High-power Microwave Pod for Drones proposed by Epirus

On 14 February, the Venture capital-backed startup Epirus unveiled a high-power microwave system capable of deploying on a drone. According to a company statement, the Leonidas Pod makes the company’s ground-based system designed to protect forward operating bases from incoming threats and mountable on a variety of other systems. This system is thought to address drone swarms rather than singular done threats. In fact, these swarms are a growing problem for the U.S military as it develops counter-unmanned aircrafts system capability.

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US and UK Army to Cooperate on Future Vertical Lift (FVL)

On 14 February, the army leaders from the United States and the United Kingdom signed a Future Vertical Lift Cooperative Program Feasibility Assessment project agreement on behalf of their re-spective countries' services, promising to collaborate to ensure interoperability between the two countries' future rotorcraft aviation forces. The two nations will share information regarding their rotorcraft requirements and future projects. Moreover, they will look into and evaluate new ideas for using coalition airpower in the lower-tier air domain, which is where Army aviation usually oper-ates.

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Indonesia’s Military Upgrade

On 10 February 2022, the Defence Ministers of Indonesia and France reached an agreement on two contracts to purchase the French-made Dassault Rafale fighter jets and Naval Group attack submarines that will be joining the Asiatic country’s arsenal soon

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Transformative Opportunities for European Defence with 5G Technology

Fifth-generation wireless technology, or 5G, is becoming increasingly popular among different sectors and industries. This new technology could also be a useful instrument for the European defence sector. It will provide next-generation connectivity and more unified network management to armed forces around the globe.

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Nord Stream 2, a Rift in the EU’s Response to Russia?

As tensions continue to build surrounding the possible invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military, one issue has stood out as a potential point of tension: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. A significant part of the European Union (EU) still depends on imported natural gas as a source of energy. A sizeable part of that comes from the Russian Federation, the primary import of natural gas to the EU, amounting to 40% of imports (Euractiv, 2022). In that context, any tension with Russia has the potential of having serious consequences for the energy supply of the Union. Russia has been known to use this leverage in negotiations in the past, such as when it turned off all supplies to Ukraine in January 2006 over a dispute regarding payments (Parfitt, the Guardian, 2006). At the time, this has pushed the EU member states to realise the danger of depending on Russia for energy, and incited them to pursue other sources, as well as increase storage capacity in case the EU’s supply was ever cut.

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