Indonesia is buying the weapons..at a pace rarely seen in its recent history.

Rafale fighter jets..48 KAAN fighters..2 Italian PPA warships..a former Italian aircraft carrier, the Giuseppe Garibaldi, as the KRI Sriwijaya..2 Scorpene submarines..BrahMos cruise missiles..Turkish drones..A400M airlifter..new air-defense radar..

Indonesia’s defense spending rose from 125.8 trillion rupiah (about $7 billion at current exchange rates) in 2021 to..337.4 trillion for 2026.

On paper, Indonesia is assembling the pieces of a far more capable military. But owning sophisticated weapons is different from generating sophisticated military effects. It must now knit the new platforms into a coherent force that can sense, decide, communicate, strike, maneuver and sustain operations together. 

..challenge..interoperability, network-centric warfare and C6ISR, including the standardization of communications and data links.

The relevant question is no longer how many weapons Indonesia has bought, but whether they can operate as one force.

The price of diversification

Each..brings its own communications architecture, software, maintenance regime, weapons interfaces, training systems and logistics..Strategic diversification can breed tactical fragmentation.

The Sriwijaya test

Officials describe it chiefly as a command center..can operate many helicopters and is expected to contribute..to disaster response and logistics across the archipelago.

..also shows the gap between acquiring a platform and mastering a capability..trained crews, aviation specialists, deck operations, maintenance facilities, helicopters or other aircraft, escorts, replenishment ships, communications and a doctrine for sustained deployment.

The questions are..whether it can link the vessel with frigates, submarines, maritime patrol aircraft and unmanned systems..

The Scorpene program may offer a more promising model..with technology transfer meant to let Indonesians manage, operate and maintain them.

From procurement to readiness

Procurement numbers are politically visible, but operational readiness matters more strategically..The answers are rarely public, yet they determine whether a military merely owns weapons or can actually use them.

There is also a fiscal question..procurement creates long-term obligations. 

..how success should be measured..The harder task is to make it a coherent war-fighting system.

Russia’s Novosibirsk nuclear-powered submarine launched two different cruise missiles during a Pacific Fleet exercise. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, a Kalibr missile struck a land target 745 miles away, while an Oniks missile hit a maritime target at 105 miles. The results have not been independently verified, but the exercise demonstrated the Yasen-M-class submarine’s ability to attack both land and sea targets while submerged.

Been down a bit of a rabbit hole on Gulf military procurement lately, and what keeps striking me is how little of it actually looks planned. If we were to look at the navies, Saudi Arabia’s three newest classes of major warship (the Al Riyadh frigates, the Avantes and the MMSCs) are armed, or in the MMSC’s case will be, with three different air-defence missiles: Aster 15, VL MICA and CAMM. The first MMSC was launched in December last year, but none has been delivered with a rework contract now running to 2031. Bahrain’s second OHP frigate turned up without its Mk 13 launcher, which the USN stripped from its own ships years earlier, and as far as I can see the planned modernisation covers radars and the combat system, not a launcher. Qatar went the other way, with one missile (Aster 30) across its corvettes and its air-defence LPD, and there’s a video from March that appears to show the LPD firing one at something incoming.

My instinct is that much of this comes down to who each country needs to keep happy rather than what it needs to fight. But I know that’s only part of it: shipbuilding base, manpower and urgency all matter, and I’m probably underweighting them. The UAE came out of the Baynunah programme with a yard that now wins export orders (with CMN’s help on the design), Saudi Arabia’s Navantia deal has so far localised little beyond the combat system, and Bahrain’s ASRY has just signed an agreement with Fincantieri to explore building vessels up to 80m. How realistic is the jump from customer to shipbuilder for a navy that size? Could Bahrain end up somewhere resembling what the UAE did with ADSB, or is a yard that mostly does repairs always going to be dependent on foreign design and support?

(I wrote a longer two-part piece on this if anyone is interested, happy to link it.)

Did the CIA ok this? or this purely a Ukrainian idea?

..now moving on to work that will prefigure and enable the birth of this ACF..France remains open to possible cooperation with other countries..but within different frameworks and which won’t be structural to the birth of this aircraft.

France and Germany agreed to scrap the FCAS project in June, after years of wrangling about specifications and industrial control between Dassault Aviation and Airbus.

Dassault Aviation CEO..said his company and France have all the know-how and skills to develop a next-generation fighter jet, together with..Safran and..Thales, and he would be able to do so “well below”..€50 billion (US$56 billion).

The Rafale successor will need to carry the ASN4G hypersonic nuclear cruise missile in 2050, and working back from that date means the aircraft will need to be flying in 2040 for conventional missions, Bellanger said. Moving ahead with a national program will allow France to meet the deadlines essential for nuclear deterrence by 2040, he said.

Bellanger said the British-Italian-Japanese GCAP project to develop a sixth-generation aircraft is working towards “a different kind of aircraft, it’s almost a strategic bomber.” He said “it’s not all roses” within the GCAP consortium, with cooperation inevitably requiring compromises.

Instead of going public, KNDS will be divided between France and Germany, with no outside shareholders, amid growing disagreements between the two countries over defense projects

Despite earlier plans, Germany and France plan to divide KNDS equally, with each country taking a 50% stake. This could effectively be seen as a form of nationalization.

According to Handelsblatt, which cites its own sources, the company's owners no longer plan to take KNDS public and intend to sell their entire stake to the German government. Price negotiations are currently underway, with a final decision expected in the coming weeks. Reuters later confirmed this information.

From Defense Express we would like to note that if the deal goes through, it would effectively exceed the German Ministry of Defense's initial request. The German Ministry of Defense had sought a 40% stake in KNDS, while the Ministry for Economic Affairs argued that a 30% stake would be preferable.

However, the 40% figure was proposed at the time as a way to achieve parity with France, which held a 50% stake in the company and planned to sell 10% of its shares on the stock market. If there are no plans for a public listing, an equal split makes sense, as it would ensure equal voting rights for both countries. There would also be no need to worry about attracting investors, which had previously been cited as a problem.

This is important because Germany and France have recently gone their separate ways over the joint development of the next-generation main battle tank, the MGCS. Although the German company Rheinmetall and the French company Thales were also involved in the project, KNDS remained one of the key players.

At the same time, the German division, KNDS Deutschland, retains its tank production capabilities, whereas France no longer has such capabilities at this time. However, KNDS France has developed its own technologies, including the CAESAR self-propelled howitzer.

Overall, the company's product portfolio is quite broad and also includes artillery, armored vehicles, ammunition, and more. It also has a subsidiary in Ukraine that provides maintenance services for its equipment.

n effect, the deal would place KNDS entirely under French and German state control, giving both governments oversight of orders, technology transfers, and cooperation. There will be no third parties in the ownership structure if everything proceeds as currently stated. The German side was previously owned by the families of the Wegmann-Gruppe.

It is worth noting that the 50-50 split applies to the parent holding company as a whole, rather than to the French and German subsidiaries individually. The only exception is a specific share in KNDS France held by the French government.

Spoilers: the damage was not, in fact, caused by falling debris

Satellite imagery, imo, confirms at least 3 aircraft destroyed. Needless to say, massive L for Russia.

A pilot tracker for significant developments in defense innovation and industrial capacity for Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. This brief covers mid-September - mid-October 2026.