Signal No. 114 · A hard thing to give away
RUCIAMDDIP Trump says Washington "has not agreed" to license Patriot production for Ukraine; Kyiv's ambassador puts the talks alone at 12 months to five years
CNBC 31 Jul · Financial Times 31 Jul · Ukrainska Pravda 31 Jul · Reuters · Camp David 31 Jul · Reuters · Stefanishyna 31 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 109 · Großwald Signal No. 112 · Großwald Signal No. 113
At a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Donald Trump said the United States "has not agreed" to grant Ukraine licences to produce Patriot missiles. He called it "a big step" and said Washington had to be "very judicious" and "very careful". "Now we have not agreed to that," he said. "We're talking about it, but it's a hard thing to give away that kind of technology." He then qualified the risk he had named: "And I don't think this would ever happen but, you know, there's people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you." He put the request in a pair: "In the case of President Zelenskiy, he'd like to have some Patriots, he'd like to have some Tomahawks, which are you know lethal — one offensive, one defensive."
The remarks landed the same day the Financial Times published a telephone interview, conducted on Thursday, in which he was softer but moving the same way. Asked whether Washington would license Ukraine to build the interceptor, he said he was "not sure" and that the administration was "looking at it". He went on: "It's a very extraordinary weapon, and … we have to be a little bit careful of who we license to. We don't really license equipment." That last characterisation is his own, and wrong: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has built the PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability 3) interceptor under licence from Lockheed Martin since 2005. At the NATO summit in Türkiye at the start of July Trump said Washington would grant Kyiv the licence. Three days ago, leaving the White House, Volodymyr Zelensky said the president "accepted that he will give us licences". Trump also told the FT that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would travel to Ukraine "in the coming days", and set his own priority against the hardware question: "I'm not looking for missiles. We're looking for peace."
Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's ambassador to Washington, had set out the mechanics a day earlier. Talks with the Pentagon on a PAC-3 production licence could take between 12 months and five years, she told an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Running beside it is a second route: a long-term Ukrainian purchase of PAC-3 interceptors, then a swap of positions in the production line with another buyer. Raytheon officials have already been to Ukraine, and Lockheed Martin, which builds the interceptor, was working to send a team of experts. By Thursday she said Lockheed executives had met Zelensky on Tuesday and that the company plans to send executives to Ukraine soon. She framed the need as inventory: "for this winter, we need the missiles." She put each of the two preceding nights at 30 to 40 ballistic missiles. Signal No. 113 nominated the leading indicator on Thursday: the nightly intercept rate, one of nine ballistic missiles downed that night and four of the month's first 54.
Two markers sit open on this file, and neither closed on Friday. Signal No. 109 logged a signed production-licence instrument on 24 July; Signal No. 112 logged the narrower one — whether any export authorisation follows the licence discussed in the Oval Office. Neither has appeared. What arrived instead, on 29 July, was the Pentagon's seven-year contract with Lockheed Martin for PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement) interceptors — up to USD 53.86 billion, and USD 58.62 billion across the multiyear. The company sized it to triple output by the end of 2030 (Signal No. 113).
Signal › Trump named two objections — one to the technology, one to the recipient — and did not say which governs. The operative question is timing. Stefanishyna's 12 months to five years is the time to conclude talks, before plant, tooling, qualification and a first article; set against her own statement of the requirement, missiles this winter, the licence was never the instrument that answers it. The route Kyiv describes instead is the swap, and a swap reaches interceptors without adding any. It moves a delivery slot from one buyer to another on a line whose order book includes European Patriot operators. Whether that transfer itself needs American approval is unresolved, and if it does, the alternative route runs back through the authority it was meant to avoid. The document to watch is a schedule rather than a statement: a delivery-date revision in a national procurement report, or a contract modification reallocating deliveries. The number to watch is the one already published every night, and it has not moved.
INTDPLDIP Some 50,000 cross into Ceuta and 48,300 go back within a day; 57 dead, and Italy suspends Schengen with Spain for a month
Reuters 31 Jul · Reuters · live 31 Jul · Reuters · analysis 31 Jul · Euronews · Commission 31 Jul
Spain's interior ministry said around 50,000 people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco by land and sea from Thursday morning. Juan Jesús Vivas, head of Ceuta's local government, put it at as many as 60,000 over a couple of days. The Spanish government's representative in Ceuta said 57 bodies had been recovered on the Spanish side, some drowned and some crushed while trying to climb the breakwater that holds the border fence. There could be further casualties on the Moroccan side. The toll was revised through Friday from 19 to 43 to 57. By 6 p.m. the ministry estimated that 48,300 people had gone back to Morocco, most of those who had crossed, inside a day. The ministry calls the returns voluntary. Returnees interviewed by Reuters gave harder reasons: one said he had not eaten since the previous lunchtime, another that "there was no food inside Ceuta and we were kicked out badly by the (Spanish) army". Spain deployed troops to the enclave alongside additional police, and Reuters saw Spanish military vehicles drawn up along sections of the border. Moroccan forces used batons, tear gas and water cannon at the gates.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in Ceuta on Friday, called the crossing "a violation of Spain's territorial sovereignty" and the surge "unexpected", saying it broke a pattern of falling irregular flows. Territorial Policy Minister Ángel Víctor Torres said a Supreme Court ruling this month — that migrants intercepted at sea trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily rejected — may have been among the contributing factors. The foreign ministry blamed misleading information online, and specialists note the ruling does not prevent expulsion through ordinary procedure. Spain is weighing changes to immigration law and will install maritime buoys to mark the border at sea as an interim measure. The Guardia Civil association AUGC said there had been too few officers on the fence to stop the rush.
Italy suspended its Schengen arrangements with Spain for one month. The two share no land border, so the measure means passport checks on people travelling between them by air or sea; Italy's interior ministry said it had also agreed with Paris to strengthen controls on the Franco-Italian land border. Madrid said the move violated EU treaties, having already summoned Italy's ambassador over Antonio Tajani's claim that Spain's amnesty had "encouraged human trafficking". Piero De Luca of the opposition Democratic Party called it "a purely demagogic proposal, as usual designed for domestic consumption". French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said police presence on the Spanish border would be quintupled by Saturday, with reinforced aerial surveillance and patrols on trains. Magnus Brunner, the Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, said there were no "onward movements towards the European continent or other Member States". He added that "the Schengen Borders Code provides for special rules that apply to Ceuta", and that exit checks from Ceuta and Melilla remain in force.
Whether Rabat allowed it is unresolved, and both sides of the question are on the record. Analysts noted the precedent of May 2021, when Moroccan border controls appeared to relax after Spain hosted a Western Sahara independence leader, and that the heaviest crossings fell on Throne Day, when most Moroccan government offices are closed. Haizam Amirah-Fernandez of Madrid's Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies pointed to Sánchez's visit to Algeria this month, and to a Spanish bill granting nationality to descendants of Sahrawis. "One way of handling that is to send a not very subtle message," he said. Lahcen Haddad, who chairs a Moroccan parliamentary committee on EU relations, rejected any political role and echoed Spain's misinformation account. Morocco's government has not responded to requests for comment.
Washington intervened on the same afternoon that produced the Patriot answer. The State Department accused Sánchez's government of "deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration". Trump, at the Camp David cabinet meeting, said the crossings "look like an invasion" and showed "weak law, bad management, but very liberal law".
Signal › The movement largely reversed inside a day: the interior ministry counted 48,300 back across by six in the evening. It calls those returns voluntary; the people Reuters spoke to on the way out described no food, no shelter and soldiers moving them on. The Commission says those still there cannot travel onward, Ceuta's exit checks being a standing feature of the Borders Code rather than an emergency measure. The reversal was public before the responses were. The ministry had 25,000 returns on the wire by 16:15 and 37,000 by 17:01; Italy announced its month of passport checks on air and sea travel with Spain at 18:15, and the 48,300 print followed at 18:44. France quintupled police on the Spanish border and Washington accused Madrid of deliberate facilitation the same afternoon. Each measure went up while the count of people going back was climbing in public. The shortfall identified on the record, meanwhile, is Spanish and external: the Guardia Civil's own association says there were too few officers on the fence to hold it. What settles the legal half is whether Italy files a Borders Code notification at all, and under which article — Madrid's position that the measure breaches the treaties is a claim that it should have to.
RUCPLBINT Warsaw dates the Kh-101 to the second quarter of this year, summons the Russian ambassador and hands over a protest note
Reuters 31 Jul · European Pravda 31 Jul · Handelsblatt 31 Jul · Reuters · Romania 31 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 113
Deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk had confirmed the Kh-101 identification on Thursday evening (Signal No. 113). Friday added the date. Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote that Warsaw had established the missile was produced near Moscow in the second quarter of this year. "This means that Russia is using newly produced missiles to strike Ukraine," he wrote. "It confirms reports that Russian wartime stockpiles have been depleted."
The foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador and handed him a protest note. "We conveyed to the ambassador our unequivocal condemnation of hostile actions directed against the security of a sovereign state and its citizens," spokesman Maciej Wewior told reporters, demanding an end to actions that "pose a risk of an aviation disaster". The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately comment. At the district prosecutor's office in Lublin, Marcin Kozak said forensic examination of the debris was set for Friday at military police headquarters, with a Ukrainian expert taking part.
Martin O'Donnell, spokesman for the alliance's military headquarters at Mons, itemised the response Thursday night had drawn: two Polish F-16s, a NATO A330 tanker, a Polish Saab 340 early-warning aircraft and a Polish Mi-24. Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexus Grynkewich spoke to the Polish chief of the general staff, Wiesław Kukuła. Warsaw has still not invoked Article 4 — an instrument it used after the September 2025 mass drone incursion, so the omission is measured against its own precedent. Overnight into Friday Romania briefly scrambled two fighters as a group of aerial targets was detected near its river border with Ukraine; the targets left radar without entering Romanian airspace.
Signal › Signal No. 113 recorded that Thursday night's engagement decision ran through Poland's national command. Friday's response ran through the foreign ministry, with Article 4 still unused. The production date is the larger fact, and it arrived before the forensic examination Warsaw had scheduled for the same day — the one a Ukrainian expert was attending. Warsaw has not said where the date came from; a field read of component markings and partner intelligence are both open, and the second would make this a shared finding rather than a Polish one. That matters here more than it usually would. Signal No. 113 recorded why Tusk insisted on establishing "what kind of missile, who launched it" before drawing conclusions: the missile that killed two Poles at Przewodów in November 2022 was found, by Poland's own investigation, to have been a Ukrainian air-defence round. A finding reached with Ukrainian participation, announced before the examination, sits against that precedent. The inference is a separate question from the date. Fresh production reaching the front is as consistent with output running ahead of expenditure as with stocks running down, and Kosiniak-Kamysz's reading is one of the two. What the date establishes on its own is a factory-to-field interval under four months. The check is the forensic report: whether Poland publishes the plant and the production data, or the minister's post stays the only public version of them.
DIN Hensoldt doubles half-year orders and confirms guidance; Leonardo raises orders, profit and cash and holds revenue at EUR 22.1 billion
Reuters · Hensoldt 31 Jul · Handelsblatt 31 Jul · Leonardo 30 Jul · Reuters · Leonardo 30 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 112 · Großwald Signal No. 113
Hensoldt's first-half order intake came in at EUR 2,812 million against EUR 1,405 million a year earlier. The backlog rose from EUR 7,070 million to EUR 10,356 million, above EUR 10 billion for the first time. Revenue rose 24 per cent to EUR 1.17 billion; adjusted EBITDA rose 28.5 per cent to EUR 137 million, lifting the margin to 11.8 per cent from 11.3. Adjusted free cash flow was negative EUR 136 million against negative EUR 181 million, an improvement the company attributes primarily to advance payments received from customers. The orders behind the number are Eurofighter radars, TRML-4D air-defence radars of the type in service in Ukraine, and optronics packages for the Puma infantry fighting vehicle and the Schakal wheeled vehicle.
Guidance for the year was confirmed, not raised. It holds revenue at about EUR 2.75 billion, the book-to-bill ratio at 1.5 to 2.0, the adjusted EBITDA margin at 18.5 to 19.0 per cent and cash conversion near 50 per cent of adjusted EBITDA. "The political decisions to increase defence spending are now being reflected in our order book," chief executive Oliver Dörre said in Taufkirchen. "Now industrial execution decides how fast that becomes real capability." He named the constraint as delivering radars and optics in the quantities required. The shares fell about six per cent, the weakest performance in the TecDAX. The reaffirmation follows a month in which Germany's abandonment of the F126 frigate cost Hensoldt a TRS-4D radar package it valued above EUR 200 million, and Saab took the combat system and radars for the replacement MEKO A-200 class.
Leonardo reported the day before with the same shape in different proportions. First-half new orders came in at EUR 16.3 billion, up 44.6 per cent and 38.8 per cent like-for-like, against revenues of EUR 10.0 billion, up 12.2 per cent. EBITA rose 34.3 per cent to EUR 780 million; free operating cash flow was negative EUR 249 million, a 39 per cent improvement; the backlog stands near EUR 59 billion. Net debt rose almost 50 per cent to EUR 3.25 billion on the EUR 1.6 billion purchase of Iveco Defence Vehicles completed in March. Full-year guidance went up on orders, to EUR 28.2 billion from a comparable EUR 26.2 billion — the figure Signal No. 113 carried on Thursday evening — on EBITA to EUR 2.21 billion and on free operating cash flow to EUR 1.37 billion. Revenue stayed at about EUR 22.1 billion. Chief executive Lorenzo Mariani, appointed in May, said the group is looking at further mergers and acquisitions and at "expanding the strategic partnerships that support the Group's long-term growth".
Signal › Four issuers in three days, across three editions. Rheinmetall's pre-release on 29 July warned that customer prepayments had shifted right, producing an outflow it said would weigh on subsequent quarters (Signal No. 112). BAE's half on 30 July put free cash flow at GBP 1,791 million on a high level of customer advances, with finance chief Brad Greve setting a floor that excludes any further material advances; Signal No. 113 drew the mechanism from that print. Hensoldt and Leonardo repeat the shape on Friday. Hensoldt's backlog is now about 3.8 times the revenue it guides to for the year, and that guidance did not move when intake doubled; Leonardo lifted orders, profit and cash and left revenue where it was. Four sets of accounts describing one throughput limit is no longer a wire observation. The nearest test is Hensoldt's margin. An 11.8 per cent first half against 18.5 to 19.0 per cent confirmed for the year puts effectively the whole ramp after June. Friday's six per cent share fall is consistent with concern about that ramp; one day's trading does not establish its cause. Second-half cash answers the rest of it — whether milestones are being met, or advances merely arrived early.
Procurement · Industry · Capability
DINNAV Thales signs the Exail tender-offer agreement — and dates the close to 2027 and 2028
Thales said on Friday it had signed a tender offer agreement with Exail Technologies setting the terms of the acquisition announced on 6 July, unchanged at EUR 134 per share against an enterprise value of EUR 3.9 billion. Thales will first buy the 35.51 per cent held by the Gorgé family, with closing expected by the third quarter of 2027 subject to regulatory and antitrust approvals. The mandatory offer for the remaining shares and ODIRNANE bonds follows, expected to close by early 2028 at the latest. The instrument is signed this week; the first closing is more than a year out, and the combined entity is a 2028 object. (Reuters 31 Jul)
GRDDIN Lithuania contracts the Kaunas hall where its Leopard 2A8s will be assembled
Lithuania Defence Services — the joint venture of KNDS Deutschland and Rheinmetall Landsysteme that will assemble, maintain and repair tanks for the Lithuanian armed forces — signed YIT Lietuva to build a 13,000 square metre plant on almost 10 hectares in the Kaunas free economic zone, at EUR 29 million to the client and about EUR 30 million in value to the contractor. Construction starts in August and finishes in November 2027; the first tank is expected to leave the plant in late 2028, and the site is planned for up to 100 jobs. Total facility investment was previously put near EUR 50 million, with state-owned Epso-G Invest expected to take 25.1 per cent of the venture. (LRT 30 Jul · YIT 30 Jul)
AIRINT Spain's Paznic detachment arrives at Mihail Kogălniceanu with helicopters attached
Spain's air and space force is deploying about 200 personnel, seven F-18M fighters, an A400M for the first two months and three NH90 helicopters in the final phase to Mihail Kogălniceanu air base, beginning operations in early August on a four-month rotation under enhanced Air Policing eAP-72. The NH90s are new to this mission; three intercept controllers and a Link 16 operator go to the air control and reporting centre at Balotești. Italy is sending four Eurofighters to Lithuania and Türkiye five F-16s to Estonia in the same rotation. Spanish reporting counts 33 drone incursions into Romanian airspace since the invasion, 18 of them in 2026. (EMAD 29 Jul · Militarnyi 31 Jul · Infodefensa 31 Jul)
INTDPL Italy's Gulf deployment goes to parliament
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto rejected opposition claims that the government had failed to seek parliamentary authorisation for deployments to the Gulf, saying the mission's legal and operational framework had been presented "with the utmost transparency" and was already public on the ministry's website. About 400 Italian air force personnel have been in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain since March, including four Eurofighters, air-defence radars and a counter-drone system. Democratic Party legislators argue Saudi Arabia falls outside the approved overseas mandate. Il Giornale reported up to 700 personnel and a Franco-Italian SAMP/T battery in Saudi Arabia; the ministry's published list does not mention the battery. The dispute is about authorisation, not deployment. (Reuters 31 Jul)
INTMDF dpa: NATO is drawing up options to expand nuclear deterrence in Europe
Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported on Friday that NATO is working on plans to expand nuclear deterrence in Europe, with the stationing of additional American non-strategic weapons among the options. The documented layer is narrow. In June the alliance's Nuclear Planning Group published a statement for the first time in nearly two decades, committing allies to modernise NATO's nuclear capabilities, strengthen nuclear planning and adapt deterrence; Rutte, interviewed in mid-July, declined to discuss the reviews under way and said "Wherever we need to make adjustments, we will do so". Past that it is argued position: Robert Peters of the Heritage Foundation advocates 100 to 150 additional non-strategic weapons with Poland and Finland as candidate sites, while Jim Stokes, a former NATO director for nuclear policy, holds that forward basing is not militarily necessary and favours broader allied participation instead. Alliance officials told dpa it is unclear whether any decision would be announced at all. Roughly 100 B61-12 bombs remain at six bases in Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye. Storage construction at a new site, or another allied air force certified for the mission, would be visible before any statement. (Handelsblatt · dpa 31 Jul)
Deep Strike · Supply Lines
RUCENS Ukraine's drones reach a second Russian retailer; Ukrainian officials say Russian strikes have destroyed more than 200 filling stations
Ozon, Russia's second-largest e-commerce company, evacuated its warehouse at Zelenodolsk in Tatarstan after a drone alert on Friday; the building was undamaged and reopened the same day. Ukraine has struck at least a dozen warehouses belonging to its larger rival Wildberries since 18 July, and Ukraine's drone forces commander Robert Brovdi posted that "the ozone concentration exceeds the critical norm". The European Union listed the financial units of both retailers on 24 July, and an executive at a leading Ukrainian arms producer told Reuters that Wildberries is targeted for its standing as a major borrower from Russian banks, so that strikes on it reach the banking system; the Kremlin denies the company handles military supplies. Running the other way, Russian drones and glide bombs have destroyed more than 200 petrol stations, Kharkiv regional councillor Oleksandr Skoryk told Ukrainian media, at least 80 of them in Kharkiv region — a count resting on one regional official. The Kharkiv–Kyiv leg of the E40 is one of two main logistics corridors between the capital and the front, and motorists have been advised to carry fuel cans, as they last were in the opening weeks of 2022. Signal No. 108 asked on 23 July whether the deep-strike campaign had reached the distribution layer of Russia's rear economy, and the Wildberries strikes answered it; an evacuation at Ozon is exposure, not a further answer. The two campaigns are not working the same layer either — Ukraine hits consolidated hubs, Russia hits dispersed retail. (Reuters 31 Jul · Financial Times 31 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 108)
SEAENS The UN grain corridor is effectively shut, and Russia says it struck 31 ships in a week
Reuters reports that the UN-brokered corridor which allowed Ukraine to export along the western Black Sea from 2022 has effectively been closed in recent weeks by Russian attacks. Russia's defence ministry said its forces had struck 31 ships linked to the Ukrainian military over the past week, 23 of them cargo ships and four bulk carriers. An agricultural market source told Reuters that a Ukrainian drone attack inflicted "significant damage" on a major grain export terminal at the Russian port of Taman. Zelensky said Russian attacks on Black Sea shipping threaten global food security and asked European partners to help counter them; Ukraine's farming union UAC says the strikes near Odesa are restricting exports through the harvest. Russia's grain lobby put its own season shortfall at 30 to 35 million tonnes, which it calls around 15 per cent of global wheat trade — an interested party's projection, and a figure amounting to most of Russia's annual wheat export. This is one campaign with a month behind it, not a Friday development: Signal No. 111 recorded three Russian Black Sea grain terminals restricting truck intake on 28 July, and Signal No. 113 the CPC terminal at Novorossiysk closing for the third time this month after drones hit two tankers. The corridor closure is the fact; the lobby number is a forecast. (Reuters 31 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 111 · Großwald Signal No. 113)
Energy · Supply Security
ENS A record-low Danube takes Hungary's reactors down one by one, and a full shutdown is announced as unavoidable
Paks — four reactors, 2,000 MW, nearly half of Hungary's electricity — draws Danube water to cool its condensers, and the river at the plant fell to minus 118 centimetres, 28 centimetres below the 2018 record and about a metre under the hundred-year minimum used as the plant's design reference. The operator, MVM Paks Nuclear Power Plant Ltd, took Unit 3 offline from 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and successive output reductions followed; a complete shutdown has since been announced as unavoidable, which would be the first in the plant's service life. Prime Minister Péter Magyar said the plant could stay shut for weeks and that "2,000 megawatts will be lost from Hungarian energy production from Monday at the latest". Energy Minister István Kapitány described the sequence as a prepared plan. The measures named are raised output at other Hungarian plants, cross-border imports against constrained regional hydro, rotational consumption limits at industrial facilities and an appeal to cut use between 5 and 10 p.m.; the Commission's Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said it "stands ready to convene an ad hoc meeting of the Electricity Coordination Group", with no date set. The rotational limits are the list to watch: they name which industrial consumers an EU member state switches off when hydrology, not installed capacity, becomes the binding constraint. (Euronews 30 Jul · Euronews 31 Jul · Hungary Today 29 Jul · CEENERGYNEWS 31 Jul)
Forward Look
Coming days, Kyiv: Witkoff and Kushner. Trump told the FT they will travel "in the coming days"; Stefanishyna said no date is set and it could be next week or later. A Ukrainian government source told Reuters last week that US and Ukrainian officials were discussing a possible air ceasefire as part of proposals to put to Russia, which the Kremlin called premature to comment on. That is the file the visit points at; what it leaves on paper is the check.
Weekend and Monday, Brussels: whether Italy files a Schengen Borders Code notification for its month of passport checks at all, and under which article. Madrid's position that the measure breaches the treaties is a claim that it should have to; if nothing is filed, that is the story. Spain's interior ministry publishes its migration report on 3 August.
Coming days, Lublin: the forensic report on the Kh-101 — whether Poland publishes the production plant and date it says it has established, and whether it says where the finding came from.
Monday, Hungary: Magyar's 2,000 MW comes out of the system, and the Commission decides whether to convene the Electricity Coordination Group. Watch which industrial consumers appear on the rotational-curtailment list.
Next week, Washington: the Senate could pass the Graham act before senators leave. It cannot reach the president's desk before September regardless — the House is away until 31 August — and Reuters reports that the tariff title is what may stop it there. That title authorises 100 per cent duties on the five largest buyers of Russian crude or gas, a set that could include EU member states.
6 August, Rheinmetall: the full half-year report, after the 29 July ad-hoc disclosure that put second-quarter revenue up 69 per cent and warned on operating cash flow. It is the fifth print on the throughput question, and the first full half from a company that has already warned on the mechanism.
Still open: a third edition without a restart statement from Dassault or ArianeGroup for Mérignac or Saint-Médard. The stake is unchanged from Signal No. 113 — whether the week ends as a scare or as an entry against the 28-aircraft Rafale delivery target — and only a company statement dates the return to production.
