Signal No. 107 · Two systems in one force
IAMDDINDPL Pistorius says Berlin will seriously examine Macron's SAMP/T NG co-production offer — and names the obstacle himself: a second system beside Patriot
BMVg 21 Jul · Hartpunkt 21 Jul
Germany has answered the air-defence offer Emmanuel Macron put on the table at the Franco-German ministerial council in Brühl on Friday: co-production of SAMP/T NG, the new generation of Eurosam's SAMP/T — the only European-built land-based air-defence system with a capability against ballistic missiles — and an offer Macron framed as joint work with Italy, the system's co-owner, not a purely bilateral track. It lands beside the Integrated Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition France launched in Paris on 13 July — a separate programme, but recognisably the same French push to Europeanise the anti-ballistic layer. Speaking to press at KNDS Deutschland's Kassel plant on Tuesday, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius called the proposal very welcome and said Germany is fundamentally open to it: the offer should be taken "very seriously… concretely and substantively."
He then stated the objection in the same breath: it is "not straightforwardly, and above all not easily, imaginable to operate two different systems within the armed forces." German ground-based air defence between the IRIS-T layer and the exo-atmospheric Arrow 3 is built on Patriot — batteries, training pipeline, and a domestic production stake: COMLOG, MBDA Deutschland's joint venture with Raytheon, is standing up production of Patriot's GEM-T interceptor at Schrobenhausen, with the first German-built rounds due at the end of 2027. SAMP/T NG competes for exactly that middle tier, and it is not the only claimant: Diehl's in-development IRIS-T SLX is reaching toward the same envelope from below. A second system means a second logistics chain, training track and integration burden.
The reconciliation Pistorius offered is time: on a horizon of ten years and more, he said, alternatives become viable. Observers quoted by Hartpunkt see the easiest entry point as narrower than the system itself — MBDA Deutschland taking a share in manufacturing the Aster 30 B1NT, the anti-ballistic round now completing qualification as the first SAMP/T NG systems reach Italian and French hands — and the round whose supply has been the European system's weakness since Ukraine reportedly ran short of Asters last year. That would put German industry inside the European interceptor round without displacing a single Patriot battery. Curated No. 46 priced the hit-to-kill interceptor as the dear half of Europe's air-defence economics.
Signal › Pistorius's ten-year horizon pushes the launcher question into the next planning decade; what stays live now is the round. The examination becomes checkable in workshare: a B1NT production role for MBDA Deutschland would buy Germany an option on a European round while staying inside Patriot; the next German ground-based air-defence order placed on Patriot alone would mean the answer was no.
AIRDIN Saab and Embraer sign a framework for 20 more Gripen built in Brazil — expanding the second assembly line for an order book running ahead of output
Saab 21 Jul · FlightGlobal 21 Jul · Saab Q2 17 Jul
At Farnborough on Tuesday, Saab and Embraer signed a Heads of Agreement to produce 20 additional Gripen at Embraer's Gavião Peixoto plant in São Paulo state — on top of the 15 Gripen E/F Embraer already assembles under contract for the Brazilian Air Force. Both companies intend to conclude the corresponding production agreement in 2026. Neither has named a customer for the additional tranche.
The context is a production system under strain from its own success. Saab's export run — Ukraine's 16 Gripen E contracted on 30 June for SEK 24.6 billion with deliveries from 2029, Brazil's expansion, further campaigns open — has the order book running years ahead of the Linköping line's output. Saab's own half-year numbers carry the strain: SEK 68.4 billion of order bookings in the second quarter alone, against a backlog of SEK 317.7 billion. Twenty unassigned aircraft leave the operative question open — a Brazilian follow-on or an export customer — and the two differ in kind: export production out of Gavião Peixoto would still need US sign-off, because every Gripen E flies on General Electric's F414.
Signal › When Europe found the money for Ukraine's Gripen, Signal No. 105 read the constraint as delivery, not money. Three weeks after booking the Ukraine order, Saab is moving to book capacity — and siting it in Brazil, where a trained workforce and a certified line already exist, rather than waiting for a second Swedish line to be built. A signed production agreement by year-end makes the 20 aircraft real; a lapsed framework leaves the order book still waiting on Linköping.
AIRDINAI BAE unveils Brontanax, what it calls the first British-designed collaborative combat aircraft — first flight 2027, pitched at the GBP 300 million StormFighter requirement
BAE Systems 22 Jul · FlightGlobal 22 Jul
BAE Systems rolled out Brontanax at Farnborough today — a Hawk-sized uncrewed aircraft for electronic warfare and precision strike against air and ground targets, designed to be controlled from range by a Typhoon pilot or mission commander. The prototype was designed and built at Warton, Lancashire, by a team of more than 500 BAE employees working with over 75 companies; the aircraft is being prepared for ground testing, first flight is planned for 2027, and service entry is targeted before the end of the decade.
The prototype has been built to date on BAE's own research-and-development money; the prize it is aimed at is the GBP 300 million commitment to the StormFighter sovereign autonomous-aircraft programme confirmed in the Defence Investment Plan announced on 30 June — a line Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, two days into the job, restated at the unveiling.
Signal › BAE built this aircraft on its own money, ahead of any announced StormFighter award — hardware shown before the requirement hardens, the playbook the autonomy entrants wrote, now run by a legacy prime. It is a bid, not yet a programme: the GBP 300 million award is the decision to watch, and the test dates are the aircraft's own — ground-test preparation now, first flight planned for 2027.
NAVDININT Portugal confirms three FREMM EVO frigates from Italy for EUR 3.9 billion — financed against its SAFE loan, with Naval Group's FDI passed over
Naval News 21 Jul · OPEX360 22 Jul
Portugal has confirmed three FREMM EVO multi-mission frigates from Italy: a government-to-government agreement under the EU's SAFE borrowing instrument, signed in Rome on 20 July by defence ministers Nuno Melo and Guido Crosetto during Prime Minister Luís Montenegro's visit. The ships come from Orizzonte Sistemi Navali, the Fincantieri (51 per cent) and Leonardo (49 per cent) joint venture already building two EVO hulls for the Italian Navy; the announced programme value is EUR 3.9 billion — ships plus three decades of sustainment and technology transfer — drawn against Portugal's EUR 5.8 billion SAFE allocation, with deliveries scheduled for 2029–2030. The domestic return is promised but unquantified: the ministry names a floating dock, combat-systems work and simulators for Portuguese industry, and has published no figure.
Naval Group's FDI — the compact design whose export case France's then-naval chief of staff, Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, had argued as recently as May — was passed over.
Signal › SAFE is now writing naval procurement outcomes across borders: Lisbon borrows through Brussels and spends in Italian yards. The 2029–2030 delivery promise is only reachable on a line already running — whose slots those are, OSN's Italian Navy hulls or new capacity, is the first thing the industrial contract will show. For Paris the loss is sharper than one campaign — the compact FDI is the hull Naval Group pitches to navies of Portugal's size, and the customer chose the larger Italian design anyway. The next round of the same contest is already open: Belgium's alternatives list, below, includes both designs.
NAVDIN Belgium opens a search for alternatives to the Damen ASWF frigate — two to three further years late, cost off-track, decision in October
Hartpunkt 22 Jul · Marineschepen.nl 20 Jul · NOS 16 Jul
Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken says the Dutch-Belgian Anti-Submarine Warfare Frigate programme — four ships from Damen, two per nation, originally targeting delivery around 2031 — is running a further two to three years late with costs off plan, and that Belgium is now scanning the market for alternatives. The request for information reaches across Europe's serial producers: Italy's FREMM EVO and PPA, France's FDI, German MEKO designs, Spain's F-110, and Turkey's I-class. Francken wants a decision in October.
It is the second blow to Damen's naval order book in a month: Berlin answered its own slipping Damen programme, the F126, by cancelling it on 24 June in favour of up to eight of TKMS's in-production MEKO A-200 — a termination Damen is contesting, with compensation claims reported in the hundreds of millions of euros.
Signal › The RFI is a lever, and what gives it force is new: Europe's yards now offer in-production frigates a buyer can credibly walk to — the same shortlist circulating from Lisbon to Brussels. Francken's stated preference is to stay with Damen and the Dutch at a price and schedule he can defend; re-competition is the threat, not yet the choice. For Damen, two anchor programmes have produced one cancellation and one open RFI in four weeks. The October decision is the observable; a Damen restructuring offer before then is the counter-move to watch.
Procurement & Industry
DINGRD Rheinmetall to more than double propellant output at Aschau — EUR 350 million against the shell bottleneck
Armin Papperger said Wednesday that Nitrochemie's Aschau am Inn plant will lift powder output from roughly 1,700 to up to 4,200 tonnes a year within two years, propellant-charge production past one million units, and the workforce from 800 to 1,300 — a EUR 350 million move against the binding constraint of European shell output. Papperger separately told Reuters the group is studying its options at GNYK after TKMS's withdrawal (No. 106). (Bloomberg 22 Jul)
GRDDIN BAAINBw puts Spike ER2 on the H145M — a 16-kilometre reach for the light attack helicopter
The procurement office contracted EuroSpike GmbH — Diehl Defence and Rheinmetall Electronics at 40 per cent each, with developer Rafael — to qualify the Spike ER2 on the Bundeswehr's H145M, the missile's first introduction into German service. The roughly 35 kg round reaches up to 16 km when air-launched, up to four per helicopter across two HForce stations, with datalink guidance and an imaging seeker. (Hartpunkt 22 Jul)
AIRDIN Hensoldt joins Boeing's German MQ-28 team — the American airframe assembles a German supply chain
By a Farnborough MoU, Hensoldt joins Rheinmetall, Diehl Defence and Rohde & Schwarz in Boeing's Ghost Bat offer to the Luftwaffe, contributing sensors, mission-system components and in-service support; the same day, Boeing's MQ-28 global programme director Glen Ferguson named Leonardo and Eaton as further international partners — one airframe, national industrial teams assembled per market. Boeing Deutschland's Michael Haidinger describes the German team as a sovereign solution anchored in Germany; the Luftwaffe's collaborative-combat-aircraft contest is structured the same way across all bidders, with national industrial teams assembled per market and airframe designs originating from three continents. (Aviation Week 21 Jul · Hartpunkt 22 Jul)
RUCDIN BAE Systems licenses Ukraine to build the 105mm L119 light gun
BAE Systems signed a licence for local production of the L119 105mm light gun with an undisclosed Ukrainian manufacturer, adding tube artillery to the licence stack European primes and governments have been signing with Ukraine through July — cruise missiles, guided bombs and interceptors from France, now guns from Britain. (BAE Systems 21 Jul)
SPC France's PROVIDENCE telescope: 10 cm resolution at 500 km, operational 2029
ONERA presented PROVIDENCE, a 2.5-metre space-surveillance telescope resolving 10 cm objects at 500 km and detecting to 2,000 km altitude, to be operational at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence in early 2029 — built by Belgium's AMOS, complementing the GRAVES radar in service since 2005, with Thales developing the successor radar AURORE. France is building the sensor layer of space surveillance nationally while IRIS², the connectivity layer, runs European and late. (OPEX360 22 Jul)
CUASPLB Poland calls interceptor drones to the test range — 150 km/h minimum, applications by 31 July
The defence ministry's inspectorate for unmanned systems opened a call for interceptor drones to test: at least 150 km/h, up to 2 kg, EU or NATO manufacture, applications by 31 July — Warsaw putting the interceptor-versus-Shahed speed problem onto a test range before it writes a requirement. (Defence24 17 Jul)
Forward Look
Thursday 23 July: The freeze on the Russian-oil price cap at USD 44.10 lapses. Ambassadors met again on Wednesday without announced adoption of the 21st sanctions package — talks continue into Thursday, with Greece's LNG-transport exemption the open block after Austria's Raiffeisen-linked demand was reported resolved earlier in the week. Absent a deal or a fresh freeze, the formula resets the cap significantly upward, loosening the constraint the package was meant to tighten.
Through 24 July: Farnborough concludes. The Saab–Embraer production agreement for the additional 20 Gripen is intended to be concluded before the end of 2026.
October: Belgium's frigate decision — Francken wants a selection or a restructured ASWF by then. Watch whether Damen tables a recovery offer before the RFI hardens into an RFP.
18 August: The Verkhovna Rada's next scheduled plenary; Ukraine's defence and foreign ministries run on acting ministers — Yevhenii Khmara and Andrii Sybiha — with no confirmation vote possible before then.
Watch: whether the BMVg's examination of SAMP/T NG co-production produces a formal study order or a B1NT workshare; and whether CPC loadings at Novorossiysk resume after the drone strikes on tankers at the terminal — the fifth attack on CPC facilities by the consortium's own count — or the closure carries into a second week.
