European Air Transport Fleet Launched

>Launch of a European air transport fleet is one of the initiatives decided Nov. 10 by European defense ministers. (Alenia photo)European Defence Ministers, meeting in the Steering Board of the European Defence Agency, launched today concrete initiatives and projects for improving European military capabilities. Decisions were taken on programmes related to air transport, maritime surveillance and helicopters, amongst others.>> "This is the concrete follow-up to the discussions which took place at the Informal EU Defence Ministers meeting in Deauville early October. We are seeing today that the Agency can very quickly translate political intentions into concrete proposals. These programmes will create tangible European capabilities and improve the capacity for crisis management operations, said Head of the Agency Javier Solana, who chaired the meeting.>> European Air Transport Fleet> European Defence Ministers launched today EDA work on establishing a European Air Transport Fleet (EATF). A Declaration of Intent on participation in the initiative was signed by Defence Ministers of Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.>> The EATF aims at reducing European air transport shortfalls by pooling aircraft such as the A400M and C130. Participation can take different forms: making aircraft available; purchasing, providing or exchanging flying hours; or to provide and benefit from shared and/or pooled support functions (training, maintenance, etc.). Milestones have been set with the aim of reaching EATF initial operational capability by the next decade.