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20 Mar 25. Italy opposes EU defense-spending scheme, checking bloc’s momentum. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has opposed European Union plans to raise €800bn ($870bn) for defense spending, spoiling the bloc’s show of bravura in the face of Russian aggression and Donald Trump’s disregard. The European windfall has been proposed by EU commission head Ursula vonder Leyen who is backing plans for €150bn in loans for defense spending by member states.
A second proposal would see member states allowed to exempt defense spending worth up to 1.5 percent of their national GDP from EU debt rules which are designed to stop members racking up excessive deficits.
If all states take advantage of the exemption, the EU forecasts that bloc-wide defense spending will swell by €650bn – combining with the loans to achieve a total of €800bn.
But Italy PM Meloni gave the debt rule scheme a thumbs down when she met Von der Leyen in Brussels on Thursday ahead of an EU summit to discuss the plan.
She said she preferred to see private investors encouraged to put money into defense programs, or direct EU funding which “does not directly impact the state debts.”
Meloni’s lack of enthusiasm will have surprised defense officials in Europe since her government has repeatedly appealed to exempt defense spending from EU deficit spending limits.
That move, her defense minister Guido Crosetto has previously said, was the only way Italy could hope to increase its spending, which is around 1.5 percent of GDP.
Now that the EU has said Italy can do what it has been pushing to do for years, Meloni has declined to take up the offer.
One reason is that whether or not the EU allows fresh debt spending, the markets may be less forgiving.
Another reason is that Meloni remains skeptical about Europe becoming a defense superpower without strong backing from the Unites States.
This month she declined to join in with plans hatched by the U.K. andFrance to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
In a letter to Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Thursday, Meloni’s defense minister, Crosetto, wrote that only NATO, not the EU, offered a guarantee of military assistance among members.
“The only concrete and practical defense model, here and now, is NATO,” he wrote.
Meloni’s caution on rearming also reflects opposition from Italian voters to spending on arms rather than healthcare.
A poll this month reported that 54.6% of Italians oppose the €800bn spending plan.
Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, a Eurosceptic who has long been soft on Russia, has also this week been opposing extra defense spending, claiming Italy’s biggest threat is Islamic terror, not Vladimir Putin. (Source: Defense News)
20 Mar 25. Serbia: Possible snap elections are unlikely to decrease domestic unrest, government instability. On 19 March, parliament confirmed the resignation of (now caretaker) Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, submitted on 28 January. Vučević resigned amid mounting pressure applied by ongoing student-led demonstrations following a fatal train station accident that killed 15 people in November 2024. Parliament’s confirmation of the resignation transitions the current government into a caretaker role and initiates a 30-day period for the formation of a new government. Otherwise, snap elections can be called in early June. We assess that there is a realistic possibility of new elections if the ruling party assesses that persistent anti-graft, student-led demonstrations will further erode public support. We also assess that possible elections are unlikely to decrease domestic unrest and government stability risks thereafter. Protesters are requesting systemic institutional changes. The SNS’s grip on power remains firm; any future elections are unlikely to be entirely free or fair. The opposition will likely boycott them, which will further increase political instability. (Source: Sibylline)
20 Mar 25. Under the European Defence Fund (EDF), Thales is to coordinate the EISNET (European Interactive Sensor-Based Dynamic Defence Network) consortium, involving 23 partners from industry, research centres and universities from twelve Member States.
* The project seeks to decisively enhance the responsiveness, resilience and performance of Integrated Air Missile Defence (IAMD) systems to protect the European Union from threats ranging from hyper-saturating drone swarms to hypersonic missiles.
* Co-funded by the European Defence Fund, member states and industry investments, this strategic initiative will create a European collaborative architecture to harmonise and aggregate existing as well as future IAMD systems.
EISNET was launched at the end of January 2025 in the presence of 65 high-level representatives from European industry, research centres and universities. The project will establish a set of common standards, as well as create prototypes and develop demonstration scenarios.
EISNET will define, develop and demonstrate next-generation real-time networks protocols – called the EISNET Architecture Framework Tool (EAFT) – that will allow European radars, passive sensors, and command & control systems from different suppliers and countries to communicate in real-time and exchange data and services between systems dynamically. EISNET’s smart dynamic management will enhance the performance, scalability, responsiveness and resilience of new and legacy IAMD systems for the most challenging air and missile threat scenarios.
By integrating these various capabilities in a coordinated manner and enhancing communication speed, the project aims to reduce the command chain latency in the face of new-generation threats, high velocity attacks, massive fire saturation, and the stealth of these threats. EISNET’s ambition is to move towards an open standard to enable full interoperability with all IAMD suppliers.
Raphaël Desi, Vice-President Integrated Airspace-protection Systems, Thales said: “Air superiority is decisive in today’s warfare in order to protect our countries and citizens. EISNET paves the way for a new generation of Integrated Air Missile Defence. Together, in this Thales-led consortium, we will boost European air defence”.
About EISNET
The EISNET Architecture Framework Tool (EAFT) that will consist in a set of common concepts, rules and
functions which will permit the scalability of heterogeneous weapon systems, sensors and Fire Control Centres (FCC) with different architectures or configurations cooperating in a network centric solution.
The partners are:
* THALES LAS FRANCE SAS (Coordinator) France
* AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH Austria
* BSS aps Denmark
* CAFA TECH OU Estonia
* CONSORZIO NAZIONALE INTERUNIVERSITARIO PER LE TELECOMUNICAZIONI Italy
* DIEHL DEFENCE GMBH & CO. KG Germany
* ELETTRONICA SPA Italy
* HENSOLDT SENSORS GMBH Germany
* INDRA SISTEMAS SA Spain
* INTEROPERABILITY SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL HELLAS SINGLE MEMBER SOCIETE ANONYME Greece
* LEONARDO – SOCIETA PER AZIONI Italy
* MBDA ITALIA SPA Italy
* NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO The Netherlands
* OFFICE NATIONAL D’ETUDES ET DE RECHERCHES AEROSPATIALES France
* POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA Poland
* RHEINMETALL ELECTRONICS GmbH Germany
* SAAB AKTIEBOLAG Sweden
* SPIKA TECH SL Spain
* STAM SRL Italy
* THALES EDISOFT PORTUGAL, S.A. Portugal
* THALES NEDERLAND BV The Netherlands
* TOTALFORSVARETS FORSKNINGSINSTITUT Sweden
* XYSENSING SPOLKA Z OGRANICZONA ODPOWIEDZIALNOSCIA Poland
19 Mar 25. British arms industry blocked from €150bn EU defence fund. The money must be spent on weapons from EU-based defence companies, ruling out suppliers in the UK, Turkey and the US. Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to unite Europe in the face of Russian aggression have suffered a serious setback after France succeeded in blocking EU countries from using a €150bn fund to procure British arms industry weapons. The money cannot be used to buy weapons from Britain, the US or Turkey but only from European arms companies, according to a European Commission proposal. British officials reacted with fury as Starmer prepared to host a summit of European military chiefs on Thursday to discuss the deployment of international troops to Ukraine.
Under proposals published on Wednesday, the fund will only consider purchasing British weapons if Starmer signs a security pact with Brussels, something France has tied to fishing rights.
“Europe needs Britain’s defence industry a bit more than the French need a few extra fish,” said one senior British government source. “It is astonishing how puerile the French are behaving. They have not grasped the enormity of the moment.”
In recent weeks, President Macron has publicly positioned himself alongside Starmer at the forefront of European efforts to rearm after President Trump’s ambivalent remarks about Nato’s Article 5, which states that members will come to the defence of an ally that comes under attack. Macron has said “we must act united as Europeans”.
At the same time, France has successfully led a diplomatic effort in Brussels to pursue a “Europe only” approach to procurement, excluding major British defence firms such as BAE Systems and Babcock from the €150 bn EU fund, known as Security Action for Europe (SAFE).
The fund will prohibit the purchase of advanced weapons systems where a non-EU country, such as the UK or US, has “design authority”. The exclusion is meant to prevent any non-EU country from being able to have a say in the use of weapons after their sale.
It comes after Trump’s decision to temporarily freeze military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine highlighted European dependency on US arms — almost two thirds of arms imports — and raised fears that Washington could withhold or disable key weapon systems.
The US was forced to deny the existence of a “kill switch” on F-35 fighter jets, which are widely used across Europe. Other weapons that have come under scrutiny include US Patriot air defence systems, which have consistently shot down Russian cruise and ballistic missiles in Ukraine.
One EU diplomat said: “We cannot have a situation where a non-EU country has control on the use or the destination of a weapon or a situation where objections can be made.” (Source: The Times)
19 Mar 25. Arms companies from the US, UK and Turkey will be excluded from a new €150bn EU defence funding push unless their home countries sign defence and security pacts with Brussels. (Source: FT.com)
19 Mar 25. Poland and Baltic nations plan to withdraw from landmine convention.
* Summary
* Poland, Baltics say they need to protect their borders
* Finland may follow their lead
* Comes as Ukraine and Russia may agree ceasefire
* 1997 landmine ban was global disarmament landmark
* Red Cross ‘gravely concerned’ by the move
NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia plan to withdraw from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines due to the military threat from their neighbour Russia, the four countries said on Tuesday.
Quitting the 1997 treaty, which has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 nations, will allow Poland and the three Baltic countries to start stockpiling and using landmines again. (Source: Reuters
18 Mar 25. Merz sees new era for European defence with German spending surge, Germany’s planned surge in borrowing to fund defence spending and revive growth heralds a new era for European security, the country’s likely next Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag lower house of parliament on Tuesday.
“We have for at least a decade felt a false sense of security,” said Merz, adding the post-war peace dividend had been used up long ago and a total rebuilding of Germany’s defence capabilities was needed. (Source: Reuters)
18 Mar 25. Germany: Likely approval of debt, defence changes will mark important milestone in defence strategy. Later on 18 March, the Bundestag will vote on a fiscal package and debt-related constitutional reform proposed by the incoming coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD). Most notable is the proposal to amend the constitution to relax borrowing rules to allow higher defence spending; the package also envisages a EUR 500 bn (USD 547 bn) fund for infrastructure. We assess that the CDU, SPD and Green party will likely provide the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the legislation. The vote is being conducted by the outgoing Bundestag composition before the newly elected MPs (where hard-right and hard-left MPs hold a blocking minority or ‘Sperrminorität’) convene for an inaugural session on 25 March, following the February federal election. Approval of the package will represent a major departure from long-standing fiscal conservativism. If implemented effectively, we assess that the measures will likely support the modernisation of the (Bundeswehr) military and infrastructure; this will likely help to revive Germany’s stagnant economy over the coming years. (Source: Sibylline)
19 Mar 25. MoD oversight of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations still needs strengthening – NAO.
* While the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has improved its oversight of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (RFCAs) since its 2019 review, an NAO investigation has found that financial, legal and governance risks remain which the MoD must mitigate to support the increasingly important role of the reserve forces in national defence.
* The MoD must consider how, in doing this, it ensures that the RFCAs provide the reserves and cadets with cost-effective, high-quality infrastructure and support services while retaining the benefits of their local identities and connections.
* Statement from PAC Chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown:
The MoD must address risks in the organisation and operation of the RFCAs, which support and provide training sites and facilities for 31,967 reserves, who comprise nearly a fifth (18%) of the UK’s armed forces, and 139,960 cadets, says a National Audit Office (NAO) report.
The independent public spending watchdog’s latest report investigates the MoD’s current oversight arrangements for the RFCAs, including how it has addressed the 2019 Sullivan review’s recommendations.
The 13 regional RFCAs support the UK’s reserve forces, which have an increasingly important role in national defence, and cadet forces, which provide young people with valuable life skills. They manage and maintain a network of 2,478 sites for training and other activities, and support and promote the interests of reserves and cadets in their local areas. The RFCAs have established a Council as a co-ordinating headquarters, through which public money flows to them. In 2023-24, the RFCAs received £146.1 m of public money.
The Sullivan review, which concluded that the RFCAs’ functions supported the MoD’s objectives and should be retained, included two strategic recommendations for the MoD – to ‘regularise and streamline’ the Council and the RFCAs into a single executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), and to appoint a senior officer as sponsor for the RFCAs.
The MoD has now appointed an appropriate sponsor, but in April 2023, it paused the RFCA Reform Programme due to a lack of Parliamentary time to legislate for a new NDPB. The MoD told the NAO it planned to revive proposals for the NDPB, but the Council and some RFCAs have expressed concerns that this might damage local engagement, which they see as essential for delivering better value for the taxpayer and effective support for the reserves and cadets.
Five years on from the Sullivan review, the MoD has strengthened its oversight of the RFCAs. It has implemented 36 out of 80 recommendations, progressed 25 as far as possible without establishing an NDPB, and paused, not pursued or, in one instance, transferred the remainder. It has strengthened its financial relationship and service level agreements (SLAs) with the RFCAs; developed a more business-like way to hold them accountable; helped improve the stewardship of the volunteer estate; and supported a new board structure at the Council.
However, some financial, legal and governance risks remain, including the limitations of the MoD’s powers to act if a RFCA was to fail in delivering its duties. The MoD’s oversight operates through the Council, and it does not deal with individual RFCAs. If an individual RFCA underperforms, the Council has limited leverage to address this.
In August 2022, HM Treasury raised concerns about whether the financial framework between the Council and the MoD was compliant with its rules, which are meant to control and oversee spending. The MoD is working on a new financial framework to address these concerns, but it is not yet in place, and until recently the MoD lacked the resources to regularly monitor spending.The NAO also reports that for four years the MoD has not published the Council’s Annual Report and Accounts on time, which brings together the accounts of all 13 RFCAs. In addition, the reporting does not comply with accounting standards, for example by not including a cash-flow statement. The Council’s finance team have prioritised reforming the structure of the RFCAs and have had limited resources. The Council’s 2023-24 Annual Report and Accounts are still unpublished.
The NAO concludes that the MoD must mitigate the remaining legal and financial risks, whether that is by creating a new NDPB or further strengthening the current model. In doing this the MoD will need to consider how best to retain the benefits of the RFCAs’ local identities and connections, while ensuring that they provide cost-effective, high-quality infrastructure and support services for reserves and cadets.
17 Mar 25. Serbia: Large-scale anti-government demonstration underscores sustained domestic unrest risk. On 15 March, between 100,000 and 300,000 people attended a student-led demonstration in the capital Belgrade. This was the largest demonstration since the start of an anti-graft protest movement in December 2024, triggered by a fatal train station accident that killed 15 people. While the protest was largely peaceful, organisers ended it earlier than planned due to sporadic violent incidents. Human rights organisations suspect that police used a military-grade sonic weapon to disperse and scare protesters; the authorities deny this. We assess that demonstrations will highly likely continue over the coming weeks and that domestic unrest risks will remain elevated. The authorities will likely continue efforts to weaken the protest movement; civil society organisations supporting the protests will likely experience increased scrutiny from the authorities, exacerbating compliance risks. Government stability will also remain elevated, at least until parliament confirms the resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vulevil (which was announced in January) and forms a new government. However, we continue to assess that fresh snap elections are unlikely to be announced in the coming weeks. (Source: Sibylline)
14 Mar 25. Italy prepares plan to bridge automotive and defence sectors, minister says. Italy is preparing an industrial plan aimed at fostering connections between its automotive, defence and aerospace sectors, to be unveiled in June, Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Sunday. The plan comes amid European discussions on boosting defence spending and potential joint military funding. “In June, when the path of reforms we have defined in Europe is clear, we will present the first industrial strategy document in 30 years to guide the country towards new development opportunities,” Urso told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. (Source: Reuters)
17 Mar 25. Airbus leads call for Europe to create sovereign infrastructure fund, buy European. Airbus Dassault Systemes and more than 90 smaller European technology firms and lobby groups have urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to create a sovereign infrastructure fund to ramp up public investments in cutting-edge technologies. The companies and groups said recent U.S. and EU developments and U.S. measures underscored the urgency of Europe taking steps to maintain its strategic autonomy in key sectors.
“Europe needs to recover the initiative, and become more technologically independent across all layers of its critical digital infrastructure,” they said in an open letter dated March 14 seen by Reuters. This ranged from logical infrastructure – applications, platforms, media, AI frameworks and models – to physical infrastructure such as chips, computing, storage and connectivity, they added. “Europe’s current multiple dependencies create security and reliability risks, compromise our sovereignty and hurt our growth,” they said. (Source: Reuters)
13 Mar 14. UK Shadow Minister calls on MoD to prioritise “enablers” over “platforms.” Ahead of the Strategic Defence Review, the Shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, urged the government to revive his integrated procurement plans. He recognised that Britain’s military must move away from an enduring tendency for individual armed services to prioritise “large platforms” in their respective domains.
This appears to include what the current Labour government, and what the previous Conservative government before them, had considered crucial programmes such as Type 83, GCAP and Boxer.
“We don’t value… that which is repsonding to all of defence: the enablers,” Cartlidge supposed. “All those critical elements that actually deliver fighting capability and integrate.
Cartlidge, who served as the former defence procurement minister under the previous Conservative government, had sought to reform the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) acquisition process since February 2024 with the Integrated Procurement Model (IPM).
The Shadow Secretary’s advice comes at a key moment as the MoD is coming to the end of compiling a Strategic Defence Review, a document that will coordinate the UK’s position in the world, amid a fracturing security climate, for years to come.
UK Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge speaks about the need to integrate defence procurement across armed services, with focus on “enablers” such as space in a speech at the London-based Space-Comm Expo, 12 March 2025. Credit: Author.
Among those enablers, Cartlidge recognised space as a critical area of focus, pointing to the importance of domain in which Russia had deprived Ukraine of Viasat modems during its full-scale invasion of the country.
“Space should be given the same weight as nuclear,” he asserted.
There are other lessons to extract from the conflict in Ukraine. The war weary nation is often in dire need of more artillery – systems and munitions – as well as manpower. For years, air power expert, Professor Justin Bronk, Royal United Services Institute, has put forward a compelling case for the need to focus on conventional war material instead.
“Buy ammunition, buy spares, increase the size of your maintenance contracts for your key fleets,” he said in July 2024. “You don’t have time to get new [platform] orders delivered.”
Labour pick up the baton
Meanwhile, the Labour government has put forward a business case for its path towards procurement reform, tieing Britain’s sovereign defence industry intimately with its crusade for economic growth.
The Defence Secretary John Healey joined the Chancellor in promoting this business case among defence industry leaders at RAF Waddington at the end of February, while proceeding to join Prime Minister Keir Starmer days later to invest in small to medium sized enterprises.
Institutional changes have recently been implemented, including a new four-person structure that will take responsibility for operational, procurement and investment programmes.
Army Technology asked the UK MoD to comment on the status of the IPM. A spokesperson confirmed that “implementation of the key features of the reformed acquisition model are being taken forward.”
They added: “This government has launched the biggest reform programme in defence for 50 years. It will create a stronger UK defence centre to secure better value for money, better outcomes for our Armed Forces, and be better able to implement the Strategic Defence Review.” (Source: naval-technology.com)
14 Mar 14. NATO to ask allies for 30% capability boost, top commander says. NATO will ask alliance members to raise their military capability targets by 30% as the organization seeks to boost its force posture, according to the commander in charge of defense planning at the 32-nation alliance. The proposed capability targets have been accepted by 80% of the allies, with a goal of full consensus before a NATO summit in The Hague; Netherlands, in June, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Adm. Pierre Vandier said in a March 12 press briefing at the Paris Defence and Strategy Forum here. He said the biggest NATO members are signed on, “even those who didn’t usually accept,” without naming countries.
The capability targets refer to the pool of forces and capabilities NATO considers necessary to fulfill its missions. Vandier said NATO asks allies to provide capabilities such as a localized brigade or an air and naval group rather than numbers of troops or equipment, with the details for national governments to fill in, and with no time constraints on when countries meet the targets.
Allies are already 30% behind in delivering on existing capability targets, so the proposed increase means “there’s a huge hole,” Vandier said. “We’re at a moment in time where everything is important, we’re lacking everything, and so we have to be quite astute.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has said European NATO allies need to pay more for defense, threatening to deny security guarantees to those who don’t spend enough. The alliance is expected to agree on higher budget targets ahead of the June summit, even as a third of its members in Europe last year failed to meet the current goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense.
Vandier said any discussion about U.S. disengagement from the alliance is “highly speculative,” with the Trump administration saying NATO is important, should be stronger and more lethal, and that the Europeans are going to pay. He noted the U.S. has accepted the 2025 capability targets, and hasn’t said they won’t contribute.
“What is certain is that today, the Americans have not said they are disengaging, what we can in fact imagine is that there will be a probable capacity rebalancing,” Vandier said. “The issue is not NATO, the issue is the weight of the U.S. in Europe.”
The budget of United States European Command is estimated at $60bn to $70bn, which includes the cost of some 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe and the U.S. Sixth Fleet, according to Vandier.
Allied Command Transformation is pushing for NATO members to rebuild an arsenal of offensive weapons as a priority in order to ensure deterrence, Vandier said. The U.S. currently provides the bulk of offensive tools such as rocket artillery, so reinvesting in battlefield ballistics “is extremely important.”
Europeans need to be more aware that NATO seeks both to defend and to deter, according to Vandier. He said a shield without offensive capabilities deters no one, even encourages adversaries to try to pierce the shield, whereas conventional deterrents create strategic and tactical dilemmas for an adversary that make an attack more costly or complex.
“If we want to avoid war, the offensive tools must be sufficiently dissuasive,” Vandier said. “Defensive strategies are systematically losing strategies.” He called the European Long-range Strike Approach project for long-range, ground-based conventional missiles “a very, very good initiative that recreates deterrence tools.”
Offensive electronic warfare and weapons to destroy enemy air defenses are two other “extremely important” areas for investment, according to the commander.
NATO members also need to build up overall force strength, as both “the shield and the sword are too small,” Vandier said during a round table at the forum. That translates into more battalions, tanks, ships, artillery and other equipment – “This is a big shopping list.” (Source: Defense News)
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Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need.
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