On Wednesday 2 October 2024, the Ministry of Defence sent a letter to the House of Representatives on structural strengthening of European production of ammunition and defence equipment. The KIVI Working Group on Politics and Defence Technology offered a number of comments and suggested questions on this to the Permanent Committee on Defence.
The Politics and Defence Engineering working group of the Royal Institute of Engineers (KIVI) has submitted the following response to the progress report on structural strengthening of the European production of ammunition and defence equipment that the Minister and State Secretary of Defence presented to the Lower House on 2 October 2024 the response has been prepared based on publicly available documents and defence technology knowledge and experience. The comments and questions concern technological or related aspects only.
It is war in Europe......That is why we are strengthening production with great urgency.....
Perhaps a good way to emphasise urgency, but there is no war situation in the Netherlands now. However, with the war in Ukraine, it is also no longer a time of peace, as we have been used to in recent decades. A formal state of war, with a declaration of war etc., has become unlikely at this time. It seems important to the working group to adapt legislation accordingly.
With this declaration of urgency, it might be expected that proposals, measures and concrete results would follow each other in quick succession. However, the Boswijk/Tuinman initiative note is dated 31 January 2024 and the "task force on production security" was launched in September 2023.
The working group therefore finds it disappointing, to say the least, that at present few if any concrete results in the form of orders, production and (re)supply of units are visible, and that some studies will continue until mid-2025 before a start can be made on implementation. Which could then take several more years in an overburdened industry.
The working group's questions and comments:on each of the proposals in the Boswijk/Tuinman own-initiative note can be found here.
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The Hague, 8 October 2024
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Photo: Ministry of Defence
