France calls for new EU ammo plan, speeding up satellite constellation

PARIS — France is calling for a new European plan to ramp up ammunition production, including of complex ordnance such as missiles, and wants to move forward at a meeting of European Union defense ministers in Warsaw this week, French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu said.

Lecornu will also ask the European Commission to speed up deployment and increase the budget for the IRIS² sovereign satellite constellation, the French minister said in a press briefing with his Danish counterpart, Troels Lund Poulsen, in Paris on Tuesday afternoon.

The defense ministers are meeting on April 2 and 3 to discuss a white paper on the future of European defense, developing and financing defense capabilities within the 27-nation bloc, and military support for Ukraine. Lecornu said policymakers need to move on to concrete measures to build up Europe’s defense industry.

“We have to stop with the big speeches, we have to stop with the packages of billions where we don’t always know exactly how it works,” Lecornu said. “We need things that are sometimes perhaps more modest, but very effective.”

The EU’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production “worked, we are therefore calling for a new edition of an ASAP-type facility,” according to Lecornu. The European Commission allocated €500 million ($540 million) through the program to boost ammo output, and now forecasts the bloc will produce 2 million artillery shells this year, from an estimated annual capacity of 230,000 rounds in early 2023.

A new ammo program should cover both simple and complicated munitions, including missiles, the French minister said. EU aid could help in a hypothetical scenario where missile maker MBDA sets up licensed production in European countries by adding to corporate financing and purchases by the host country, according to Lecornu.

France has support from other EU members to ask the Commission to speed up the IRIS² plan for a sovereign European satellite constellation, Lecornu said, declining to name the countries. The project is key to European strategic autonomy and is progressing, but has “an enormous challenge in terms of execution time,” the minister said.

The consortium picked to deploy the satellite constellation , led by SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat, is targeting full operational status for the early 2030s, pushing back IRIS² by several years compared to an EU timetable in March 2023 that envisaged full service in 2027.

“It’s an issue on which the commission is obviously eagerly awaited and on which we’d like to help,” Lecornu said. “It’s about money because it’s about speeding up, and money means speeding up. It may also be about simplifying the organization, the very governance of IRIS².”

“It makes sense, because we don’t have a solution, we don’t have a plan B, it’s either that or Starlink,” Lecornu said, referring to the satellite constellation operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

“The problem is, we have industrial time that is sometimes decorrelated from diplomatic time,” Lecornu said. “I’m trying to reduce diplomatic time, because there are still people making noise and doing complicated things, when in fact there are industrial opportunities.”

Denmark formalized the purchase of French Mistral short-range air defense missiles in Paris, and “we can do even more together,” Lund Poulsen said. “I hope also that it will be possible to make further announcements in the coming month about new procurements in France. I think the French defense companies have a lot to offer.”

The Danish government in February agreed to allocate an additional 50 billion kroner ($7.2 billion) to defense over the coming two years, boosting defense spending to more than 3% of GDP in 2025 and 2026.

The Nordic nation is looking to rebuild an air-defense bubble after decommissioning its Hawk missile systems in 2005. Denmark last month shortlisted the French-Italian SAMP/T and the U.S. Patriot air-defense batteries to cover the high end of the threat spectrum in its planned purchase , while MBDA France’s VL MICA system, Kongsberg’s NASAMS, the IRIS-T SLM from Germany’s Diehl Defence and the U.S. IFPC. are in competition for the lower end.

“We are in Denmark very concerned about the situation with the land-based air-defense system, because we don’t have any,” Lund Poulsen said. He expects the government will be able to make a decision “before summer.”

“I’m very happy that France also today have told me directly that they will be willing to collaborate with Denmark in that context,” the Danish minister said. “We have to see the offers that will come in, but let me just underline that it is of our interest also to have a decision before summer.”

Buying SAMP/T would make Denmark the first export customer in the EU for the long-range air-defense system, with France and Italy currently the only users in the 27-nation bloc. Ukraine uses a donated SAMP/T system to defend the Kyiv area, while Singapore is the only other export user following a purchase in 2013.

Meanwhile, Lund Poelsen commented on the American military presence in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, where the U.S. operates Pituffik Space Base. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to annex Greenland, citing security needs.

“Denmark has a long-lasting good relationship with the U.S., also about the security in Greenland,” the minister said. He said Denmark has an agreement from 1951 about the U.S. presence in the territory. “So if the U.S. would like to have more bases in Greenland, it is possible for them to raise that question to the Danish government. And will they be doing that? We’ll be willing to discuss that.”

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

巴黎——法国武装部队部长塞巴斯蒂安·勒科尔努表示，法国呼吁制定一项新的欧洲计划，以提高弹药产量，包括导弹等​​复杂军械的产量，并希望在本周于华沙举行的欧盟国防部长会议上推进该计划。

法国外长勒科尔努周二下午在巴黎与丹麦外长特罗尔斯·伦德·波尔森举行的联合新闻发布会上表示，勒科尔努还将要求欧盟委员会加快 IRIS² 主权卫星星座的部署并增加其预算。

国防部长们将于4月2日至3日举行会议，讨论一份关于欧洲防务未来的白皮书，探讨如何在欧盟27个成员国之间发展和资助国防能力，以及对乌克兰的军事支持。莱科尔努表示，政策制定者需要采取具体措施来发展欧洲的国防工业。

“我们必须停止那些慷慨激昂的演讲，停止那些动辄数十亿美元的援助计划，因为我们并不总是清楚这些计划的具体运作方式，”莱科尔努说。“我们需要一些或许更朴素一些，但却非常有效的措施。”

莱科尔努表示，欧盟的《支持弹药生产法案》“行之有效，因此我们呼吁尽快建立类似ASAP的设施”。欧盟委员会通过该计划拨款5亿欧元（5.4亿美元）以提高弹药产量，并预测欧盟今年将生产200万发炮弹，预计到2023年初，年产能将达到23万发。

法国国防部长表示，新的弹药计划应涵盖简易弹药和复杂弹药，包括导弹。勒科尔努认为，在导弹制造商MBDA于欧洲国家设立特许生产基地的设想情景下，欧盟援助可以通过增加企业融资和东道国采购的方式提供帮助。

法国外长勒科尔努表示，法国已获得其他欧盟成员国的支持，要求欧盟委员会加快推进IRIS²计划，该计划旨在建立一个自主的欧洲卫星星座。但他拒绝透露这些国家的名称。勒科尔努指出，该项目对欧洲的战略自主至关重要，目前正在推进中，但“在执行时间方面面临着巨大的挑战”。

由 SES、Eutelsat 和 Hispasat 领导的联盟被选中部署该卫星星座，目标是在 2030 年代初实现全面运行状态，与欧盟 2023 年 3 月制定的时间表（设想在 2027 年全面投入使用）相比，IRIS² 将推迟了几年。

“委员会显然非常期待解决这个问题，我们也希望能够提供帮助，”莱科尔努说。“这关乎资金，因为资金意味着加快速度。这或许也关乎简化IRIS²的组织架构和治理结构。”

“这很合理，因为我们没有解决方案，也没有备选方案，要么选择星链，要么选择它，”莱科努说道，他指的是埃隆·马斯克的SpaceX公司运营的卫星星座。

莱科尔努说：“问题在于，我们的工业时间有时与外交时间脱节。我正在努力减少外交时间，因为有些人仍然在制造噪音、做着复杂的事情，而实际上却存在着工业机会。”

丹麦在巴黎正式签署了从法国购买“西北风”短程防空导弹的协议，“我们还可以携手做更多事情，”伦德·波尔森说道。“我也希望下个月能够宣布更多关于在法国进行新采购的消息。我认为法国国防企业有很多值得称道的地方。”

丹麦政府在 2 月份同意在未来两年内额外拨款 500 亿克朗（72 亿美元）用于国防，使 2025 年和 2026 年的国防开支占 GDP 的比例超过 3%。

这个北欧国家在2005年退役了“鹰”式导弹系统后，正寻求重建防空体系。上个月，丹麦将法意联合研制的SAMP/T和美国的“爱国者”防空系统列入其采购计划的候选名单，以应对高端威胁；而MBDA法国公司的VL MICA系统、康斯伯格公司的NASAMS系统、德国迪尔防务公司的IRIS-T SLM系统以及美国的IFPC系统则在争夺低端威胁的市场份额。

“丹麦非常关注陆基防空系统的情况，因为我们目前还没有陆基防空系统，”伦德·波尔森说。他预计政府“在夏季之前”能够做出决定。

丹麦部长表示：“我很高兴法国今天也直接告诉我，他们愿意在这方面与丹麦合作。我们还要看看会收到哪些提议，但我要强调的是，我们也希望在夏季之前做出决定。”

购买SAMP/T系统将使丹麦成为欧盟首个出口该远程防空系统的客户，目前欧盟27个成员国中只有法国和意大利使用该系统。乌克兰使用一套捐赠的​​SAMP/T系统保卫基辅地区，而新加坡是除乌克兰外唯一一个出口用户，于2013年购买了该系统。

与此同时，伦德·波尔森就美国在格陵兰岛的军事存在发表了评论。格陵兰岛是丹麦的自治领地，美国在那里设有皮图菲克太空基地。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普曾以安全需要为由威胁要吞并格陵兰岛。

“丹麦与美国有着长期良好的关系，在格陵兰岛的安全问题上也是如此，”这位部长说。他表示，丹麦与美国于1951年签署了一项关于美国在格陵兰岛驻军的协议。“因此，如果美国希望在格陵兰岛增设军事基地，他们可以向丹麦政府提出这个问题。他们会这样做吗？我们愿意就此进行讨论。”

鲁迪·鲁伊滕贝格是《防务新闻》的欧洲记者。他的职业生涯始于彭博新闻社，拥有报道科技、大宗商品市场和政治方面的经验。