Although reported elsewhere, maybe not everyone here has seen that it all came a whole lot closer yesterday :diablo::eek:
EU governments agreed Monday to establish a joint military air squadron to improve their transport capabilities to far-flung operations such as Afghanistan, Africa or the Middle East.
The 27-nation bloc has had a long-standing shortfall in available military transport planes, and EU defense ministers meeting in Brussels hope to reduce this by pooling C-130s, the new Airbus A400 heavy lifter and other types of cargo aircraft.
Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have signed on to the initiative, which will be implemented by the European Defense Agency, the ministers said in a statement.
“Pooling European aircraft and services will improve the lift capabilities and alleviate a significant European shortfall,” agency director Alexander Weis said.
The agency has not yet determined how many aircraft would participate in the joint squadron. But defense agency officials have said they plan to concentrate the planes on one or two European air bases to make it easier to deploy them in an emergency.
In recent years, troops from EU nations have operated in places like Lebanon, Congo or Aceh in Indonesia. They have relied mainly on the U.S. or NATO for logistical support because of their lack of air transport.
The new, much-delayed prototype of the A400M, the first military plane produced by Europe’s Airbus consortium, is scheduled to take to the sky soon. About 200 will enter service in eight EU air forces starting in 2009.
The defense ministers’ statement agreed to boost the capabilities of the EU’s transport helicopter fleets by 2009. This would include upgrading the obsolescent Soviet-built helicopters still in air force inventories in Eastern Europe, and a long-term Franco-German-led project to develop a new heavy-duty transport chopper.
The ministers also said they would make sure that at least one of Europe’s five operational aircraft carriers will be at sea at all times. These would be escorted by destroyers and frigates from various other EU nations, which would also provide refueling and other logistics vessels.
The European Defense Agency was created in 2004 to boost cooperation, eliminate duplication and end fragmentation of the European defense market, which is worth about 30 billion euros a year.
“These programs will create tangible European capabilities and improve the capacity for crisis management operations,” said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who chaired the meeting.
Source Associated press / International Herald Tribune 10 Nov. 2008
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