Latest news with #Firepower
Euractiv
a day ago
- Business
- Euractiv
FIREPOWER: Nursing NATO hangovers at the EU summit
Take a free trial of Euractiv Pro to get FIREPOWER in your inbox. Good morning and welcome back to Firepower, After going daily this week to keep up with the NATO and EU summits, the newsletter will return to its weekly schedule, delivering what you need to know about European defence policy and spending to your inbox every Friday. The EU summit in Brussels had the feeling of a hungover group brunch after a wild night out. European leaders tended to their throbbing headaches, mortification, and wounded pride while trying to fill in the gaps on exactly what occurred in The Hague. Everyone agreed to 5%, right? They're also checking their credit cards to see just how much they spent during their NATO bender. From what Firepower heard, lots of ideas were tossed around for how the EU can make the financing work: more "flexibility" on budget rules to "Eurobonds" to more defence cash stuffed in the EU's next budget. They didn't find a miracle hangover cure, but know they must make it work somehow. More on the possibilities below. A rich country's world DANES TAKE CHARGE. Copenhagen will take charge of the rotating Council presidency on Tuesday, and from what we've heard, they're putting defence at the top of the agenda. Until 2022, Denmark had an opt-out on EU defence policy, so their embrace of the issue underscores its importance – and the huge shift in thinking Europe has seen over the past few years. That said, the COUNCIL CONCLUSIONS on defence were rather thin on substance even after EU leaders spent nearly three hours discussing the topic in Brussels. Firepower overheard one person quip that the meeting was more of 'a post-NATO therapy session' (perhaps they discussed their daddy issues ). EU leaders come back in October for a progress review of the defence readiness agenda. Until then, watch out for the presentation of the Commission's proposal for the EU's next seven-year budget (the Multiannual Financial Framework, MFF) on 16 July. MORE FINANCING? Now that (almost) all Europeans have committed to the 5% target, it's time to ask how to fund the scale up. Several EU countries raised the idea yesterday of getting more flexibility around the EU's Stability and Growth Pact budget rules. Currently, 16 countries have asked the Commission to activate the national escape clause , allowing them to go beyond their deficit cap and borrow an extra 1.5% of annual GDP for defence over the next four years. Another option batted around in Brussels is repurposing cohesion funds for dual-use 'defence-related' projects (think tech or infrastructure). The idea was raised once again by Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas in a joint letter . That spending, by the way, would now count towards NATO's new accounting that counts spending of up to 1.5% of GDP on defence-related items. DEFENCE BANK COMING UP? The possibility of creating a publicly backed multilateral bank to provide financing to the arms industry has been gaining traction, according to the man pitching the idea. Rob Murray, a former NATO official and current defence industry executive, spoke with Firepower recently about his pitch to create the Defence, Security & Resilience Bank (DSR), which he believes could start 'initial operations' as early as the end of the year. Poland proposed creating a defence bank at a meeting of EU defence ministers in early April, but it's yet to gain enough support to become a reality. WHY A BANK? There have been widespread complaints from defence industry leaders that they've struggled to secure financing for ramping up production and innovation – partly because investors are unsure whether rearmament will remain enough of a long-term priority to justify major outlays. Murray said an institution like the DSR could step in to provide cheaper credit and a long-term perspective to allow industry to increase capacity and invest in innovation. He envisioned launching the bank with €100 billion in capital. Murray declined to say WHICH LEADERS have expressed a willingness to sign up, but said that none of the 'dozens of countries I talked to" appeared uninterested in the project. Europe is a focus, but Murray said it would make sense to involve countries like Canada, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Those countries host important production capacities, and would also bring scale. What matters, he said, is "less about the number but rather about the size of GDP – we need a blend'. RARE EARTH MINERALS are becoming a European defence headache. China dominates global production and processing, and Russia is a major player in other key raw materials. As our data deep dive shows , that puts Europe's grand military ambitions at risk since rare earths are important in components for a huge range of modern military hardware. In April, China turned up the heat by restricting exports of crucial minerals, underscoring the potentially serious strategic vulnerability for defence industry production. Europe has been eyeing deals in Central Asia and Ukraine to secure alternative supplies, but let's be real: there's no quick fix. This is a modern arms race where the weapons are mined and refined, not made On your EU radar HIDDEN SURPRISE. Europe's €500 million plan to boost European ammunition production (ASAP) expires in just a few days, and the final chance for ambassadors to extend comes today. That looks pretty unlikely, even though sources had told Firepower that EU countries informally pledged hundreds of millions to keep it going. A source close to the file said the spirit of ASAP – which has sought to boost production in order to supply Ukraine and replenish arsenals – will be part of the long-term European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) as planned. For now, countries will focus their attention on using large parts of the EU's €150 billion SAFE joint procurement loan scheme specifically to BUY AMMO AND MISSILES FOR UKRAINE, two other sources told Euractiv. SPEAKING OF EDIP. Negotiations over the text of the proposed programme will start on Monday between the Council and Parliament, two sources told Firepower. Ambassadors settled on their preferred text last week while Parliament agreed on their version back in April . OMNIBUS DEADLINE? Parliament President Roberta Metsola said yesterday that MEPs plan to finalise legislation on the Commission's so-called defence omnibus proposal by the end of the year. The omnibus would roll back some existing EU laws on procurement and sustainability in hopes of boosting production, and it contains two legislative proposals as well as a proposed directive that all need to be negotiated with the Parliament and Council.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Dead on arrival: Army pulls plug on M10 Booker light tank
The Army has spent well over a billion dollars on a light tank the service is now terminating, just as the program was slated to enter into full-rate production. The M10 Booker was going to be the first new combat vehicle to enter the force in four decades. The service noted its plans to cancel the M10 Booker procurement in a memo issued at the start of last month and on June 11 officially announced the program's end. 'In response to current world events and in support of the strategic objectives outlined in the Army Transformation Initiative, the U.S. Army has issued a termination for convenience of the current low-rate initial production of the M10 Booker combat vehicle and will not enter into full-rate production as originally planned,' the Army said in a statement. The Army set out to fill a lethality gap in its infantry formations, and following analysis spearheaded by Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who led the Army's future-focused efforts within Training and Doctrine Command, the service decided it needed what it called a Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle. The new light tank would offer greater survivability and lethality against enemy machine guns and light armor, but could also be air-dropped from a C-130 aircraft. Ultimately, the requirements became heavily focused on a vehicle that could be survivable in varied terrain, requiring a tracked ride, and also more lethal, which did not translate to a vehicle that could be air dropped. 'This concept of sunk cost fallacy, it is a thing that human beings generally struggle with, which is if you've invested a lot in the past, and we do this in our personal lives, you get anchored to things that are suboptimal for the future,' Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told Defense News in a June 9 interview at the Pentagon. The Booker was 'intended to be a light tank that served all of these new purposes,' he said. 'It ended up medium. I don't think the manufacturer liked it all that much, and we, the Army as a customer, kind of helped create this Frankenstein that came to be.' Historically, the Army would have continued to acquire it, despite not being all that excited about it, Driscoll said. 'We would have just made it work.' But, the service is now trying to accept it 'got it wrong,' Driscoll said. The Army had originally planned to spend over $4 billion on the program, according to a review of past service budget documents. The service would have bought between 362 and 504 systems. Original predictions for research and development costs early in the program fell in the ballpark of $1 billion, but as the Army decided to award a low-rate production contract earlier than planned to General Dynamics Land Systems following a rapid prototyping competition with BAE Systems where both delivered a number of vehicles for assessment with soldiers, the total R&D cost ended up somewhere between $349 million and $460 million, according to budget documents. The Army has so far spent at least $1 billion to build M10 Bookers. Booker turrets are built at GDLS' Lima, Ohio, plant and hulls are built in Saginaw, Michigan. Final assembly is performed at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. The cost assessment does not include the possibility of additional costs that would have been associated with a side effort under consideration to procure a new recovery vehicle appropriate for the M10 Booker. According to the latest budget documents, the Army ordered 84 vehicles between fiscal year 2022 and FY24. Another 33 vehicles were planned to be ordered in FY25. The low-rate initial production order total was 96 vehicles. An Army spokesperson said the service will not stop low-rate production abruptly. 'There are a number of M10 Bookers currently in final stages of production that will be accepted by the Army,' the spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. The Army has 26 Booker production vehicles on hand, the spokesperson said. 'The final number of M10 Bookers will be determined once those that are in final stages of completion are accepted by the Army.' The service is known for its slow-paced acquisition efforts, but the Mobile Protected Firepower program went at a risky, fast pace. This meant industry brought designs to the table that were mature – both GDLS and BAE Systems based their designs off of fielded chassis. Initial prototypes from both competitors were delivered in 14 months from contract award so that soldiers could spend more time assessing the options in robust evaluations. 'The Army will request to reallocate the remaining funds in fiscal 20205 to accelerate fielding of war-winning capabilities and anticipates additional significant savings to be fully realized within the next 18-24 months,' the Army statement noted. 'The ongoing contract termination process will ultimately determine the disposition of the remaining assets,' the Army added.
CBC
16-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
How a network of journalists uncovered billion-dollar accounts and toppled world leaders
In 2011, Gerard Ryle, an Irish journalist working in Australia, received a package. Inside was a disk featuring content that would lead to multiple investigations, exposing corruption worldwide, and forcing some political leaders to resign. Ryle is the executive director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., responsible for some of the biggest international investigative stories of our time. The Offshore Leaks. The Panama Papers. The Paradise Papers. The Pandora Papers. Just to name a few. These stories uncovered billions of dollars stashed away in secret offshore accounts. Before taking the job at ICIJ, Ryle had published a major newspaper investigation into a company called Firepower. It claimed to have invented a pill that, if you put it in your gas tank, would vastly improve your mileage. The Australian government celebrated the company as a major success story. However Ryle found out that it was a Ponzi scheme, and that the pill was a scam and didn't work. Ryle later wrote a book about his investigation into Firepower. And someone who read it put a disk in the mail to Ryle. This disk would change Ryle's life dramatically, leading to the ICIJ becoming a leader in global investigations, and expose the nefarious world of dark money in offshore accounts, among other revelations. IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed recently interviewed Gerard Ryle onstage at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It was part of the annual Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism. Here is an excerpt from their conversation. GR: "After I wrote the book, someone then sent me a disk in the mail, and it was like a computer hard drive. It was the offshore law firm in Singapore that had set up all the offshore structures for this particular Firepower pill." NA: But you didn't know that when you got this disk? "Well, I had a fair idea. Another tip for you as a journalist is try to get stuff anonymously because you can always then say you don't know who the source was. And so when I was dealing with the sources, I was saying, 'Well, look, if you wanted to give me this material, please just send it to me in a brown paper bag at my newspaper address.' And when it arrived, my biggest challenge was understanding it and trying to work out what it was." So what did you do with it? "Well, at that stage, I had taken a new job in Canberra, and I bribed the IT guy with beer to try and open up the disk and to let me know what was in there. I found lots of spreadsheets of names [and] a lot of material about my company, but at that point, I'd written the book and I thought, 'Well, there's nothing new that I can really do with this.'" About Firepower? "About Firepower. But I'm not making this up, but I saw all these names from around the world and I remember distinctly seeing a Canadian name that got me really interested. It was a guy…" Do you remember the name? "I don't. And I can't even replicate what I'm about to tell you because I did try and search for this afterward and I still can't find it. But it's a true story. So, I saw this Canadian guy and apparently, he'd been killed involving some sort of drug deal. I think it was in Toronto. And there I saw an email address with his offshore company and the email address was something like: 'On the run at And honestly, it was like a light bulb [moment] for me. I thought, 'Oh my God, I wish I knew a Canadian journalist, I could give this to.' But when you're an investigative reporter and you're working in one country, you really have no interest in helping anybody else. "And so I sat on the material." For how long did you sit on the material? "A few months later, again, out of the blue, I got a call from Washington D.C. And it was from [a person who] was sitting on an organization called the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. And part of the Center For Public Integrity was the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. They were desperately searching for a new director. What I hadn't realized was that the ICIJ, at the time, was really just a fundraising device for the center, for the larger organization. "The ICIJ only had one grant, it was from a Dutch foundation. And the Dutch foundation had been very critical. The ICIJ had been going for about 12 years at that point. They'd given it a three-year grant. They were saying, we won't give you another three-year grant because you're too American-focused. So I thought I was being hired for my skills. But in fact, the only reason I was being hired is that I wasn't American. "But of course, I did have this disk in my back pocket." Right. Did you tell them about the disk? "I did not. Because again, I was worried that maybe it was a story, maybe it wasn't a story. I couldn't unpack the disk. It turned out the disk had two and a half million records. And my beer-consuming IT person had only allowed me to look at a very small part of it. "But I had an instinct that there had to be a good story in there somewhere. I just needed to work out a way of doing it." I am curious: are there ethical lines or boundaries for you in terms of what you will do to get at that data, or maybe what you won't do? "It's a good question. I mean, I obviously deal with a lot of people who have stolen material, and they're giving you stuff that is stolen. And often they get a reaction, 'Well, why would you take material that has been stolen?' But I keep asking myself the same question, which again, is the question that my lawyer in the U.S. keeps asking me: 'Is the material of public interest?' Your job as a journalist is to the public. It's not to courts or anyone else. Is this material of public interest? And if it is, then I will take the material. "There are things I would never do though. I mean, I would never pay for material and there are certain ethical lines that I would never go past. But generally speaking, what I tend to do if I do manage to get a big data set is that I will sit down, look at the data first, then I would write a note to my lawyer with what I'm seeing and make a case for why we should look at that material in more detail. And that was what we did every time." Would you ever endorse the idea of hacking into any kind of database or information source? "If I did the hacking myself, I wouldn't be able to use the material. If I paid for the material, I wouldn't be able to use it, so I'm very, very careful not to cross that line. But of course, I'm aware that a lot of material has been hacked, and the last 20 years have been transformational for information. Everything has been digitized... when people actually have access to them, they can be copied quite easily. And therefore, that's why whistleblowers now give you more and more data." This hasn't come up a lot lately in public, but what do you think about WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? "The model that he was using was very much: publish everything. And I think that was a model that went against journalism because the idea of journalism is that you filter the information. You only publish what's in the public interest, not everything. The criticism of WikiLeaks was that it was just basically raw data dumped." "One of the things I wanted to do when I took over ICIJ was literally to take on that model in a different way, to show that journalism was important, that when we publish our big data sets, we do not publish all of the information that we find. "We have people's passport details, their bank accounts, passwords to their bank accounts. That is not in the public interest. But if it's a politician or if it is a public figure who's in there and they've got a secret offshore account and it's linked to something that you can prove is in the interest, then that is the kind of material that I think we need to, as journalists, do."
