Signal No. 98 · Everything but the interceptor
INTAIRDIN Trump tells Erdoğan he will lift Turkey's sanctions and 'certainly consider' F-35 readmission — with GE engines for the KAAN already before Congress
Reuters, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul · FlightGlobal, 7 Jul · Aerotime, 26 Jun · FT, 7 Jul · Jerusalem Post, 6 Jul · Al Jazeera, 27 Oct 2025
On the first US presidential visit to Turkey in 11 years, US President Donald Trump said he would remove Washington's sanctions on Ankara and weigh restoring it to the F-35 programme. "We're going to be taking the sanctions off," he told reporters before meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. "It's time. We don't want to sanction friends." On the fighter he was softer but clear: "Turkey has been, in many ways, much more loyal than other countries... it's certainly something we will consider." Washington expelled Turkey from the F-35 in 2019 and, in 2020, sanctioned its defence-procurement agency under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), after Ankara took delivery of the Russian S-400 air-defence system. Erdoğan said Trump had previously promised him five aircraft.
The obstacle has not vanished so much as been handed a route out. Two sources told Reuters the solution gaining traction is to move the S-400 to a third country — unresolved, and complicated by Russia's end-user rules. Trump said he had "no concerns" about the battery at all. The engine lever is further along. On 24 June the State Department notified Congress of a sale worth more than USD 700 million for roughly 80 General Electric F110 engines, the powerplant for Turkey's indigenous KAAN fighter. The notice opened a 15-day window for a disapproval resolution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a television interview, urged Trump to deny both jets and engines, saying a sale would "destroy the power balance in the Middle East." He cited Erdoğan's threats against Greece and Turkey's occupation of half of Cyprus.
Signal › Every fifth-generation aircraft Turkey stands to gain runs back through one signature: the F-35 is Washington's to grant, and the "indigenous" KAAN flies on an American engine Congress is now weighing. That review runs on the 15-day clock the statute gives NATO members — Turkey still on the ally fast track for the engine, even as the S-400 keeps it off the F-35. Europe holds the consolation prize. Turkey turned to the GBP 8 billion order for 20 Eurofighter Typhoons it signed with Britain last October only because it was locked out of the F-35; readmission recasts that European buy as a bridge rather than a fleet. And the precedent is the durable part — an S-400 operator welcomed back into the stealth-fighter tent, the Russian battery merely relocated, not removed. That the loudest objectors are Israel and Cyprus, an EU member kept outside NATO by Turkey's own veto, marks where the host's reward cuts against a Union member's security.
DINIAMD Washington licenses ATACMS to a German line — the round it is retiring — and holds back the PAC-3 interceptor Europe actually asked for
Reuters, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul · FT, 7 Jul · Handelsblatt, 7 Jul · Rheinmetall, 7 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 97
At the NATO defence-industry forum, Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin signed a memorandum of understanding — backed by the US and German governments — toward a joint venture to build the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) at Rheinmetall's Unterlüß plant. It would be "the world's first and only ATACMS production facility outside the United States"; CEO Armin Papperger said the up-to-300-kilometre ballistic round would be made in Lower Saxony from 2027.
It was less than Rheinmetall had sought. More than a year ago Papperger had pressed for licensed European production of the Patriot's PAC-3 — the interceptor holding Ukrainian cities against ballistic missiles. He got, instead, only the ATACMS, a weapon the US is itself phasing out for a newer successor. On the PAC-3, US Undersecretary of Defense Michael Duffey offered a maintenance depot in Europe and a non-commitment: "We leave open the opportunity for production beyond the US borders." NATO's procurement agency will buy 900 Patriot rounds — 700 of the older PAC-2 and only 200 PAC-3. The PAC-2 that Europe builds at MBDA in Bavaria is optimised against aircraft and cruise missiles, with only limited reach against ballistic threats; the PAC-3 hit-to-kill, still US-made, is the round that stops a barrage like Monday's.
Signal › This is what "produce more" — the phrase NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte used a day earlier — looks like read closely. What Washington licensed is a missile it is retiring; what it kept is the interceptor Kyiv cannot get. On the summit's eve, Signal No. 97 asked whether Ankara would convert "release the Patriots" into a signed licence to build them — the one decision, in Trump's gift, that moves a delivery date rather than adds a pledge. The day-one answer is a maintenance depot and a "we remain open." Europe can already build the PAC-2, but the PAC-2 does not stop the weapon that killed 25 people in Kyiv on Monday. The licence moved today, and it moved away from the interceptor.
INTDPL Trump opens the spending summit "very disappointed," renews his claim to Greenland, and threatens to pull every US soldier out of Europe
FT, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul · Handelsblatt, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul · Großwald Signal No. 84
The forum showcased deals a NATO official put at USD 50 billion; the alliance's largest member opened by turning on the rest. Trump said he was "very disappointed" with NATO, singling out Britain, France, Germany and Italy for not backing his war on Iran. On the troops he went further than before: "We could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe." Some 80,000 US personnel are stationed on the continent; in May the Pentagon withdrew 5,000 from Germany and cancelled a long-range Tomahawk deployment, with a six-month posture review still running. He renewed his demand for Greenland — "That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark" — which Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen answered by insisting the island "is not for sale." Trump also called Germany's rearmament "ridiculous"; Berlin had just reported record 2026 defence spending of EUR 124.7 billion, 2.69 per cent of GDP and second in NATO only to the United States.
Signal › Großwald billed this summit for weeks as a backfill audit — the point, set out in Signal No. 84, where Europe would have to show it had replaced the carrier, tankers and jets the United States pulled. Signal No. 94 then caught it arriving to call the gaps "almost all" filled. Day one turned the audit around: it was the guarantor, not the allies, who reopened the account, threatening to remove every soldier and revive the claim on Greenland. The spending is real and rising; what it buys in alignment is the part now in doubt. Copenhagen made the point concrete hours later — two Boeing maritime aircraft ordered to patrol the seas around Greenland, American aircraft bought to guard the approaches to the island the American president wants.
INTC4IDIN NATO picks Sweden's Saab GlobalEye over Boeing's E-7 for its AWACS replacement — about USD 4.5 billion, up to 10 aircraft
Reuters, 7 Jul · FT, 7 Jul · Hartpunkt, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul
NATO chose Saab's GlobalEye to replace its Cold-War-era fleet of 14 E-3 AWACS, entering formal negotiations for up to 10 aircraft in a programme it valued at roughly USD 4.5 billion. It picked the Swedish-Canadian system — Saab's sensors on a Bombardier Global 6500 business jet — over Boeing's 737-based E-7 Wedgetail. Saab CEO Micael Johansson put deliveries from 2030 at USD 400–450 million per aircraft. Germany's draft 2027 budget already earmarks about EUR 3.4 billion toward it — the anchor share, taken up as the United States steps back from funding Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) in Europe. Rutte, mindful of his audience, stressed the jet was "made in NATO."
Signal › At the summit convened to prove Europe is buying more — and, Trump insists, buying American — the alliance's flagship surveillance recapitalisation went to a Swedish airframe over the US contender. It is not a clean rupture: the same forum sent Northrop Grumman a letter of intent for up to five MQ-4C Triton drones, so Washington keeps the niche while Europe takes the marquee. The structural line is the funding, not the flag: a capability the US once helped pay for as a NATO common asset is now anchored by a single European budget.
RUCENS Russia's largest refinery halts after a Ukrainian deep strike — the one weapon Kyiv needed no one's permission to build
Reuters, 7 Jul · Reuters, 7 Jul
The Gazprom Neft refinery at Omsk — Russia's largest, processing around 440,000 barrels a day — halted operations after a Ukrainian drone strike on Monday, one of the deepest of the war and well into Siberia. Two primary distillation units are down, and the plant has stopped selling on the St Petersburg exchange. Over the same 48 hours Ukraine's drone forces struck about a dozen tankers Kyiv said were under sanctions, eight of them in the Sea of Azov. It is part of drone-forces commander Robert Brovdi's stated campaign to sever fuel to occupied Crimea.
Signal › Underneath the day's supply politics sits a harder asymmetry. A strike weapon is built to fail: fire enough cheap drones and some get through, which is why Ukraine can mass-produce them at home. An interceptor cannot miss, so hit-to-kill defence is correspondingly hard, dear, and kept in American hands. That is why the tier Kyiv makes for itself is the one working tonight, Russia's largest refinery offline and Crimea's fuel line under attack, while the tier it must be sold was the one not on offer.
Procurement & Capability
GRD UK buys into Precision Strike Missile — GBP 190 million, 500 km reach
Britain committed GBP 190 million (USD 254 million) from its Defence Investment Plan to join the US–Australia Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) programme. The Lockheed Martin ballistic round reaches up to 500 kilometres, fires from existing M270 launchers, and could arrive from 2027. It lands the same day Germany moved to co-produce the ATACMS that PrSM was built to replace. Two allies are extending ground-based deep strike from opposite ends of one US family — Britain buying the successor, Germany building the incumbent (Reuters, 7 Jul).
IAMD Europe's hedge against the licence — Diehl's longer-range IRIS-T, and rocket-motor capacity
Diehl Defence is developing the longer-range IRIS-T SLX to reach up to 80 kilometres and 25 kilometres altitude — close to the Patriot's envelope — expressly to cut reliance on the scarce US interceptor. The family is already in Ukrainian service, 21 countries have ordered it, and divisional revenue rose 28 per cent to EUR 2.33 billion (Reuters, 7 Jul; Handelsblatt, 7 Jul). Upstream, Italy's Avio sold about 7 per cent to Advent for EUR 109.4 million to expand solid-rocket-motor output on both sides of the Atlantic (Reuters, 6 Jul) — the propellant bottleneck behind every missile here. Both are bets on interceptor capability Europe can field without an American sign-off.
C4I Finland's ICEYE — sovereign radar imaging, built to need no US licence
The Finnish radar-satellite firm ICEYE launched four more synthetic-aperture-radar spacecraft on 7 July aboard a SpaceX rideshare — among them the Finnish Defence Forces' third satellite — taking its constellation to 76. Output is set to double toward 100 a year by 2027. Its selling point is independence from the American export licence: the systems are "fully sovereign... free from ITAR restrictions." ICEYE stood up a national capability for the Polish armed forces inside 12 months and now counts seven European governments as sovereign customers (ICEYE, 7 Jul). Where the F-35 and the PAC-3 wait on Washington, radar imaging from orbit is one capability Europe can already field on its own terms.
NATO Forum · Pooled Buys
AIR NATO pools A400M airlift and adds a tanker — the enablers Europe still leans on Washington for
The alliance launched a shared strategic-airlift fleet of Airbus A400M transports, with Belgium, Britain, France, Spain, Turkey, Croatia and Poland taking part. The pool is drawn first from aircraft already in operation, then from the industrial pipeline, though Airbus called new orders premature to speculate on. It separately added one A330 MRTT tanker to the nine-jet Multinational Fleet at Eindhoven, moving toward a target of 12. Heavy airlift and air-to-air refuelling are precisely the enablers the US has pared back; the pooled fleets are the backfill of that drawdown — Airbus airframes, not American (Reuters, 7 Jul; Handelsblatt, 7 Jul).
C4I NATO buys up to five US Triton drones — the ISR tier it did not Europeanise
Norway, Finland, Germany and Denmark signed a letter of intent for up to five Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton high-altitude surveillance drones, at about USD 270 million each on recent US procurement figures. They would complement the alliance's RQ-4D Phoenix fleet at Sigonella. It is the counterpoint to the GlobalEye decision above. NATO went European for airborne early warning, American for high-altitude ISR — the two halves of what Europe routes around Washington, and what it does not (Reuters, 7 Jul; FT, 7 Jul).
CUAS Over USD 40 billion for counter-drone — and a NATO "marketplace" of vetted systems
The alliance will invest more than USD 40 billion over five years in countering drones and stand up its own "marketplace" of tested, approved systems for members to buy from. It is the eastern-flank lesson of Ukraine turned into a buying mechanism — not a budget line but a route to move money toward fielded systems, the step that keeps lagging the spending (Handelsblatt, 7 Jul).
Forward Look
Wednesday 8 July: the summit closes and the declaration is adopted — "ironclad" Article 5, Russia named a "long-term threat," roughly EUR 70 billion in Ukraine aid for 2026 and "at least equivalent" in 2027 — and allies present the "5 per cent" spending plans by which the meeting asked to be judged (U.S. News/Reuters, 3 Jul).
Wednesday 8 July: Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hold their bilateral, after Trump's 85-minute call with Vladimir Putin on 4 July and his claim a settlement is "getting closer than people realise." Zelenskyy will press for Patriot systems from allied stocks and US production licences — the withheld item at the centre of the day, and the one Großwald Curated No. 45 argued only the licensor can grant (Reuters, 7 Jul).
Wednesday 8 July: Britain, whose Defence Investment Plan drew a "frosty" warning from former NATO chief George Robertson for not yet reaching 3.5 per cent, is set to answer with a Deep Precision Strike initiative — about a dozen European allies, some USD 50 billion over the decade, spanning ranges from 300 to beyond 2,000 kilometres and expected to include Germany, France and the Baltics. It is likely Keir Starmer's last summit before Andy Burnham succeeds him around 20 July (Reuters, 7 Jul; FT, 7 Jul).
This week: the congressional review window on the 24 June F110 engine notification lapses; watch whether the disapproval move gains signatures and whether the S-400's removal is set as a firm precondition for anything Trump offered Erdoğan on camera.
Watch: does Washington's new openness to co-production — the ATACMS signed, AMRAAM edging closer — reach the tier Kyiv needs now, or does the PAC-3 stay something Washington maintains in Europe but will not yet let it build?
