cologne, Germany.

France and Germany launched MGCS Phase 1A on April 26, 2024, consisting of eight pillars: platform, main weapon, innovative weapons, onboard systems, simulation, sensors, overall protection, and infrastructure.

The German Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support of the Bundeswehr (BAAINBw) led the negotiations on the government side.

The French DGA conducted negotiations on the FCAS program, with France at the helm.

Germany Prepares for Leopard 3

The German Bundestag has voted development funds for the Leopard 3 tank, which could enter service around 2032, the defense specialist said. An upgraded Leopard 3 could have a 40-year operational life, allowing repayment of development cost.

KNDS Deutschland has some 600 Leopard 2 tanks on its order book, the specialist said. There has been a reshuffle at Projekt System & Management (PSM), which will be the prime contractor on the Leopard 3.

KNDS Deutschland and Rheinmetall Landsysteme were equal joint venture partners in PSM, whereas KNDS Deutschland had been prime contractor and Rheinmetall the subcontractor when PSM was set up for the Puma infantry fighting vehicle program.

The Leopard 3 program was backed by the hefty German defense budget, the specialist said.

Germany’s 2027 core defense budget would rise to €109 billion from €82 billion in 2026, Reuters has reported, with overall 2027 German defense spending due to rise to €130.1 billion, once funds for Ukraine, civil protection, intelligence, and IT security were included.

Germany has exempted defense spending from its limits on debt funding.

In France, the defense ministry said Oct. 8 that the administration has proposed an extra €6.5 billion in the draft 2027 defense budget, to total €63.4 billion, up 11.4 percent from 2026.

The budget bill is going through parliament for approval, with the center-right government under pressure to slash public spending at a time of social unrest, notably school pupils taking to the streets, calling for better conditions, smaller classes and fully staffed schools in poor neighborhoods.

Studies for Future Tanks

The European Commission is backing two research studies on future tanks and on upgrading present fleets, supported by the European Defence Fund.

There is Marte, or Main Armoured Tank of Europe, a two-year €20 million design study led by Germany with 11 European Union member states. The Marte Arge joint venture, led by KNDS Deutschland and Rheinmetall, runs the study, with partners Indra of Spain, Leonardo of Italy, and Saab of Sweden.

Santa Barbara, the Spanish unit of General Dynamics, is part of the study group.

The commission accepted the concept of operations submitted and cleared the study group to work on design and architecture of the tank system and subsystems.

There is also FMBTech, a three-year €19 million study for what the commission calls “the best innovative technologies” for a future main battle tank. France is the lead nation, with Thales leading the industrial group. There is a strong French presence, with Arquus, the French units of Hensoldt and MBDA, Nexter Systems, and Safran Electronics and Defense in the 26-strong industrial group from 13 member states.

Elephant in the Room

Germany was the “elephant in the room,” Liana Fix, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Helsinki Security Forum.

The question was not “if” Germany was rearming but “how,” she said. People were happy Berlin was rearming in light of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

“Is it European enough?” she said. “Would that investment be primarily national? Is Germany trying to integrate defense industries?”

Ignoring these questions would be at “its own peril,” she said. German dominance was an issue to confront – not military dominance – but Germany was becoming “a very, very powerful country in Europe,” she said.

Fix has been on a speaking tour since publication of her book, Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions (Hurst Publishers-Oxford University Press). The Helsinki Security Forum ran Oct. 2-4.

On arms production, a senior German official told reporters May 29 that European governments should avoid a “defense production nationalism.”

Berlin should spend a certain percentage of its military budget on subcontractors elsewhere in Europe, such as France, Italy, and Spain, the official said.

“We want to be not just more European in terms of more European political decision-making, we also want to make sure we are going to be more European in terms of making our equipment,” the official said. “I hope our governments will see to it that it’s not going to lead to a patchwork situation but to a more cohesive situation.”

Postponing the MGCS tank could be added to the list of projects that French media have reported as hurting European – and French – interests, namely Berlin opting out of an upgrade of the Franco-German Tiger helicopter to a Mk3 standard, ordering Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft instead of working with France on the future Maritime Airborne Warning System, and promoting the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative, based on German, Israeli, and U.S.-built missiles. Paris resented Sky Shield’s exclusion of the joint SAMP/T new generation surface-to-air missile system from France and Italy.

There had been a plan to work together on a joint artillery system, dubbed Common Indirect Fire System, but that also fell through.

Note: The photos are credited to: ©️Paul Grayson Photeinos.com

The photos are of the Leclerc tank and the pictures were taken on the press day of the Eurosatory 2026 trade show.

Same Range, Separate Roads: What the Deep-Strike Week Says About Franco-German Arms Cooperation

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
10/25/2026

By Robbin Laird

Having been a long-term observer of Franco-German defense industrial cooperation, the thing I know for sure is that it is never static and is often subject to political maneuvering, industrial dialogue, distrusts and conflict.

The new stage of that co-operation continues in that tradition.

In the same week in October 2026, the French and German armies each made a claim to the same new class of weapon: conventional, land-based missiles reaching 1,500 to 2,500 kilometres. Neither claim came out of a bilateral program. Neither mentioned the other country. That is the point.

For most of the past decade, Franco-German armaments cooperation was judged by two flagship programs: the Future Combat Air System (FCAS/SCAF) and the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS). Both were supposed to show that Paris and Berlin could design the next generation of European combat power together. Long-range strike is now arriving as the next big capability area, and it shows a different pattern.

The two countries are converging on the same operational idea while building it through national channels, different industrial partners and different service arrangements.

Two Armies, One Week

In Paris, the budget opinion on Programme 178 (land forces) by deputy Anna Pic, reported by Zone Militaire’s Laurent Lagneau, says France’s future conventional land-based ballistic missile (missile balistique terrestre, MBT), aimed “prioritairement jusqu’à la classe 2 500 km”, is expected to go to the Armée de Terre. According to the opinion, an ArianeGroup risk-reduction study is to be notified in autumn 2026, with development launched in 2028 and initial capability targeted for 2030–31.

The service question was still open six months ago. The then army chief, General Pierre Schill, told deputies that the capability was “avant tout d’une logique interarmées” and that whether the army or the air force would operate it had not been settled (Zone Militaire). The air and space force chief, General Jérôme Bellanger, told the Senate in May that a 2,500 km surface-to-surface missile “ne permet guère de mobilité” and that his priority is an aeroballistic missile that can be fired from aircraft or ships, though no money is currently programmed for that (Zone Militaire). Pic’s opinion presents the MBT as one of France’s main “différenciantes” contributions as a framework nation, tied to the army-corps “comprendre – décider – agir” chain and the TITAN future land-combat model.

In Germany, the army’s inspector, Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, told the Defence TechDay at Erding on 22 October that the Heer must get better at indirect fire over “Entfernungen … die bisher für Landstreitkräfte fast nicht vorstellbar waren” (hartpunkt). The more specific claims come from the text of a speech he gave earlier in the month. In it he said the army will field low-cost cruise missiles, with two market-available systems of roughly 1,500 km range under consideration, first deliveries possible from 2027, and Typhon and Tomahawk “richtig verortet” with the Heer because the force should command and fire “aus einer Hand” (hartpunkt). Hartpunkt’s sources identify the two candidates as Covenant’s Anthem and a variant of the Ukrainian Bars, both potentially to be built in Germany (hartpunkt). At Erding, Freuding said the army wants to operate Tomahawk “also”, without excluding the Luftwaffe, and that a procurement decision on the low-cost missiles could come in 2027 (hartpunkt).

The Flagships Recede

These claims come as the old model of cooperation is coming apart. On 8 June, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced that the Franco-German-Spanish New Generation Fighter at the heart of FCAS had been terminated after nine years (Warsight). Work on the combat cloud continues (Aerotime). German defence officials are now recommending a new fighter partnership with Sweden and Spain rather than joining GCAP, although no political decision has been made (Politico Europe).

MGCS has followed a similar path more quietly. After the July Franco-German council at Brühl, the program was confirmed but the common tank was not. The two countries agreed to study collaborative combat in a research program up to a feasibility demonstration (Zone Militaire). In October, France’s chief of defence staff, General Fabien Mandon, told lawmakers that “the Germans have withdrawn from the project” (Politico Europe). Pistorius and Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin replied that MGCS “is not dead” and remains a core land-systems project (DW). Both statements can be true. A joint research and technology effort can survive while the joint platform does not, and France is moving ahead with an interim Leclerc successor (Zone Militaire).

Cooperation by Framework, Not by Program

Deep strike shows what is replacing the flagship model.

The European Long-range Strike Approach (ELSA), which brings together France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the UK, has moved from a requirements forum into standalone Implementation Groups led by individual nations (UK Defence Journal). It is a portfolio of efforts, not a single missile. Germany’s main partner for the 2,000 km-plus tier is Britain, through the Trinity House agreement, which aims at a family of stealth cruise and hypersonic weapons entering service in the 2030s (Army Recognition). President Macron said at Île Longue in March that Germany, the UK and France would work together on long-range missile projects within ELSA (Élysée). The Financial Times later reported that Paris wanted to join the UK–German effort and was offering ArianeGroup booster technology, as relayed by Caliber.

So the Franco-German link in deep strike now runs through a broader European framework, with Britain at its centre, rather than through a Paris–Berlin co-development deal. France is pursuing a sovereign ballistic missile with its own industrial champion. Germany is buying across several sources at once: market-available low-cost cruise missiles from an Israeli-US-German firm and a Ukrainian design, US Tomahawk and Typhon, and a long-term UK partnership. Berlin is reportedly looking at three Typhon batteries and around 400 Tomahawk Block Vb, with delivery not expected before the early 2030s (Ukrinform, citing hartpunkt).

Different Theories of the Same Weapon

The two armies are also justifying the capability differently, and that matters more than the range figures. The French case is tied to deterrence. Army chief General Jacques de Montgros argued that the more visible nuclear weapons become, the more France must be able to act below the threshold, because a credible deterrent requires credible conventional forces (Zone Militaire). The MBT is a high-end, sovereign, nationally distinctive asset meant to strengthen France’s role as a framework nation.

The German case is about the economics of war. Freuding argued that if an effector costs the enemy many times what it costs the Bundeswehr, that is an economic and therefore military advantage. He called for graduated effectors: cheap mass where mass must meet mass, high-end weapons where needed (hartpunkt). In his concept, low-cost cruise missiles saturate air defences so that Tomahawks can reach strategic targets (hartpunkt). That is a mass, salvo and kill-web argument shaped by Ukraine. The French argument is a deterrence argument shaped by the nuclear posture.

The Service Fight Is the Story Too

In both capitals, the most revealing argument is inside the national armed forces. Each army is claiming deep strike, which used to belong to air forces and navies, as a land-force function. In France, the air force chief prefers a mobile aeroballistic weapon that is not funded. In Germany, the ministry has not said whether it accepts the army’s case, and the future Bundeswehr structure is still awaiting approval (hartpunkt). A shared problem might seem to call for a shared Franco-German answer. In practice, each country first has to decide who in its own forces owns the weapon, who controls the targeting chain and whose budget pays for it.

Why It Matters

Franco-German armaments cooperation is not ending. It is changing form.

The model of grand co-developed platforms, with an agreed workshare and one common product, has failed twice.

What is emerging is cooperation by alignment: shared frameworks such as ELSA, shared technology strands such as the combat cloud and collaborative land combat, and national or minilateral programs underneath.

For deep strike, this may be workable, and perhaps quicker. Interoperability depends less on a common missile than on common targeting, ISR, command networks and launch infrastructure. A French ballistic missile and a German salvo of low-cost cruise missiles could complement each other within a NATO or European strike architecture. They would complicate an adversary’s defences in different ways, if the two countries can integrate the kill web that sits above the weapons.

The risk is that alignment without integration produces the fragmentation that the flagship programs were meant to prevent: small national inventories, duplicated industrial bases, separate sovereign supply chains and command arrangements that meet only at the top.

France is betting on sovereignty and quality. Germany is betting on speed, mass and buying wherever it can. The test for the coming decade is whether Europe can turn those two bets into one deterrent effect.

That will depend less on whether Paris and Berlin build a missile together than on whether they can fight their missiles together.

Lithuania Foils an Arson Attack on Starlink Equipment

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
In brief

Lithuanian authorities stopped an attempted arson attack overnight on October 18 at a company that stores Starlink satellite communications equipment, and Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius has pointed to Russia. According to Linda Hourani’s report in The Kyiv Independent on October 18, 2026, the attackers tried to set fire to satellite antennas and a control unit. Investigators found incendiary liquids at the scene and containers holding between three and 10 liters, Sinkevicius told the national broadcaster LRT Radio.

The attack failed because the warning came first. “The authorities had warned the company of possible attacks, security had been stepped up, and the attempt failed,” Sinkevicius wrote on Facebook. He described the incident as part of Russia’s hybrid warfare campaign and pointed to similar suspected sabotage in Poland and Bulgaria. “It is likely that it is already clear who commissioned it — the Russian side,” he said, adding that investigators would establish who ordered the attack and how it was carried out (The Kyiv Independent).

Lithuania is not the first target. On September 23, a fire broke out at a Starlink ground station in Poland in what may have been an attempt to disrupt its operations (The Kyiv Independent).

The same day brought a second incident. A drone crashed and exploded in northern Lithuania near the Latvian border, damaging a passing car, said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Center. Authorities have not yet determined whether the drone carried explosives or who it belonged to. Ukraine launched a large-scale drone attack on St. Petersburg that night, and similar drone incidents in the Baltic states have occurred during earlier Ukrainian strikes on the city. Sinkevicius said Lithuania’s public warning system was activated but did not work perfectly, with reports received only from the Kaunas district. He planned to convene the National Security Commission on October 19 to discuss both incidents (The Kyiv Independent).

The significance is the target. Starlink has become a critical part of Ukraine’s war effort and of Western military communications more broadly. Its satellites are hard to reach, but the ground stations, terminals and warehouses that support it sit on allied soil, often in commercial facilities with only commercial security. Attacking those sites is a cheap, deniable way to undercut a capability Russia cannot easily counter in orbit.

The lesson cuts both ways. The Lithuanian case shows that intelligence warning, passed quickly to a private company, can defeat this kind of sabotage. But the same day showed gaps in public warning when a drone reached Lithuanian territory. Defending the home front now means treating commercial space and communications infrastructure as part of the defense perimeter, and building the warning systems to match.

Source: Linda Hourani, “Lithuania foils arson attack on Starlink equipment, suspects Russian involvement,” The Kyiv Independent, October 18, 2026.

In Brief: What Ten Days of Short Reports Tell Us About a Changing Strategic Landscape

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
10/24/2026
In brief

Second Line of Defense has always been about the long view: interviews with the people who build and run forces, analyses of how militaries are changing, and books that pull those threads together. But strategic change does not only show up in the big set pieces. It shows up in a cabinet decision in Suva, a gravel road in the Hindu Kush, a coast guard rotation schedule east of Taiwan, or a pair of AI models presented at a seminar in Vilnius.

That is the job of our In Briefs section. It has grown into a place where we track news events and trends as they happen, along with videos that show forces in training and in action. The range is deliberately wide. Defense, maritime security, energy, infrastructure, industry and alliance politics all sit side by side, because that is how the strategic environment actually works.

Each brief follows a simple discipline. We report what a credible source has said and name that source. Then we add a short judgment on why it matters and where the caution lies. Our view is kept separate from the reporting so readers can tell the two apart.

The videos are part of that mix. Recent examples include the CH-53K King Stallion capabilities video from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (posted September 20) and the FARP Brief Class footage from MAWTS-1’s Weapons and Tactics Instructor course at Yuma. They show what doctrine and procurement debates look like on the flight line.

Here is what the In Briefs section covered over the past ten days.

The Pacific Maritime Picture

Four of the seven news briefs posted between October 18 and October 24 deal with the Pacific. Taken together, they say a lot about how maritime competition is changing.

China’s coast guard is borrowing from its navy. In China’s Coast Guard Takes On Destroyer DNA East of Taiwan (October 18), we drew on Lu Wen-hao’s analysis in The Storm Media. It looks at ship 2503, the Zhujiajian, which is built on a Type 052D destroyer hull. The ship has had its weapons and phased-array radar stripped out, but it keeps its 30-knot-plus propulsion and has a much larger flight deck. Since Beijing announced regular patrols east of Taiwan on June 1, each rotation of paired coast guard ships has included more of these high-performance hulls. The lesson for Taipei and its partners is that counting hulls no longer tells the story. What matters is hull lineage, aviation capability, rotation patterns and how far the ships deploy.

Taiwan is treating its coastline as a capability. Taiwan Turns to Civilian Boats and Aircraft to Map Its Invasion Beaches (October 20) reports on a Taipei Times story. Taiwan’s navy will hire private survey firms to map its “red beaches” with fishing boats carrying multibeam echo sounders and chartered aircraft carrying LiDAR. Typhoons and seasonal shifts keep reshaping the seabed, and a mine barrier planned on last season’s charts may fail against next season’s landing craft. Contractors will collect only raw data, and the military will handle the analysis. Our caution is that this split is only as strong as its enforcement.

Australia is putting persistent sensors into Pacific hands. Australia Gives Fiji Bluebottle Sea Drones for Pacific Maritime Security (October 19) covers the transfer of Ocius Bluebottle uncrewed surface vessels to Fiji’s military. The program falls under the Waqa Moana counter-crime initiative and follows the Ocean of Peace Treaty signed in July. Bluebottles can stay at sea for more than 180 days, and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said they are “virtually impossible to detect unless you get very close.” For small states with huge exclusive economic zones, this kind of sensing is maritime domain awareness they could not otherwise afford. The open question is the network behind the drones: how the data gets fused, shared and acted on.

And Fiji is thinking about sustainment. Fiji Plans a Pacific Shipyard and a New Maritime Security Strategy (October 23) reports on Cabinet endorsing a feasibility study for a FJD$792 million ship repair and shipbuilding facility at Lautoka, with Australian support through the AIFFP. Cabinet also endorsed a seven-pillar Maritime Security Strategy for 2026–2035. Drones and patrol boats are only as useful as the ability to maintain them near where they operate. The caution is a thin 30-year margin and a dependence on finding a private partner.

Read together, the four briefs show both sides of the same contest. China is building a layered gray-zone fleet. Taiwan, Australia and Fiji are building sensing, knowledge and sustainment to counter it, and much of that effort runs through civilian, commercial and uncrewed means.

Ukraine, NATO and the Speed of Learning

Ukraine and NATO Co-Develop AI Tools for Drone Warning and Fire Planning (October 21) draws on hartpunkt reporting about two decision-support models built by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation and Ukrainian forces through the JATEC centre. Model No. 13 forecasts enemy drone activity by sector and time. Model No. 32 filters and ranks artillery fire options to shorten the time from target to decision.

The real story is the direction of learning. Ukraine is no longer only receiving allied equipment and training. Its combat data is being turned into tools the Alliance itself can learn from. The caution is just as important: no accuracy figures or combat results have been published, and an adversary that adapts its drone tactics will be the real test.

Infrastructure as Leverage Across Eurasia

The last two briefs move from military platforms to the infrastructure of influence.

The Taliban’s Wakhan Road to China (October 22) draws on Shadi Khan Saif’s piece in the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter. It covers a 121-kilometer gravel road, costing about US$5.5 million, that runs through the Wakhan Corridor toward the Chinese border. No commercial crossing exists yet. Even so, the road gives Kabul a bargaining card against Pakistan and gives Beijing an option without a commitment. For now it is leverage in principle, not in practice.

Russia Turns to Africa as Gazprom Loses Europe (October 24) uses Moscow Times reporting on Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilyov’s pitch to Africa. He offered not just gas but full energy systems: generation, grids, substations and dispatch centers. Pipeline exports are estimated at 77 billion cubic meters this year, down from 185 billion in 2021, and price talks with China on Power of Siberia 2 have stalled. Russia is selling influence in the south because it can no longer sell volume in the west, and it is bargaining from weakness in the east.

The Threads That Connect Them

Read together, the past ten days of In Briefs bring out three themes that run through much of our longer work.

First, the gray zone is being industrialized. Coast guard ships built on destroyer hulls, civilian survey fleets and commercial sea drones are all examples of non-combat platforms becoming strategic tools.

Second, sensing and knowledge are becoming combat capabilities in their own right. That covers drone-activity forecasts in Ukraine, constantly updated seabed maps in Taiwan and persistent surveillance in Fiji’s waters. In each case the advantage goes to whoever sees, understands and acts first.

Third, infrastructure is how influence gets built. A shipyard in Lautoka, a road in the Wakhan and power grids in Africa all create long-term access and dependence well beyond their price tags.

None of these developments alone is decisive. That is the point of the In Briefs format. Strategic change usually builds up through many small moves, and by the time it shows up in the big analyses, it is already well underway. Following the briefs, and the videos alongside them, is one way to see it coming.

You can follow the full section at Second Line of Defense In Briefs.

Russia Turns to Africa as Gazprom Loses Europe

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
In brief

Russia is looking to Africa for new gas buyers as Gazprom struggles to replace the European customers it lost after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to The Moscow Times on October 16, 2026, Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilyov told Russian Energy Week that Russia was ready to supply gas to African countries, explore for deposits there and develop any reserves it finds.

Tsivilyov pitched more than gas. “Our country can offer a comprehensive solution: modernize existing hydropower plants, build solar and thermal power plants, lay power lines, supply substations and transformers, and create power system management and dispatch centers,” he said, as quoted by the state news agency TASS. He described Africa as a “long-term market” for Moscow (The Moscow Times).

The scale of the problem explains the search. Gazprom has lost more than half of its gas exports to countries outside the former Soviet Union since 2022. Economic Development Ministry estimates put this year’s pipeline exports at 77 billion cubic meters, down from 185 billion in 2021 and roughly 200 billion a year in the late 2010s. The ministry expects exports to fall to 72 billion cubic meters by 2028, once the EU ban on Russian gas imports takes effect. That would be a level last seen in the second half of the 1980s (The Moscow Times).

China, the obvious alternative, is driving a hard bargain. Vladimir Putin wants a new deal that would raise Chinese supplies to 100 billion cubic meters a year, but his August 31 meeting with Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek produced no breakthrough, the South China Morning Post reported. Beijing reportedly wants to pay about what Russian households pay, roughly $50 per 1,000 cubic meters, or at most the $120–$130 paid by Russian industry. Moscow wants to start from the $250–$260 China pays for gas through the existing Power of Siberia pipeline, which is already about 40% below Gazprom’s $420 contract price for other customers outside the former Soviet Union. Talks on Power of Siberia 2, which Putin has renamed Power of Baikal, are on hold over price (The Moscow Times).

The African pitch should be read as strategy as much as commerce. What Tsivilyov described is less a gas sale than a full energy-system offer: generation, grids, substations and dispatch centers. Whoever builds and runs a country’s power system gains long-term access, technical dependence and political influence. For Moscow, that is a way to stay relevant in the Global South even as its core export business shrinks.

But Africa cannot replace Europe. Europe was a high-volume, high-price market tied to Russia by pipelines built over decades. African demand is smaller and more scattered, and many buyers cannot pay European prices. The real lesson is that the loss of Europe has left Russia bargaining from weakness: Beijing sets the price in the east, and Moscow is selling influence in the south because it can no longer sell volume in the west.

Source: “Russia Looks to Africa for Gas Buyers as Gazprom Struggles to Replace European Market,” The Moscow Times, October 16, 2026.

The Requirement for Air Combat Mass and Depth in the Indo-Pacific

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
10/23/2026

For three decades, “generation” has been a word we attach to aircraft: fourth, fifth, now sixth. The label implies that the next step forward is a better machine. The Sir Richard Williams Foundation’s 1 October seminar in Canberra, The Requirement for Air Combat Mass and Depth in the Indo-Pacific, suggested otherwise. It read less like a platform conference than a description of an enterprise. My special report, published this month, follows that argument through the day.

The April seminar was about readiness: fight tonight. This one asked whether the force that fights tonight is still fighting, and still deterring, months into a high-end contingency. The day began with geography and strategy and only then turned to what a force requires. Platforms were something to be fitted into a larger problem, not the starting point.

A platform-centric view measures a force on its best day: aircraft ready, bases intact, weapons stocked, networks up. But a war is the fifth day, the fifteenth and the fortieth, after the first strikes have landed on the infrastructure.

The People’s Liberation Army has spent a decade building a targeting complex of long-range strike, dense sensors and intelligence fusion that treats fixed, forward and known bases as vulnerabilities. A planner does not need to shoot down a fifth-generation fighter. It is enough to hold at risk the runways, fuel, munitions and maintenance that put it in the air. A small fleet of exquisite aircraft is an arithmetic problem, and arithmetic problems can be solved.

One industry presenter drew the answer as a graph of combat effect over time. A force surges into combat with pristine equipment, war stocks and skilled people, then declines into what he called the grind. The height of the line in the grind is set by industrial capacity: how fast a nation can replace combat effect as the enemy destroys it. A force optimised for the sharpest tip on its best day trades away the area under the curve, the total combat effect a nation can bring to a sustained war. This, he said, is not an industry problem. It is a combat power problem.

That is what I mean by regenerative airpower: the capacity of an air combat enterprise to absorb attack, replace losses, reconstitute degraded nodes and keep generating combat effects across a campaign rather than a single engagement. The thing being regenerated is not an aircraft. It is the capacity to fight.

The seminar surfaced four elements, each on the Foundation’s agenda.

  • Mass that can be replaced. Collaborative combat aircraft were central, but speakers rejected the idea that Australia needs them because it expects to lose many. That is not the movie Australia is in. The case was risk management, capacity optimisation and persistence: uncrewed systems as the lever, scarce crews and aircraft such as the E-7 and the tanker as the fulcrum. They are additive, which fits awkwardly in an acquisition system built to swap one platform for the next. Attritable mass is valuable not because you can afford to waste it but because you can replace it, and that holds only if an enterprise exists to build, supply, maintain and integrate it. The sceptics were, in effect, asking for proof that the enterprise exists.
  • Depth that is designed. Geography becomes depth only when it is developed: distributed runways, fuel, munitions handling, repair capacity and layered base defence, paid for before the war. The seminar acknowledged that access, basing and overflight were not covered. That gap matters, because bases are what an adversary will target first.
  • People who cannot be surged. Aircraft come from factories. Aircrew, maintainers and logisticians come from training systems, which are slow. One senior officer admitted that nobody has yet thought through what a sixth-generation workforce looks like, and the enterprise’s workforce now includes software engineers and production specialists as well as pilots and mechanics.
  • Industry as the combat reserve. The MQ-28 program involves roughly 125 suppliers, with about 70 per cent of investment flowing to Australian industry, some from firms that had never worked in aerospace. The argument was for a sovereign kernel, the people and competencies who know how to design, build and adapt at speed. And production lines are regenerative capacity: once they close, they are very hard to reopen.

On sustainment, a fleet funded around 16 flying hours a month per jet can find itself flown ten times that over Pacific distances, and the supply chain is not prepared for a tenfold increase sustained for months. Weapons expenditure makes the headlines. Sustainment is what quietly runs out.

On architecture, consider the May 2025 India–Pakistan air clash. Both sides flew capable fourth-plus-generation aircraft with good weapons and trained crews. One arrived with a far more advanced communications, sensor and command-and-control architecture, and the information advantage tipped the exchange. The platforms were comparable. The enterprises were not.

The room treated one final theme with growing urgency: the homeland. National polling cited at the opening found that 80 per cent of Australians believe a foreign military attack would have major or catastrophic consequences. No defence effort lasts without public understanding and consent. A later speaker argued that Australia has a defence strategy rather than a national one, because civil defence and mobilisation planning is largely absent.

I would put one point differently. That speaker argued that in the most demanding contingency Australia would deter only by annoying. Regeneration is how a middle power turns a modest force into a credible contribution to a coalition’s staying power. A bastion that can keep generating effects is far more than an annoyance, but only if it can regenerate.

Acquisition has to change. Decisions should be judged by their contribution to the regenerative capacity of the whole, not the performance of the item alone: a slightly better platform with a fragile supply chain may add less combat power than a less exquisite one embedded in a robust enterprise. Sustainment moves to the front of the conversation. And allied interoperability must extend beyond data links to shared spares, common munitions and software baselines, and distributed basing.

The arc across a decade of these seminars is visible. In 2014 the conversation was about acquiring the pieces of a twenty-first century air force; by 2024, fusing them around a fifth-generation core; in 2026, whether that core can be made deep, distributed and sustainable enough to survive a precision-strike adversary.

The closing synthesis said it plainly: air combat mass is far more than numbers of aircraft, and technology does not equal strategy. Platforms will keep arriving and they will matter. But the winning advantage will belong to the side that can regenerate.

Reach Needs a Web: The MV-75, Autonomy and the Future of Air Assault

Posted on | by Robbin Laird

By Robbin Laird

The commander of the 101st Airborne Division has just set out the operational problem for the next generation of Army air assault. He did it in plain language, and he did not claim that a single platform will solve it.

In a recent Task & Purpose interview, Maj. Gen. David Gardner described the division’s mission: deliver a brigade, roughly 1,500 to 2,500 soldiers, into territory the enemy will contest, and be ready to fight on landing. “We expect the place that we land to be contested by the enemy, and so we’ve got to set conditions,” he said. “We’ve got to air assault a formation, and then we’ve got to fight as soon as we hit the ground and win.”

Two other points in the interview matter just as much. The first is the MV-75 Cheyenne II, which the 101st will be the first to field. The second is autonomy. Gardner did not present autonomy as an add-on. He said it is changing how air assault works: “Maybe it’s not a helicopter or a plane that drops a parachute resupply. Maybe it’s an unmanned system that does that.”

My argument is that these two points are really one point.

The MV-75 gives the division reach. Autonomous systems give that reach persistence, awareness and sustainment.

Neither delivers what Gardner is asking for without the other.

The task is to build them as one integrated force from the start, not to bolt drones onto a new aircraft after it arrives.

What the Commander Asked For

The 101st is training for what it calls Large-Scale, Long-Range Air Assault, or L2A2. In the division’s first large test, nearly 80 aircraft moved more than 3,000 soldiers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. They covered more than 500 miles, stopped at six forward arming and refueling points, and arrived four days later.

That exercise shows both the ambition and the limits of the current helicopter fleet. Gardner said the expectation now is “to be able to do a brigade in a single period of darkness, a deep air assault.” Six refueling stops and four days is not a single period of darkness.

When the division borrowed a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey to stand in for the MV-75 at a JRTC rotation in April, the contrast was clear. “The Osprey can do that very fast and in one leap,” Gardner said of the 500-mile trip. He also said the surrogate forced the division to work out “how we were going to command and control something that moved, expanded our battlefield, so to speak, twice as far, three times, four times as far, and twice as fast” (Task & Purpose).

The most revealing comment in the piece is about sustainment:

“We can put some things inside the helicopter, and we can put some things under a helicopter with a sling load. We’re not going to sling load something moving 250-ish knots for 500 miles. We’re not going to hang Humvees under that… We learned some things about how we need to get our equipment to the battlefield, how we need to get our sustainment to the battlefield at those distances, how we might need to rely on autonomous logistics delivery systems.”

In practice, Gardner has stated the requirement for a crewed–uncrewed air assault force.

Reach that outruns the old sustainment model needs a new sustainment model.

A battlefield “four times as far” needs a different way to see it, communicate across it and shape it before the aircraft land.

The Osprey Lesson

I have followed the Osprey since it entered Marine Corps service, and the lesson for the Army is simple. A tiltrotor does more than make the old operation faster. It changes the geometry of the operation, and the rest of the force then has to catch up.

For the Marines, the MV-22 made distances practical that rotary-wing aircraft could not cover in operationally relevant time. It also exposed every gap in the system around it: refueling, communications, fires, and getting supplies to forces that were now farther out and more dispersed. The aircraft was a forcing function for change across the force.

Bell’s Frank Lazzara made the same point about the MV-75 in the Task & Purpose article: “Being able to push a combat force out further, from further away … out of the range of certain weapons, and then be able to keep them resupplied, that is not really going to be possible with the enduring fleet alone” (Task & Purpose). The phrase “keep them resupplied” carries the weight of that sentence. A force that cannot be sustained once it is out of reach of enemy weapons is a raid, not an air assault.

The Army is unusually well placed to learn this lesson early.

It has a surrogate aircraft in the V-22.

Its first MV-75 unit is a division already experimenting with autonomy.

And there is now an institutional push behind autonomy at the top of the service.

Four Ways the MV-75 and Autonomy Work Together

Gardner’s statements point to four functions where the MV-75 and autonomous systems are complementary.

In each, the crewed aircraft carries the soldiers and the decisive cargo, and the autonomous systems extend, protect and sustain what the aircraft has delivered.

Setting Conditions Before the Landing

“We’ve got to set conditions” is the starting point. In a contested landing zone, setting conditions means finding air defenses, confirming the threat picture, jamming or deceiving enemy sensors, and in some cases striking before the main body arrives.

The Army is already building the tools for this, and they are being demonstrated today, not only promised. During Project Convergence Capstone 6, H-60M Black Hawk crews launched and controlled multiple air-launched effects in a fully networked configuration. The test showed one-to-many control and the Black Hawk serving as a gateway for over-the-horizon communications between air and ground forces. The Army has also launched effects from the AH-64E Apache, The 101st itself integrated the AEVEX Atlas, the first system fielded under the Launched Effects–Short Range program, into training at JRTC in April 2026.

The link to the MV-75 is straightforward.

If the Black Hawk can launch and control launched effects today, the aircraft that replaces it should be designed to do the same, at greater speed and range.

A flight of MV-75s flying a deep assault could put launched effects tens of kilometers ahead to scout the objective, cue fires and map the air-defense picture while the main body is still en route.

Speed matters doubly here.

A faster assault aircraft shortens the time between sensing the landing zone and arriving at it, which reduces the window the enemy has to react to what the drones have revealed.

Sustaining the Lodgment

This is where Gardner was most direct, and where the integrated approach is most needed.

The MV-75 is designed to carry 14 soldiers and an external load of up to 10,000 pounds at speeds above 300 mph. But as Gardner said, you do not hang Humvees under an aircraft flying 250 knots for 500 miles. The aircraft’s reach comes from its speed and efficiency. Building it into a slow sling-load hauler gives away what makes it valuable.

The answer is a division of labor. The MV-75 moves soldiers, critical equipment and high-value internal cargo quickly. The CH-47 fleet, which the 101st has just expanded by a battalion to form the largest combat aviation brigade in any Army division, carries heavy and outsized loads where the threat allows. Autonomous cargo systems handle what moves continuously, in small amounts, across dispersed positions: ammunition, water, batteries, blood and repair parts.

These systems are in service and in production.

The TRV-150, a 150-pound-payload electric cargo drone, has been used by the Army and Marine Corps for more than three years, mainly for resupply. Operators can give it a grid coordinate and let it calculate the route and confirm it can reach the destination. The Marines have tested it from a San Antonio-class amphibious ship. In March 2026, the Army awarded a production contract for the Joint Autonomous Aerial Resupply System to deliver cargo to dispersed forces with less dependence on convoys and crewed resupply flights.

The operational concept is to treat the MV-75 as the long-haul connector and small autonomous systems as the last tactical mile.

MV-75s deliver a brigade and its initial sustainment package to dispersed landing zones. Small cargo drones, brought in on the aircraft or pre-positioned, then distribute supplies among dispersed company and platoon positions without exposing crewed aircraft to repeated trips into contested airspace.

That is what makes the lodgment sustainable without massing helicopters over a target the enemy is now watching.

Casualty Evacuation and Force Resilience

Gardner also raised unmanned casualty evacuation. Distance changes the casualty-care problem as much as it changes logistics. When the force is hundreds of miles from its base, the “golden hour” depends on how quickly a casualty can reach a point where a fast crewed aircraft can collect them.

The pairing is similar. Autonomous ground or air systems move casualties from the point of injury to a collection point. The MV-75’s speed then cuts the long leg back to definitive care. Neither solves the problem alone.

Together they make deep air assault survivable for the soldiers asked to conduct it.

Commanding a Battlefield Four Times Larger

The least visible but most important function is command and control. Gardner said the Osprey surrogate made the division work out how to manage more airspace, more equipment and the incorporation of drones over a much larger battlespace (Task & Purpose).

A larger, faster battlefield means more airspace to manage.

Crewed tiltrotors at 250 knots, CH-47s, Apaches, launched effects, cargo drones and enemy unmanned systems will all share the same sky.

That cannot be managed with legacy procedures. It requires aircraft that act as network nodes, mission systems that can see and control uncrewed systems, and an airspace-management approach built for a mix of crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

The Black Hawk launched-effects demonstration points the way: the aircraft served as a gateway sharing information between air and ground forces.

The MV-75 should be built to play that role from the start. Its value as a node may prove as important as its value as a transport.

The Institutional Moment

The timing is good. On Oct. 1, Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle signed a memorandum establishing the Army Futures and Autonomous Systems Command, or FASCOM. It directs the integration of autonomy into at least six formation areas, starting with aviation and sustainment. It prioritizes the fielding of crewed–uncrewed teaming and reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition capabilities no later than fiscal 2028, and expands authorizations for 15X tactical unmanned aircraft systems specialists and 390A robotics technicians.

Acting Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve then announced corps-level experiments. These include autonomous aerial ISR and lift companies in XVIII Airborne Corps, the corps to which the 101st belongs. “This goes beyond drones,” LaNeve said. “FASCOM will pioneer operational concepts that harness autonomous capabilities across all warfighting functions.”

That puts an autonomous lift and ISR experiment in the same corps as the first MV-75 unit, during the same years the aircraft moves from design into test.

It would be a missed opportunity if those efforts developed separately, with the tiltrotor community and the autonomy community each writing its own concept of operations and meeting only when the aircraft reaches the flight line.

What the Army Should Do Now

Several practical steps follow from Gardner’s own lessons.

  • Design the MV-75 to launch and control drones. The mission systems and open architecture should support launching, controlling and relaying data from launched effects and autonomous cargo systems, building on what the H-60M has already demonstrated. This is far cheaper to do in design than to retrofit.
  • Use the surrogate to develop the combined concept now. The 101st should keep pairing V-22 surrogate flights with current launched effects and cargo drones at JRTC, so that the combined concept of employment is tested before the first MV-75 arrives.
  • Link the 101st and XVIII Airborne Corps autonomy work. The corps’ autonomous lift and ISR companies should be built around the problems the 101st identified: the sling-load limit, the last tactical mile and airspace management over a much larger battlefield.
  • Place autonomy specialists in the aviation brigade. The new 15X and 390A specialists should be authorized in the combat aviation brigade and its supporting sustainment units, not held at higher echelons.
  • Measure success in exercises, not briefings. The test of the concept is whether a brigade can be delivered in a single period of darkness and sustained afterward. L2A2 rotations should be scored on that standard.

Conclusion

Gardner’s interview is a statement of the requirement. A brigade, at long range, overnight, into a defended landing zone, ready to fight and then able to keep fighting. The MV-75 is essential to meeting it because, as Gardner showed with the Osprey, it collapses distance and time.

Reach alone does not win the fight on the ground. The aircraft gets the force there. Autonomous systems help it see the objective before arrival, sustain it once it is on the ground, evacuate its wounded, and give commanders a picture of a battlefield several times larger than the one they plan for today.

The 101st has already learned, through its own exercises, that it may “need to rely on autonomous logistics delivery systems.”

The next step is to build the MV-75 force and the autonomous force as one integrated system, so that both arrive at Fort Campbell ready to fight together.

Fiji Plans a Pacific Shipyard and a New Maritime Security Strategy

Posted on | by Robbin Laird
In brief

Fiji is moving ahead with plans for a shipbuilding and ship repair facility in Lautoka, on the western side of its main island, Viti Levu. According to a report carried by PINA on October 15, 2026, Cabinet has endorsed a feasibility study that puts capital costs at FJD$792 million (US$396 million). Lautoka was chosen for its existing port infrastructure and available land.

The study projects FJD$2.7 billion (US$1.35 billion) in revenue against FJD$2.4 billion (US$1.2 billion) in operating costs over 30 years. It recommends a public-private partnership to bring in private financing and expertise and limit the government’s financial exposure. It also recommends a phased approach, starting with ship repair and expanding into shipbuilding as the local workforce gains skills (PINA).

Australia is backing the next phase with technical, legal and financial support for procurement, and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) is expected to help structure the deal and identify a private partner. The longer-term aim is to make Fiji a regional center for shipbuilding, vessel repair and maritime services across the Pacific (PINA).

Cabinet has also endorsed the Fiji Maritime Security Strategy 2026–2035, which sets up an integrated national maritime security system. More than 96% of Fiji’s trade moves by sea. The strategy identifies threats including transnational crime, illegal fishing, sovereignty challenges, climate and environmental risks, cyber threats and weaknesses in maritime infrastructure and institutional coordination. It rests on seven pillars: governance, intelligence sharing, coordinated operations, infrastructure resilience, environmental security, cyber resilience and regional cooperation. A new Maritime Senior Officials Committee will oversee implementation in three phases, all subject to annual budgeting (PINA).

The decisions build on a broader deepening of Australia-Fiji security ties. That includes the Ocean of Peace Treaty signed in July and Australia’s transfer of Bluebottle uncrewed surface vessels to Fiji’s military (The Canberra Times).

The significance lies in sustainment. Patrol boats, drones and surveillance are only as useful as the ability to maintain them close to where they operate. A repair yard in Lautoka would give Fiji, and potentially partner navies and coast guards, a maintenance base in the central Pacific, rather than relying on distant facilities in Australia or Asia. Australian financing through the AIFFP also offers an alternative to Chinese-funded port infrastructure in the region.

The caution is in the numbers. The projected margin over 30 years is thin, the project depends on attracting a private partner, and the security strategy relies on existing structures and annual appropriations. Both are frameworks for now. Their value will depend on sustained funding and a steady stream of regional repair work.

Source: Editor, “Fiji advances plans for $792 million shipbuilding and repair facility in Lautoka,” PINA (PACNEWS/Fiji Government), October 15, 2026.