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FORBIN

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Ukraine unveils new tactical missile system

The
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a Ukrainian military website released photographs of a new Grom-2 (Thunder-2) tactical missile system developed by Yuzhnoye Design Office and A.M. Makarov Southern Machine-Building Plant.


Recently released imagery and reports in the Ukrainian media suggest that the new Grom-2 (Thunder-2) tactical missile system was close to the finish line.

As is known, the new operational-tactical missile system developing for Saudi Arabia. Ukraine’s defence companies have received from Saudi Arabia around $40 million to develop the Grom-2 tactical ballistic missile system, Ukrainian media reported.

The «Grom-2» has a range of 350km, but technically, a missile is able to fly up to 500km. The new system developed by Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in partnership with Pavlograd Chemical Plant and Kharkiv Morozov Machine-Building Design Bureau.

As has been reported previously, Saudi Arabia had sought to obtain both Russian and American systems (the Iskander and the ATACMS, respectively), but has had no luck doing so.
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3 European producers bid for Poland sub deal

WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s Ministry of Defence has obtained three offers to acquire new submarines for the country’s Navy as the service seeks three new vessels to replace outdated Kobben-class subs.

France’s Naval Group is offering its Scorpene-class subs armed with MBDA’s naval cruise missiles; Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems is bidding with its 212CD-class subs; and Swedish, Saab-owned company Kockum is offering its A26-class subs, the ministry said in a statement.

“These vessels are to constitute the essential combat and flagship element of the Polish Navy, and, at the same time, as they will be fitted with cruise missiles, they will be a key element of the state’s and alliance’s military deterrence,” the ministry said.

The French offer is the only one comprising cruise missiles, which could put Naval Group in a preferential position to secure the deal, local observers say.

Deliveries of the new subs are scheduled for the years 2024 to 2026. In addition to
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, the contract is estimated to be worth some 10 billion zloty (U.S. $2.9 billion), according to data from the ministry.

Last August, the Polish ministry decided to overhaul two of the Kobbens. One vessel will be decommissioned in 2018 and the other in 2020.

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now noticed (dated 21 December 2017) Dogfight over Berlin: Germany’s Tornado replacement aspirations
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Germany’s selection of a future combat aircraft for the air force may not be a binary choice.

Senior Luftwaffe officials and the German defence ministry appear at loggerheads over whether a European or US combat aircraft should replace the air force’s Tornado, with the former preferring the F-35 Lightning II and the latter in favour of the Typhoon. However, some of them could perhaps be asking the wrong question.

Rather than asking what aircraft type is needed, greater clarity may be achieved by asking what roles the aircraft will be required to carry out. In Luftwaffe service, the Tornado provides the ability to deliver both conventional and nuclear payloads. The latter role is part of NATO’s dual-capable aircraft capability, with the Tornado equipped to carry the B61 gravity bomb. If Germany intends to continue to fulfil this mission, whichever type is selected to replace the Tornado will also need to be able to meet this role.

The other combat aircraft in the Luftwaffe’s fleet, the Eurofighter Typhoon, is presently not ‘wired’ to carry nuclear weapons. There was some consideration given to this in the early days of the development programme, but was not pursued. Introducing a nuclear-assurance and -release system for Typhoon is possible, but at a cost. European industrialists suggest prices ranging from €300–500 million, while there is the likelihood that the US would require very detailed access to the aircraft’s design and systems. Furthermore, officials estimate that the necessary certification process would take upwards of seven years. Even if certification were to start straightaway, this makes it challenging to meet the Luftwaffe’s timeline, since it wants to begin replacing its Tornados in 2025, with the fleet to be fully withdrawn likely by 2030.

Germany’s dual-capable Tornado aircraft are part of NATO’s nuclear-deterrence strategy; for this to be effective, it also has to be credible. If the weapon to be delivered remains a nuclear free-fall bomb, the challenge of hitting a target through airspace defended by capable combat aircraft and advanced surface-to-air missiles is considerable. In other words, where long-range stand-off strike is not an option, a low-observable combat aircraft offers the best chance of at least reaching the target.

However, one possible solution could be that the nuclear and conventional roles now both met by the Tornado could be split between a relatively small F-35 fleet and a larger Typhoon fleet, thereby reconciling Luftwaffe and German defence-ministry aspirations. The former aircraft would meet the nuclear-delivery requirement with the B61-12 bomb and provide a low-observable platform capable of conventional weapons delivery, while a proportion of the air-to-surface missions now addressed by the Tornado could be migrated to the Typhoon.

Nevertheless, the Luftwaffe is presently not only working on how to replace the Tornado, but in the longer term, also the Typhoon. Under its Future Combat Air System (FCAS) work, it had initially looked to introduce a new combat aircraft into service from 2035, with the emphasis on the air-to-surface role, as a Tornado replacement. As thinking has developed during the course of 2017, and the F-35 has found increasing favour, Germany’s longer-term combat-aircraft requirement has placed greater emphasis on the air-to-air role for the Typhoon’s successor. The notional entry into service date has also moved to 2045.

The FCAS study work is now being carried out in collaboration with France. Moving back the entry into service date aligns more closely with France’s requirement for a Rafale successor, while also providing a more palatable gap between the cost of the possible introduction of the F-35 and the acquisition of a new fighter aircraft.
 

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GDELS contracted to deliver 227 Piranha 5 wheeled armored vehicle to Romania

General Dynamics European Land Systems signed a contract to deliver up to 227 PIRANHA 5 wheeled armored vehicles in six different configurations to the Romanian Armed Forces.

The contract has a total value exceeding $1 billion. It is part of the Romanian Army’s plan to modernize its legacy wheeled armored vehicle fleet.

Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and Deputy Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu attended the signing ceremony held at the National Defense Ministry headquarters.

The modern PIRANHA 5 vehicles will be produced in Romania under a strategic cooperation and transfer of technology project between General Dynamics European Land Systems – Mowag and the Romanian company Uzina Mecanică București (UMB).

Since 2006, the Romanian Armored Forces has fielded variants of PIRANHA vehicles which have been deployed in various missions in-country and abroad, demonstrating its reliability and performance.

“The Romanian Army is one of the most important PIRANHA users in Europe. We are very honored by this contract award as it reflects the high confidence and satisfaction the Romanian Army has in our vehicles,” said Oliver Dürr, Vice President Wheeled Vehicles and Managing Director of General Dynamics European Land Systems – Mowag.

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Poland orders four more M-346 Advanced Jet Trainers

According to the European Tenders electronic daily (Ted), Poland placed an order for four additional M-346 Advanced Jet Trainer aircraft, the online platform stated today, January 16, 2018.
The Italian planemaker received the corresponding contract on January 12, Ted's document says.

This order includes "delivery of four M-346 aircraft by 2020" and an option for four more aircraft to be delivered in 2021/2022. The trainer jets, locally named “Bielik”, will bolster Polish Air Force advanced training capability. The will be operated from Polish Air Force 41st Training AB in Deblin.

In February 2014, Poland signed a deal worth US$ 342M to acquire eight M-346s to replace the currently operational TS-11 Iskra. The contract also includes logistic support; a training programme for pilots and engineers; a state-of-the-art ground-based training system with dedicated classrooms and educational materials, including a Full Mission Simulator, a highly complex device able to replicate any possible operational scenario and also to be networked with real aircraft flying training missions.

The first two jet trainers were supplied to the Polish Air Force in November 2016.

According to Leonardo, the M346 has been ordered by the Air Forces of Italy (18), Singapore (12), Israel (30) and Poland (8) for a total of 68 orders.

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the RN Admiral full of ideas while
Nov 11, 2016
... yeah:
UK to retire GWS60 Harpoon at end of 2018
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... self-censored part ...
“When I was an ensign, a lieutenant, we knew we could
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. It was just a question of time because we were better than them,” NATO’s top admiral said. “
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.”

The European allies suffer many shortfalls at sea, said
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, the
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officer heading NATO’s Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM): anti-submarine warfare,
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,
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,
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,
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, even the command and control capabilities of his own 300-strong headquarters.

So, I asked the admiral at an
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, would coastal waters within range of Russian land-based missiles — like the
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near Syria, the northern
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, and the entire
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— be no-go zones for NATO navies in event of war? Would any NATO vessel in those areas during a crisis be effectively held hostage by the Russians?

“No and no,” Johnstone said. “We are not ceding ground and we wouldn’t put people in as hostages.”

To the contrary, the admiral argued, NATO navies must assertively patrol those areas, contest control of them, and not “cede space” to the Russians. That means, he said, sailing as close as 15 miles from the
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, for example. It means, instead of treating the Black Sea as Russia’s “private lake” and only sending lightly armed auxiliaries there, NATO needs to send full-up warships capable of defending themselves from air and missile attack, as it did recently with the HMS Duncan, a British
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. It means planning a “holistic” air and naval campaign in the Baltic to establish and sustain a forward presence there, starting long before the first shot is fired.

Once a war starts, “to fight your way through and get presence is really going to be militarily quite demanding,” Johnstone said with typically British understatement. “We have rehearsed that,” he said, but it’s far better to have forces in place from the start.

Those forces have to come from all of NATO, not just the
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themselves. That’s no slur on the Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian navies. “They’re genuinely brilliant, they are delivering capability to (NATO) Standing Naval Forces in a way that I think should embarrass some bigger nations,” he said. “But they’re small nations. (They’re) not going to win the war. they’re going to be brave and hold the line, and we’re going to have to bring in other capabilities.”

The threat isn’t limited to waters close to Russia, either, Johnstone said. Russian warships and
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now frequently deploy
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, he said. These vessels are armed with Kalibr cruise missiles that could threaten
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in a crisis, creating an extended
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zone.

“The A2/AD challenge might not be coming from Eastern Europe,” Johnstone said. “The A2/AD may come from the central Atlantic.” Johnstone is already conducting exercises on how to provide escort ships and land-based air cover for convoys crossing the Atlantic, he said.

Command & Control

NATO leaders are now considering re-creating the Cold War-era Atlantic Command. There’s also work to stand up a new Joint Forces Command-X for naval operations, probably US-led, alongside NATO’s existing JFCs. Johnstone’s MARCOM, created shortly after the
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, would complement a future Atlantic Command and/or JFC-X, not compete with them, he said.

In fact, MARCOM’s explicit mandate is to conduct operations in peacetime and crisis, but not to run a shooting war. If “kinetic” operations became necessary, Johnstone said, MARCOM would hand over command and control to a “heavy metal” warfighting force, “which will only be commanded by an American.”

NATO is still thrashing out how such a handoff would work. It would be particularly tricky, I noted, because modern Russian strategy deliberately blurs the line between war and peace and create a
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through use of propagandists, hackers, saboteurs, proxy forces, and deniable “little green men” — Russian soldiers without insignia.

That’s true, Johnstone acknowledged. In a recent exercise called
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, in which MARCOM for the first time was certified to act as a NATO “battle staff,” his HQ handled simultaneous naval conflicts in the Baltic and Norwegian Seas, he said — but what was really hard to deal with was the grey zone activity around Europe.

“The game players moved the crisis almost clockwise around the sector ending in up Germany.” he said. Events that initially seemed unrelated to the conflict would
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or a shipping company, throttling NATO supply lines.

MARCOM is now working with NATO special operations on how to counter such sabotage and subversion, he said: “We’re in the fledgling stages of how we deal with it,” he said. “They’re a long way advanced.” ...
size limit reached, the rest is right below:
 
Shortfalls To Fix

MARCOM is getting more funding to improve its command and control network, Johnstone said. His headquarters must link to 17 nation’s networks with widely varying levels of security, ultimately connecting ships with different hardware, software, and security cultures. The whole system is only as secure as its weakest link. “It’s scary,” he said. “We’re in a massive health drive within my headquarters and in NATO navies” to improve cybersecurity.

Other shortfalls, however, will require NATO’s European members to increase spending on their own capabilities:

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    : “We have found over the last two years that we are very short of very high-end anti-submarine warfare,” Johnstone said. “We’ve been struck by the massive investment it takes to hunt even a Kilo submarine.” The
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    is the standard-issue diesel subs first built by the Soviets in the 1980s.
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    : With Russian submarines, surface ships, and land bases like Kaliningrad all armed with long-range missiles, NATO needs “a proper conversation (about) how do we do missile defense,” Johnstone said. “Have we got the right missile defense capabilities? And I am not sure we have.”
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    : “One of the things that worries me (is) the industrial reserve,” Johnstone said. “How much war stocks are back at home? How able is the industrial base to support a really rapid ramp up?
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    : “Do we have enough heavy lift and stuff? No,” Johnstone said. However, he said, there’s tremendous potential to move troops and supplies in both commercial vessels and relatively low-cost amphibious warships. In the high-threat environment around Europe, he said, the value of amphibs is as fast transports, not to storm coastlines defended by missile batteries. “What worries me a bit,” he said, “(is) we are having a conversation about amphibiousity and amphibious capability as though… it’s D-Day and we’re
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    .”
source:
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Broccoli

Senior Member
Patria is going to release new APC soon. AMV has been sales success but's also relatively expensive and there has been rumors about new much cheaper 6x6 APC.
 
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