Europe

Defence and security across Europe and NATO — procurement, posture and alliance politics.

HMS Prince of Wales in NATO's High North: What Britain's Carrier Mission Achieves

HMS Prince of Wales in NATO's High North: What Britain's Carrier Mission Achieves

British F-35B jets have flown NATO air policing missions from HMS Prince of Wales off Iceland, the first time the alliance has generated such patrols from a European aircraft carrier. The deployment places the Royal Navy flagship at the centre of collective defence in the High North. The Ministry of Defence announced the mission on 6 July, as Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis visited the carrier alongside Icelandic Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir. Operating under NATO command as part
Analysis Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
Rolls-Royce Breaks Ground on Derby Reactor Site to Power AUKUS Submarines

Rolls-Royce Breaks Ground on Derby Reactor Site to Power AUKUS Submarines

Rolls-Royce Submarines broke ground on Friday on a new manufacturing facility in Derby that will more than double the size of its reactor site, expanding capacity to build nuclear propulsion units for the Royal Navy and Australia's future attack submarines under the AUKUS pact. The work at the Raynesway site will add more than 100,000 square metres of manufacturing and office space and create 1,170 skilled jobs, the company said. It forms part of a plan first announced in June 2023 to double th
News Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
Royal Navy Launches Combat-Proven Nyan Strike Drone From Warship for First Time
Photo courtesy of BAE Systems

Royal Navy Launches Combat-Proven Nyan Strike Drone From Warship for First Time

The Royal Navy and British Army have launched a domestically built strike drone from a warship at sea for the first time, a step towards a fleet that pairs crewed vessels with cheap uncrewed weapons. The trial saw the Nyan One-Way Effector, a small attack drone made by BAE Systems subsidiary Callen-Lenz, launched from the experimentation ship XV Patrick Blackett off the south coast of England last month. It formed part of Exercise Neptune Reach under Project Vantage, a Royal Navy programme set
Analysis Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
Why Europe Is Turning to Ukraine for Missile Production

Why Europe Is Turning to Ukraine for Missile Production

Ukraine and France are negotiating a licence that would allow Kyiv to build SCALP cruise missiles on its own soil, the clearest sign yet that European missile production is moving toward the country those weapons were recently built to supply. Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed the talks on 29 June, saying there had been steady progress on intellectual property and the mechanics of standing up a production line, while cautioning that no deal was final. The negotiations followed a meeti
Analysis Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
Israel's SPYDER Keeps Winning Europe's Air-Defence Race
Photo courtesy of RAFAEL

Israel's SPYDER Keeps Winning Europe's Air-Defence Race

Romania's agreement to buy Israel's SPYDER air-defence system in a framework worth more than €2 billion, signed in late June, is the largest export contract in the history of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the second-largest deal ever recorded by Israel's defence industry. It confirms that Israeli air defence has secured a durable place in the European market, and it points to the quality that increasingly sets SPYDER apart from its competitors. The system can be sold without American permi
Analysis Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
UK Adds £15 Billion to Defence Budget, Still Lags NATO Allies

UK Adds £15 Billion to Defence Budget, Still Lags NATO Allies

The UK pledged an additional £15 billion for its armed forces and lifted planned defence spending to almost £300 billion over four years, in a package delivered by Prime Minister Keir Starmer that fell short of the increase military chiefs had demanded and left Britain trailing its main NATO allies. The Defence Investment Plan, published on Tuesday after a delay of more than a year, will raise annual defence spending from £54 billion to almost £80 billion by 2029, taking it to 2.7% of economic
News Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
US-Italy Military Ties Deepen Even as the Trump-Meloni Feud Sours the Alliance

US-Italy Military Ties Deepen Even as the Trump-Meloni Feud Sours the Alliance

When President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni arrive in Ankara next week for the NATO summit on 7-8 July, it will be the first time they have shared a room since their relationship dissolved into public insult. The optics will be studied closely. Yet the more revealing story runs beneath the diplomacy: the military relationship between Washington and Rome has rarely been deeper, and much of its recent growth materialised just before the politics fell apart. The quarrel has been
Analysis Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics
UK Scraps Destroyer Plan for Hybrid Drone Warships in Naval Overhaul
Type 45 Destroyer HMS Dragon. UK Ministry of Defence.

UK Scraps Destroyer Plan for Hybrid Drone Warships in Naval Overhaul

Britain will build at least six new warships designed to command fleets of drones across the air, surface and seabed, moving away from earlier plans for a next-generation destroyer in favour of a “hybrid” navy built around crewed and uncrewed systems. The Royal Navy will procure a minimum of six Common Combat Vessels to replace its six ageing Type 45 air-defence destroyers, with the first ships expected from the early 2030s, the Ministry of Defence said on Monday. The decision shelves earlier p
News Europe
MGG Geopolitics

MGG Geopolitics