Executives still consider the module an internal prototype, with more testing planned in the coming months. But the premise of a bridge-launching capability in forces lighter than the heavy, tracked vehicles mostly used for that job today could garner interest, they said.

The German military, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Australia are current or soon-to-be operators of Boxer fleets. The vehicles were developed in a joint venture with Germany’s Rheinmetall.

The rides are modular by design, consisting of base chassis that can be combined with payloads for troop transport, command and control, combat, or medical evacuation, for example.

The new module will be able to deploy two types of bridges: a heavy variant that spans 14 meters and can carry 80 tons, and a longer version of 22 meters certified for 50 tons.

Those weight limits are sufficient for heavy battle tanks and the slightly lighter infantry fighting vehicles, respectively.

KMW officials had planned to debut the new development at the Eurosatory expo in Paris, France, last month before organizers canceled the event due to the coronavirus pandemic. The next chance to display the bridging module for would-be clients will be the U.K.-based DVD2020 conference, sponsored by the British Ministry of Defence, in November, according to the company.

Modifications needed to operate the bridging module with the base version of the Boxer include a new drive output for siphoning power from the main engine to the hydraulic arms used to push the bridge from the vehicle to the ground, officials explained.

The ongoing negotiations suggest there is still no common ground on the legal framework for costs and risks associated with the next-generation program. Berlin had asked the contractors in early May to submit a revised bid, the third attempt to nail down a replacement for the country’s aging Patriot fleet.

For its part, the Defence Ministry is still expecting a formal offer later this summer, a spokeswoman told Defense News on Friday.

Hiccups lie mostly within the industry team, specifically relating to how and if the U.S. defense giant Lockheed can bend to Berlin’s demands that the contractors absorb the majority of risk if problems come up in the program.

German officials have so stretched the scope of desired capabilities of the former Medium Extended Air Defense System — the basis for TLVS — that the effort amounts to a new development, including a ramp for integrating defenses against hypersonic missiles.

Those high-tech aspirations come packaged in Germany’s new defense acquisition process that seeks to right past procurement failures by pushing more liability to companies.

The ongoing negotiations come with the understanding that the new offer, if Lockheed decides to go forward sometime next month, equates to a contract-ready agreement that would be presented to lawmakers after the summer break.

Next year is an election year in Germany, which means there’s little appetite to push big-ticket acquisitions come January.

A lot hangs on the TLVS program for Lockheed, as German defense leaders last year connected its outcome to the competition for a new heavy-lift helicopter fleet.

Lockheed’s subsidiary Sikorsky is offering the CH-53K for that race, going against Boeing’s CH-47 Chinook.

Trump’s hostility to NATO has been obvious since he called into question its Article 5 mutual defense guarantee during his last presidential campaign. We now know, according to former national security adviser John Bolton’s tell-all memoir, that Trump was ready to pull the U.S. out of NATO at its 2018 summit.

In recent weeks Trump announced without warning that the U.S. will withdraw 9,500 — more than one quarter — of the 34,500 troops it has stationed in Germany because the German government is not spending enough on defense. Then at a Washington press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump said a large number of NATO countries were “delinquent” and declared that Europe was taking “tremendous advantage of the United States on trade.”

Trump may not understand how NATO works or the value to the U.S. of having troops in Germany, but it is true that the U.S. carries a disproportionately large share of the financial burden of defending Europe. During his presidency, Barack Obama also accused Europe of being “complacent” about its own defense — though he was rather more diplomatic.

Only a handful of European NATO members have met the alliance’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense over the past 20 years, while the U.S. has consistently exceeded it, spending 3.1-4.9 percent. But Europe’s problem is not just the amount it spends on defense, but the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of its spending: Europeans get far too many systems and far too little military capability for their money.

The European Commission’s 2017 fact sheet on European defense reported that European Union member states operated 178 different major weapons systems; the U.S. had only 30. EU member states have 17 different types of main battle tank; the U.S. has one.

This proliferation of weapons systems leads to high unit costs for short production runs, and a lack of interoperability. And European spending is not directed to ensuring that troops can fight when needed. The European members of NATO have almost 1.9 million active-duty troops, while the U.S. has 1.3 million and Russia about 900,000. But very few of the European forces can be deployed in a crisis.

Politically and economically, this is a bad time to try to get European politicians to think seriously about increasing and rationalizing defense spending. The EU’s economic forecast for spring 2020 foresees a contraction in real GDP of 7.4 percent this year, albeit followed by an increase of 6.1 percent in 2021.

Some of Europe’s biggest investors in defense are in NATO but not in the EU. The U.K. accounted for 16 percent of defense spending in Europe in 2019, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But despite some early promise, Britain seems to have lost interest in any institutionalized cooperation with the EU on foreign and security policy. Relations between the EU and NATO member Turkey, which accounted for another 7 percent of European defense spending last year, have rarely been worse.

Despite such difficulties, the fact that NATO and the EU are currently both reassessing the security environment presents an opportunity for a more joint approach.

NATO is engaged in the #NATO2030 process, which Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hopes will strengthen political consultation in the alliance. Meanwhile, by the end of 2020 the EU aims to complete a process to assess the threats it faces, which the bloc calls its “strategic compass.” These two efforts need to complement each other to produce a shared view of the threats to Europe, and the creation of a forum for political dialogue on security where European countries, regardless of whether they belong to both the EU and NATO, can discuss appropriate responses.

Europe’s ability to counter threats will depend on making its money go further by spending it efficiently, both nationally and multilaterally. The commission should do more to ensure that more defense procurement involves competitive tendering, rather than member states awarding contracts to national champions. But it should not try to shut defense firms from non-EU NATO countries out of the European market.

The commission stands more chance of influencing the research and procurement decisions of member states if it has a substantial budget to dangle in front of them. It should keep pushing back against cuts proposed earlier in the year to the defense elements of the EU’s next seven-year budget. And the commission needs to be more open to the participation of “friendly” countries in EU-funded programs.

Joe Biden, a former U.S. vice president and a contender in the current presidential race, would be an easier president for Europeans to work with than Trump has been. But Biden’s victory in November is not guaranteed. Moreover, the forces in U.S. society that propelled Trump to power in 2016 will still exist, and may return in 2024.

Even if they would rather pretend that nothing is changing, the EU and as many non-EU, Europe-based NATO members as are willing to do so need to pay attention to Trump’s message. And they need to start thinking about how to defend Europe and deter potential adversaries with reduced U.S. help.

Ian Bond is the director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform think tank. He was a member of the British diplomatic service for 28 years, most recently serving as political counselor and joint head of the foreign and security policy group in the British Embassy in the United States.

The two objectives represent a push to rekindle the bloc’s nascent defense efforts, which are facing growing pressure to show tangible results after a preoccupation with bureaucratic groundwork.

A threat analysis with buy-in from all members of the union could provide a fresh framework from which to derive new capability requirements. Such an analysis, which is routine for many national governments, has never been drawn up from an EU perspective.

German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer described the effort as a quest for a “common strategic compass” in an interview Wednesday with the Atlantic Council think tank. The exercise, for example, could lead the EU to get behind new counterterrorism initiatives in Africa to relieve the demand for U.S. presence there, she said.

Finding common ground among 27 countries on such thorny issues as dealing with Russia and China is a high bar in itself. Sustaining the trans-Atlantic relationship amid a U.S. presidency seen in Europe as increasingly cantankerous toward the bloc — and Germany in particular — is expected to add another challenge to Berlin’s six-month presidency on the council, which begins July 1.

American defense companies want the greatest possible access to the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation defense initiative, or PESCO, which comes with subsidies from the European Defence Fund.

The fund stands to get about $9 billion in the latest long-term budget proposal covering 2021-2027, down from more than $14 billion in the European Commission’s initial pitch.

But as U.S. officials push for an inclusive policy covering defense contractors of nonmember countries, European leaders say they want to focus first and foremost on streamlining intra-European cooperation.

A deal for including not only U.S. companies but also those from the U.K. and other EU partners has seemed within reach for some time.

But the devil is in the details: At the heart of it lies the challenge of letting outsiders partake in cooperative programs on a mechanistic level, while keeping them from receiving European defense money intended only for member countries.

In that spirit, Kramp-Karrenbauer, along with the defense ministers of France, Italy and Spain, has advocated for a Finnish proposal seen as a potential solution.

“The open question of third-party participation rules must be resolved as quickly as possible,” the four ministers wrote to EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell in late May. The Finnish proposal, the four defense ministers argued, should represent the bloc’s consensus on the issue. “This balanced compromise is in the interest of all participating member states on potential partners.”

According to a German Defence Ministry spokesman, the proposal in question rests on the premise that nonmember states, especially NATO allies, can become part of PESCO projects as long as an EU country retains “primacy” in the effort.

The proposal text itself hints at the fence that EU officials strive to create around the money source at the center of it all.

“The involvement of entities in PESCO projects does not imply that such entities will necessarily be eligible for funding under the EDIDP or EDF regulations,” it read, using shorthand for the European Defence Industrial Development Programme, a separate funding stream, and the European Defence Fund.

Kramp-Karrenbauer struck an optimist tone in her Atlantic Council appearance on Wednesday. “We will try to implement the proposal so we can get third states onboard in PESCO projects,” she said.

Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story.

The flights took off from Sigonella air base in Sicily, Italy, the future headquarters of the Northrop Grumman-made Global Hawks of the Alliance Ground Surveillance program. The planes are owned by a collective of 15 NATO members.

The alliance’s supreme allied commander for Europe, a job currently filled by U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, has tasking authority over the new capability. The North Atlantic Council also gets a say in cases of missions outside of NATO territory.

The first two drones arrived late last year. Officials expect the rest of the fleet to make the trip from the manufacturer’s facilities in Palmdale, California, throughout the summer.

Earlier this spring, travel restrictions spurred by the spread of the novel coronavirus had raised the possibility of a delay in getting the initial plane approved for its flight schedule. But the Italian government allowed a team of Northrop specialists into Italy in late May for acceptance testing, a key step in obtaining an airworthiness certificate for the drone.

“COVID-related delays ended up only being a few weeks, but nothing that significant,” Camille Grand, NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment, told Defense News in an interview, referring to the coronavirus disease. “We are now moving to a pattern of regular flight to enable the force to use the drone.”

Officials have been tight-lipped about exactly where they intend to use the aircraft once they are fully operational.

“You can imagine missions of looking into the situation on NATO’s borders,” Grand said. “Both in the south, in the Middle East or the east. The drones enable you to collect intelligence beyond your airspace.”

While the initial aircraft has already completed at least one nine-hour flight over the Mediterranean Sea, it remains to be seen if the the aircraft can get clearance from Italian regulators to fly over land, where air traffic is more crowded and a mishap could be catastrophic.

The general idea is to use the Italian airworthiness approval to fly anywhere. “The beauty of the European airspace is that once your are certified in Italy, you can fly across the European airspace,” Grand said.

He noted that the certification currently in effect is provisional, and that the scope of the process is “likely to expand over time.”

For now, high-flying military surveillance drones traversing the continent must obtain permission from national airspace authorities for a restricted flight corridor to protect nearby civilian traffic. Such is the case, for example, when U.S. unmanned aircraft fly reconnaissance missions close to the Baltics.

The Alliance Ground Surveillance program’s ambition is to “lift any limitations,” Grand said. “It is a very interesting and fascinating challenge because it is the first time ever that we are incorporating those Global Hawks in what is usually a crowded airspace on a permanent basis.”

The integrated defense, security and foreign policy review ordered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson soon after he entered office last December was meant to provide answers to how Britain would make its way in the world post-Brexit.

That exercise is partly, but not entirely, on ice as the government focuses its attention on trying to control COVID-19 without putting the economy back in the Stone Age.

Completion of the review has been pushed back from this summer to sometime next year.

Stephan Lovegrove, the Ministry of Defence’s permanent secretary, told the parliamentary public accounts committee recently that some work on the review was ongoing, with early results expected to emerge this year.

“There will potentially be something direction-setting later this year. Exactly how full that is, I do not know. Our view is that the fuller it can be, the better,” Lovegrove said.

One MoD official, who asked not to be named, said one of the key items now being worked on was a look at the balance of economic priorities versus national security priorities.

It’s a key question, the answer to which will likely set the scene for decisions on defense investment priorities for years to come.

Johnson’s original claim that the review would be policy driven, not financially compelled, is no longer the case — if it ever was.

Independent analyst John Louth says that post COVID-19, it’s going to be all about the money.

“Without doubt the pandemic has changed everything. It [the review] is going to be driven by affordability,” Louth said.

Defense commentator Howard Wheeldon of Wheeldon Strategic Advisory said funding was going to be a big problem across the West.

“Pressures on Western governments in relation to defense spending have probably never been greater. But while we are seeing a significant awareness of the need to invest in activities like cyber, space and ISTAR we cannot afford to ignore the ongoing need to invest in conventional weapons,” he said.

“China is investing heavily in air and maritime, and Russia, despite economic pressures, is increasing spend on conventional weapons. Given that COVID-19 has impacted on virtually every nation we must expect that defense spending will be impacted in the medium term,” Wheeldon said.

“For the UK we must anticipate cuts in legacy systems across all three services but I am of the view that the army will bear the brunt when it comes to capacity reduction,” he added.

It’s not just affordability that is the issue.

The pandemic is focusing the minds of parliamentarians and others on issues like homeland resilience.

The military here have been lauded for their efforts supporting the fight against COVID-19 but it could eventually come at a cost, according to Doug Barrie, a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London.

“The recognition for greater societal resilience, and the associated cost of this, as a result of the pandemic threatens to be a draw on the U.K.’s armed forces in terms of personnel and future investment — this will put pressure on defense expenditure across the board,” Barrie said.

“A neutral budget would be a success for MoD, but I can see some projects being postponed and platform capabilities trimmed as a near term measure,” he added.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the defense equipment budget was currently under control, but it’s not.

The National Audit Office, the government’s financial watchdog, reckons the current equipment plan has been unaffordable for several years.

The worst-case scenario puts the 10-year equipment budget shortfall at £13 billion (U.S. $16 billion) says the NAO.

While a decision by Johnson and his advisors on Britain’s strategic road map is thrashed out the MoD is living pretty much hand-to-mouth, balancing the books annually by in-year reductions in equipment spending and other measures.

Lovegrove told the parliamentary committee the MoD is focusing on smaller programs to cut to leave the government with space to make decisions on more strategic issues during the defense review. Such an approach does have financial consequences, though.

“What we typically seek to do is to look at some of the less strategic capabilities, which we are capable of making decisions on outside of a full-blown, multi-year strategic review, and ask difficult questions of those for the [Service] Commands. Ultimately, we would like the Commands to make their own decisions. Sometimes those are cut; more often, they are deferred and descoped,” he said.

“Deferring programs in order to give ministers proper choices within a strategic context has the result of pushing the bow wave of the unbalanced budget out a year or two, making it a bit bigger,” the permanent secretary said.

“There is a cumulative effect of doing what we have to do to maintain the integrity of the program of record when the balance is out of whack, in that we defer for a year, then defer for a year, then put projects on shorter rations. The bow wave becomes bigger. You see that in the nature of the more difficult financing position that we have for the next three or four years. … So, yes, I think that the program is very tight and getting tighter,” Lovegrove warned.

Without the results of the review the defense sector is operating in a bit of a vacuum on the equipment front.

Louth said that ultimately what the MoD spends its money on will be dictated by an as yet unknown view of Britain’s foreign policy goals in a post-coronavirus, post-Brexit era.

“Where the money is invested depends what they [the government] want to do. The problem is can anybody put their hand up and say ‘we understand what theUK strategic ambition is at the moment,” he said.

Despite the strategy vacuum the review likely heralds significant change to investment priorities, according to Wheeldon.

“I see a huge change of approach emerging in the UK — one that will concentrate more resources on internal defense, cyber and space and less on conventional armies and battlefield activities. The UK will remain committed to air and maritime and in particular ISTAR and carrier strike. Whilst retaining the overall air and maritime commitment to the NATO alliance I envisage a shift away from front-line land systems support to that of increased ISTAR, space and cyber,” Wheeldon said.

Which sectors will see the money invested ?

“My money would remain very much on ensuring we have sufficient air and maritime capabilities, particularly ISTAR, and fast jet and surface and sub-surface maritime capability. Investing in space is crucial, investing in cyber is hugely important. I also remain committed to replacement of our nuclear deterrent capability,” Wheeldon said.

Barrie agreed about the key requirement to invest in sectors like cyber, space and ISTAR, but cautioned that even here “ambitions will have to be shaped by budgetary reality.”

In a paper published in March as the COVID-19 crisis took hold, the Royal United Services Institute’s deputy director-general, Malcolm Chalmers, and Will Jessett, a former strategy director at the MoD, offered a view of Britain’s defense priorities should be in the future.

Britain’s new policy should be encapsulated in a new doctrine of enlightened national interest, they said.

“Under such an approach, the first priority for the armed forces should be the defense of the UK homeland and its immediate neighborhood. … The shape of expeditionary forces should now be determined primarily through the need to work closely with NATO allies in defense of Europe and its immediate neighborhood,” the two analysts said.

The analysts’ view of local and regional defense is partly reflected in their equipment list for Britain’s future forces.

“Defence priorities over the coming decade need to include robust air defense of the UK (and the Republic of Ireland), strengthened coastal defenses against limited incursions, protection of infrastructure (defense and civil) against virtual and physical attack, and maintaining the ability to provide adequate support to the civil power in national emergencies,” they said in their RUSI paper.

A move towards defense of the U.K. and, through NATO, its immediate neighborhood, would represent a significant shift.

Just a little over 15 months ago then-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was making the case for Britain competing for its interests on a global playing field.

“In an era of great power competition we cannot be satisfied simply by protecting our own backyard” Williamson said in a speech at RUSI.

Britain has spent billions of pounds building two new F-35 equipped aircraft carriers as part of that policy and needs to invest heavily to buy additional jets and carrier strike support vessels.

But a swing towards beefing up defenses in Europe may gain more traction following U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent announcement he was withdrawing thousands of troops from Europe.

Whether or not Trump means it, or is playing to the gallery ahead of the U.S. elections in November, is unclear, but a significant reduction in U.S. manpower would go right to the heart of NATO planning assumptions. Causing European powers like Britain to rethink how they address the need for their forces to maneuver against a potential adversary like Russia without significant US military support.

Louth said the Russian’s pushing west to regain territory lost since the end of the Cold War is not as unthinkable as it once was.

“We have to be able to address that level of uncertainty and in defense that must be about protecting Europe’s borders. What it means is you have to have an investment strategy and a capability generation process that allows you to protect those borders by being able to maneuver across a highly amorphous battlefield across a number of domains.The physicality of force goes to the heart of deterrent,” the analyst said.

“In my mind [there’s] been an over-fixation on the total number of ships as opposed to the nuance numbers of specific types of ships that support viable operational plans,” retired Adm. Gary Roughead, former chief of naval operations, said before the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. “There’s also the need to understand just how small our allied navies have become, and in the past we have always looked to our allies to support us, but those navies are extraordinarily small.”

NATO has for years counted on the U.S. Navy as the centerpiece of its maritime forces, with the individual European navies serving as augmenting and supporting forces. And in the post-Cold War era, Europe’s navies have focused on low-end missions like counterterrorism and counter-piracy.

And that has led to a precipitous decline in naval power available to surge in the event of a high-end conflict. In a 2017 study, the Center for a New American Security found that Europe’s combat power at sea was about half of what it was during the height of the Cold War.

“Atlantic-facing members of NATO now possess far fewer frigates — the premier class of surface vessels designated to conduct [anti-submarine warfare] ASW operations — than they did 20 years ago,” the study found.

Where they collectively had about 100 frigates in 1995, that number hovers at 51 today.

“Similarly, these nations had, in 1995, 145 attack submarines — those dedicated to anti-shipping and anti-submarine warfare missions — but that number has plummeted to a present low of 84,” the study found.

But with the U.S. increasingly focused on Asia and amid tension within the alliance, Europe is coming to grips with the need to grow its forces and regain high-end capabilities it once had — a realization that also grew out of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

“Throughout the 1990s, the focus was low-end missions: counter-piracy, counterterrorism, migration, search and rescue,” said Sebastian Bruns, head of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security in Kiel, Germany. “And they did so with the legacy platforms of the 1980s and 1990s. You know, sending an ASW frigate to fight piracy, well that’s not a lot of bang for your buck.

“But 2014, that’s really the turnaround. I can’t think of any European nation that’s not on board with modernizing and growing their navies. But the long-lead times and having to replace the legacy units, it just takes a damned long time to turn the ship around.”

But an unfortunate side effect of the long-lead times involved in force design — sometimes a decade or more — is that pre-2014 ship designs that are coming into service now are ill-suited for the high-end fight, Bruns said.

The prime example of this mission mismatch is Germany’s 7,200-ton Baden-Württemberg-class frigate. It began entering service in 2019, but is designed for low-end operations.

“They were designed in the 2000s — they even call it a ‘stabilization frigate’ — and they’re coming online at a time where the German Navy needs them for presence, but they don’t have the kind of teeth you’d expect for a 7,000-ton frigate,” Bruns said. “They’re really capable for presence and maritime security operations, but of course that’s not so much the world we live in anymore.”

But new, more advanced frigates are starting to filter into the market. For example, in 2017, France’s Naval Group launched a five-hull intermediate air defense frigate program designed to intercept air threats with the Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles.

And in January, the German Navy announced it had hired Dutch shipbuilder Damen to build at least four new MKS 180 frigates — a 9,000-ton ship designed to operate in waters with ice formations in a nod to the renewed competition in the Arctic.

Payloads over platforms

It’s not just new frigate designs that show Europe gradually upping its game.

Similar to the track the U.S. Navy has taken in fielding the Naval Strike Missile on its littoral combat ships and the Marine Corps’ approach to fielding it as a shore battery, European navies have begun to upgrade their ships’ systems in preparation for a high-end fight, said Jeremy Stöhs, a naval analyst who authored the book “Decline of European Naval Forces.”

“What we see now is since 2014 the focus is much more on sea control, lines of communication, territorial defense,” Stöhs said. “But because of the long-lead times, it is not just the ships they’re building; it’s the sensor suites, midlife upgrades, focusing again on sea-denial capabilities.”

Countries like the Black Sea and Scandinavian states are investing in anti-ship missiles and shore-based missile systems, he added, whereas a lot of those weapons were disbanded in the 1990s.

In 2016, for example, Sweden announced it was fielding coastal batteries with Saab’s RBS-15 anti-ship missile to defend its Baltic coast for the first time since 2000.

The Franco-British Sea Venom anti-ship missile is being designed to launch from a helicopter such as the U.K.’s Wildcat. It recently passed its first firing trial. The missile is currently designed for small, fast-moving vessels up to Corvette-sized warships.

In the Netherlands, the government announced in 2018 that their De Zeven Provinciën-class frigates would be ditching the venerable Harpoon missile for a new, more advanced surface-to-surface missile by 2024.

Evolving threat, evolving politics

Europe’s evolution toward more high-end naval battles in many ways mirrors the United States’ own pivot away from wars in the Middle East and Asia. But it’s also informed by changing politics.

“I’m seeing European navies pivot back to the basics: How do we handle the GIUK [Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom] gap? How do we patrol the North Atlantic? Anti-submarine warfare, convoy escort, anti-surface warfare: They are starting to come back to that,” said Jerry Hendrix, an analyst with Telemus Group and a retired Navy captain. “And as you are starting to see the new heavy German designs, they’re coming back to focusing on a maritime challenger.”

But with this evolution has come a realization of Europe’s shortcomings and just how dependent those navies have been on the U.S. for some core capabilities.

“They’re starting to think about a naval force without the US present,” Hendrix said. “[German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has talked about the need for Europe to start thinking about going its own way. And by the way, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I do see the interests on the continent and the U.S. going in different directions.”

But a European naval construct without the U.S. would prove challenging, as many countries based their investments on the idea of a shared responsibility, with the U.S. as the main high-end capability provider, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute.

“NATO, in theory, still has the NATO strategic concept where different countries were going to specialize in different capabilities, which led to the Finns and Swedes really embracing amphibious capabilities for small-scale, special operations forces insertion. The Brits and Italians focused on ASW. But without the U.S. acting as the strategic centerpiece, the strategic concept starts to fall apart.

“The concept assumes you have someone that has a multimission capability that you can augment, as opposed to: ‘We’re going to pull all this together without the U.S. from a bunch of disparate countries with disparate capabilities.’ ”

That situation means any NATO action with just European nations would need a lot of participation, he said.

“Before, if you had just the U.S. and three or four nations participating, you’d have a pretty robust, multimission capability” Clark said. “But without the U.S., you’d need half the alliance to contribute so as to not miss out on key mission areas.”

And without the robust U.S. logistics system, countries would have to replace not just the high-end weapons and sensors, but much of the support infrastructure as well. That could mean even more downward pressure on how much capability Europe can bring to bear.

“If you have to expend weapons or do extensive resupply or refueling, the whole model starts to break down,” Clark added. “The way the European navies are structured, they don’t have this end-to-end capability to deliver on all the support missions as well.

“So if they have to invest in a significant combat logistics force, with budgets for defense being limited, that’s going to mean their navies will potentially become even smaller.”

Šedivý has extensive experience in the defense domain, having served as defense minister and deputy defense minister of the Czech Republic, NATO assistant secretary general for defense policy and planning, and permanent representative of the Czech Republic to NATO.

His term comes amid a fast-changing European defense landscape and new EU defense initiatives that are under increasing pressure to deliver results.

How will the COVID-19 health crisis affect European defense spending in the near, mid and long term?

Let’s be realistic: We are still in the middle of the pandemic and, at this stage, nobody can foresee what its exact repercussions will be. But being realistic also means that we have to anticipate, already now, that national and European defense budgets might come under pressure as a result of the massive economic and financial costs of COVID-19, whether we like it or not. Here our answer should be straightforward: Rather than cutting national defense expenditure rashly, let’s coordinate, pool and share our resources and invest more in collaborative capability development because a collective approach is much more cost-effective than national solo efforts.

The same goes for defense research where national ministries of defense might face problems to receive the same funding than in the past to finance their individual national programs. The best response to shrinking national budgets for defense research is to join forces and resources and to engage in more cost-effective collaborations at EU level.

We therefore should maintain our European defense ambitions, keep course and pursue the implementation of the new EU defense instruments — the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund (EDF) — which are all in place, fit for purpose and ready to be used. The COVID-19 crisis could offer us an unexpected and unique opportunity to reinvigorate defense cooperation in Europe.

The defense portion of the proposed EU budget has come under pressure. If the European Defence Fund is indeed curtailed, how do you expect EDA to adjust its objectives?

It is too early to speculate about the Fund’s future budget allocation as negotiations are still ongoing. Therefore, we have to wait and see.

This being said, the EDF will be an essential part of the EU’s defense-cooperation toolbox, together with CARD and PESCO. Therefore, it is crucial that the Fund receives the financial means it needs to play its role properly. I thus hope for adequate funding for this important collaborative tool because for the reasons I just explained, we need more defense cooperation in the future, not less. And the Fund will serve not only as an incentive to that end, but also as a point of leverage for economic recovery.

In any case, EDA’s activities are not directly linked or dependent of the Fund’s budget as we are an intergovernmental agency entirely and directly funded by our member states, not through the EU budget.

U.S. defense companies want to be allowed to compete for EDF money and PESCO participation. How do you believe it is possible to strengthen intra-EU defense cooperation without shutting out trans-Atlantic ties at the same time?

Third-party participation in the EDF is among the topics currently discussed between member states, the Commission and the European Parliament as part of the legislative process on setting up of Fund. So the jury is still out on the outcome of these talks. EDA is not involved in that process and therefore I cannot comment.

However, I want to recall a basic underlying principle of European defense cooperation, namely that the European Union is fully committed to working with the U.S. as a core partner in security and defense matters. The EU defense initiatives must be understood in this context: They are not directed against our trans-Atlantic partnership but aim to enhance Europe’s contribution to our common trans-Atlantic security by sharing a greater part of the burden. PESCO and EDF will help enhance EU member states’ investment in the joint development of defense capabilities and deepen cooperation to make more efficient use of defense spending in the EU. The resulting defense capabilities will not be owned by the EU but by its member states. Which means they will also be available to NATO, at least for those EU member states that are NATO allies. As a result, EU cooperation ultimately also strengthens NATO as well as our trans-Atlantic partners.

What is in store for the dozens of PESCO projects currently underway? For example, do you expect new ones to join the roster at some point, or some to be canceled if they fail to deliver?

As you know, PESCO is a member states driven initiative. It’s therefore up to the 25 participating countries to decide whether they want to launch new collaborative projects in the future. If you ask me, I expect indeed more projects to be added in the future but not this year as it was decided to skip 2020 after three consecutive waves of new projects launched — 47 in total to date — since December 2017, when PESCO was established.

Focusing on the project implementation and delivering tangible outputs is thus the priority now. Equally, it is up to the member states involved in a given project to decide about possible changes or adjustments to be made or, to answer your question, even to cancel a project that would fail to deliver. It’s the member states who own the projects, so it is up to them to implement them in the way they want.

This being said, EDA is available and keen to support them, if they wish, in the implementation. As the European hub for collaborative capability development, we have the expertise and experience needed to do that. We therefore encourage member states to make full use of the Agency and to seek our know-how and support for bringing their PESCO projects forward. And we see that they start to rely more and more on our help. The number of PESCO projects which have been or currently are supported by the agency has constantly increased and now stands at six; two of them (in the areas of CBRN surveillance and deployable underwater capabilities) as EDA projects. Judging from informal expressions of interest received, we have reasons to expect those numbers to further grow in the future.

Concerns over NATO’s capacity to counter potential threats by Russia in the strategic High North and Baltic Sea regions has reignited interest by the Nordic countries, led by Sweden, to explore the development of joint naval, air and mechanized rapid-response infantry units. Nordic leaders have been tentatively discussing the possible formation of common capacities since 2016. However, little in terms of real substantive plans have emerged from the cross-border dialogue to date.

“Nordic collaboration in defense continues to evolve. We are looking to find new ways to cooperate in practical areas that can deliver improved security in the High North and Baltic Sea areas,” said Antti Kaikkonen, Finland’s defense minister.

Non-aligned Arctic states Sweden and Finland have already conducted bilateral talks to consider the formation of joint fighter squadrons and Arctic-specific, modular-designed, rapid-response brigades. The long-term expectation is that neighboring NATO states Denmark and Norway would join the group under the umbrella of the existing Nordic Defense Cooperation pact.

Of the four Nordic defense partners, Norway is the most enthusiastic supporter for an enlarged role for U.S. and NATO forces in the Arctic High North.

Faced with Russia’s continued scaling-up of its defense infrastructure on the Kola Peninsula, coupled with a surge in multi-branch exercises by Russian forces closer to its borders, Norway’s immediate response has been to raise spending to bolster military preparedness and capacities.

Aside from a strong desire to see the United States play a more robust role in the security of the region, Nordic governments are also interested in deepening defense cooperation with Germany.

Nordic defense ministers conducted a video-link conference with the German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on June 18. The meeting focused on key security and defense issues, including regional security and future challenges in maintaining a healthy trans-Atlantic alliance.

“Germany is an important actor and partner not alone in Europe, but also in the Baltic Sea region. We share common interests regarding the security situation in Northern Europe. This is a well-developed cooperation we want to expand,” said Peter Hultqvist, Sweden’s defense minister.

For Norway, the potential threats posed by Russia to long-term security in the High North regions is encapsulated in the government’s Long-Term Defense Plan 2020-2024 (LTDP) for Norway’s Armed Forces, released on April 17. The 123-page document refers to Russia a total of 58 times in the context of presenting a military threat and provoking instability in the High North and Baltic Sea theaters.

The plan aspires to combine Norwegian capability working in partnership with a strong commitment and presence by the U.S. and NATO to counter any future security threat by Russia in the High North, said Norwegian Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen.

“Norway needs to have a regular and predictable presence in the High North. We want to ensure stability and retain the influence we have in the security development in our own neighborhood. We are strengthening both our military capacity on the one hand and cooperation with NATO and the US on the other,” Bakke-Jensen said.

The LTDP document observes that Russia currently poses a bigger threat to regional security than has been the case for several decades. Significantly, the Norwegian government is also busy improving channels of communication between Oslo and Moscow in order to enhance its working relationships with Russia’s leaders and military top brass.

“The potential of Russia’s military power has significantly changed in the last number of years. The country’s behavior has become increasingly assertive and venturous. Russia is prepared and willing to apply a wide specter of military and non-military means to fulfill its goals,” the LTDP report concludes.

In practical terms, the plan adds $1.73 billion to the Norwegian Armed Forces, or NAF, budget over the next 8-years. The extra monies will be used for major capital investment programs to reinforce the overall capability and fire-power of the NAF’s Arctic-based Brigade North.

Critical procurements for the NAF will include new armored combat vehicles and long-range precision weapons. A new mobile unit dedicated to chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear defense will be established.

Importantly, Norway’s ramped-up military spending addresses capacity shortcomings in core areas naval and air-defense strength. To this end the NAF will add four new-build submarines to its naval fleet by 2030. The Army will upgrade its existing NASAMS air-defense system with modern sensors and acquire a long-range air defense system to counter threats from short-range ballistic missiles. The NAF will also form a new extreme climate maritime special force unit called the Special Operations Task Group.

In the unified Nordic defense domain, national governments support the expansion of more regular joint training and multi-branch exercises in cooperation with NATO in the High North and the Baltic Sea theaters.

In May, Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighters joined Norwegian F-35s as part of a wider, long-range strategic bombers task force mission that included American B-1B Lancers from the 28th Bomb Wing out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

The May 20 exercise was notable in that it was the first time US strategic long-range bombers participated in exercises over Swedish airspace. For the Swedish Air Force, the mission included refueling of JAS 39 Gripens from American KC-135 Stratotankers.

Although not a NATO-member, Sweden signed a host-country agreement with NATO in 2014 allowing Allied Forces to conduct joint training exercises in the country.

“Exercises like these are important. They enable us to demonstrate interoperability and our role as a reliable and relevant partner. The trans-Atlantic link and combined exercises with U.S. air units serve to increase our capability and create security and stability in the High North and Baltic Sea regions,” said Maj. Gen. Carl-Johan Edström, the Swedish Air Force’s commander.