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NATO’s newest member, Finland, announced Wednesday it will procure the David’s Sling medium-range air defense system from Israel. This is the first export customer for the system.
The system, which fires the unique “dolphin”-nosed Stunner interceptor, is a joint venture between Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Raytheon.
The Navy has added funding in its budget plans for a critical airborne electronic attack capability that’s expected to provide increased range and address specific gaps.
The Navy is requesting an increase of $32.5 million in research and development funding for the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band Extended (NGJ-MBX) in fiscal 2024.
The next-gen system, which is the replacement for the decades old ALQ-99, will be mounted on the EA-18G Growler aircraft.
As the Office of Naval Research’s international arm ONR Global moves to expand its worldwide presence, senior officials are eyeing India as the next nation where they’ll set up a post.
“Scientific collaboration with our international partners is an important ongoing effort. ONR Global has been working with officials in India to open an office there. If new partnerships become official, we will provide details,” an ONR spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.
One element within the far-reaching Naval Research Enterprise, ONR Global is a vessel through which the U.S.
The Pentagon’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve initiative is slated to run multiple technology “sprints” each year with the ultimate goal of quickly filling capability gaps identified by the Joint Staff and combatant commanders. But the timelines for transitioning the tech to warfighters will be determined on a case-by-case basis, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu told DefenseScoop.
The Pentagon requested $359 million for the RDER program in fiscal 2023 to kick off the technology sprints. For fiscal 2024, it is asking for $687 million.
The French military budget will amount to 413,000 million euros in the next seven years.
One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the French government presented the new Military Programming Budget (LPM) on Tuesday, representing an increase of 100,000 million euros compared to the previous seven-year budget.
“This LPM represents an unprecedented increase in the defense budget,” said Sébastien Lecornu, French Minister of the Armed Forces, who admitted that some programs had priority over others.
It’s an idea that’s been tossed around for quite a while now: To better protect federal information, any federal civilian contractors that handle the government’s sensitive data will have to meet basic cybersecurity standards much like those that are set to be imposed on defense contractors under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, best known as CMMC.
According to Stacy Bostjanick, the head of CMMC at the Department of Defense, that’s inevitable and now in the works.
Chinese Military via Chinesemilitaryreview.com
While the rapid pace of developments across China’s military aerospace domain has been widely reported, the focus has typically been weighted toward fighter jets and, to a lesser extent, bombers. But with China having increasingly embraced the tenets of modern airpower, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) platforms now play a critical and remarkably expansive role within its air force and navy. A sometimes-complex development path has led to a range of different in-service solutions for this mission.
With Finland officially joining the Alliance, NATO’s top commander can now include the country in his military plans, which lay out how to defend the bloc’s members against attack.
Finnish defense capabilities and experience make it unlikely that NATO will station allied battlegroups in the country to replicate the defense structures of the rest of the eastern flank, say officials with knowledge of the situation.
Already eight multinational battle groups have been constructed in Poland and the Baltics by NATO as “tripwires” against a potential Russian invasion.
After the interruption of regional cooperation with the West, Russia will begin multilateral drills in its Arctic territory this week, in which nine non-Arctic countries will participate to test Russian-made equipment.
According to a statement on April 6 and 7, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations will organize the Safe Arctic 2023 exercises in nine regions of the country’s Arctic zone.
Representatives from nine unidentified African, Latin American, and Eurasian nations are present.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu issued a threatening warning against NATO on Tuesday as Finland officially joined the alliance and expanded the network.
Finland and Sweden, which had previously opposed joining the military bloc, decided to do so after Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine and its increasingly belligerent language towards European nations opposed to the illegal war.
NATO membership means that Helsinki now enjoys the alliance’s full protection should Russia attack Finland.
