The golden triangle; Dutch Defence Industrial Base
Early June of this year the Associated Press published an article about “the bigger nations that account for the bulk of Europe’s defence spending”. The Netherlands is amongst those countries,…
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Autonomous armed drones – In the loop or on the loop?
The current debate about the dangers of fully automatic weapon systems is particularly important. An underestimated aspect however is the extent to which the already existing unmanned weapon systems like…
F-35 might undercut European arms export policy
…have been used in similar smaller operations until as recent as October 2014. It is evident that fighter aircraft are not weapons to be ignored when speaking about human rights….
Shipyard Damen wants to build for Azerbaijan
…427 million dollars. Azerbaijan spent $ 3.4 billion in the same year on the military. In Armenia about 4 percent of the Gross National Product was spent on defense, in…
War industry lobby and EU Defence Summit June 25-26
…of the Defence Summit. This should lead to a public debate about the European interests and values we should promote and protect, and the capabilities we need to face evolving…
Arming against Putin
…Poland intents to upgrade its military forces for about $42 billion over the next ten years. The military modernization program will include a missile defense shield, anti-aircraft systems, submarines, combat…
Arms industry fuels and profits from refugee tragedy
In the last weeks, news has been filled with stories about the ‘refugee crisis’, tens of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa desperately trying to enter…
Higher defence budget for new submarines
…under control. He had bad memories about his own time in government when costs of a similar project had run out of hand. The Walrus scandal is one of the…
Voice crying in the wilderness
…world and export permissions are even given for 184 destinations (of about 195 nations in the world). The permissions give us a look into the polices of governments (which countries…
Long road to arms exports transparency, the Dutch case
…raises questions about criterion 2, as Jordan is part of the coalition waging war in Yemen (see previous blog) which was reason for many other denials in the same year….