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…
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…
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…
By Robert Czulda Despite numerous alarmist tones, average Ukrainians do not panic – shops are open and people gather at restaurants and pubs. Ukrainian security expert Yevgeniya Gaber, whom I interviewed recently for the Polish media, said that there are no signs of any chaos and the Ukrainian intelligence community…
By Robbin Laird I have had the opportunity over the years to visit what I refer as the defense arc from the UK through the Nordics to the Balts to Poland. The CEO of Risk Intelligence, Hans Tino Hansen, has been a key guide to thinking through the process of…
By Pierre Tran Paris - France would do well to discard Germany as a military and industrial partner and strike out on its own, Vauban, an anonymous group of defense specialists, said Jan. 24 in La Tribune, a French business news website. “Three years after the signature of the Aix le…
By Peter Jennings The immediate significance of the recent AUKMIN gathering in Sydney (January 21, 2022) was that it took place while a Russian military assault on Ukraine is imminent. Given the threat from Moscow, no one would have been surprised had the UK foreign and defence secretaries delayed their…
By James Durso Afghanistan’s Taliban recently proposed it take a role in aid distribution via the creation of a joint mechanism with international aid organizations to coordinate the distribution of food aid to the country. According to the Taliban, "The goal of this committee is coordination on a higher level…
