Finmeccanica In The News

Eurotech: partnership agreement signed with Finmeccanica

Amaro, ITALY - July 28, 2006.

Eurotech and Finmeccanica Join Together to Develop New Products for
Aerospace, Defense,

Safety, Transportation and Energy Markets.

Eurotech S.p.A. has today signed a partnership agreement with Finmeccanica
S.p.A. The agreement is a commercial and scientific collaboration drawing on
Eurotech's R&D capabilities and Finmeccanica's international position as
supplier of choice for complex solutions and systems in the Aerospace,
Defence, Safety, Transport and Energy sectors.

Eurotech and Finmeccanica have identified several products of common
interest which may be jointly developed. These include: networking equipment
and integration devices for communication systems; wearable computers for
paramilitary, civil or industrial purposes; real-time video tracking with
integrated image processing systems; embedded PC for a wide spectrum of
applications.

With reference to identify interest's areas, Finmeccanica will accede to
Eurotech's technology and products, available or in phase of development, to
realize innovative solutions to present it to its reference markets.

FINMECCANICA Is Italy's leading high-tech company, operating in the design
and manufacture of helicopters, civil and military aircrafts,
aerostructures, satellites, space infrastructure, missiles and defence
electronics. It plays a leading role in the European aerospace and defence
industry, and participates in some of the biggest international programmes
in the sector through well-established alliances with European and American
partners. Finmeccanica also boasts significant manufacturing assets and
skills in the transport and energy. The group is listed on the Milan stock
exchange, and operates in Italy and abroad through its companies and joint
ventures. It employs around 57,000 staff in total.

As part of its drive to maintain and build on its technological expertise,
Finmeccanica spends 15% of its revenues on research and development.

EUROTECH Eurotech (ETH.MI) operates in the research, development, production
and marketing of miniature computers (Nano-PC) and high performance
computers (HPC).

www.eurotech.com

A split-second glimpse, a beep -- and an arrest

The Pinellas Sheriff's Office's new high-tech equipment needs just a
millisecond to check a suspicious tag number.

By JACOB H. FRIES
St. Petersburg Times (florida)

All sheriff's Deputy Matt Ingoglia had to do was drive. The infrared cameras
on his cruiser did the rest, instantly scanning the tag of every car he
passed at Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg.

After 15 minutes, his laptop beeped. The cameras had found what Ingolia
always looks for but has found only once: a stolen car.

"Oh, it took me by surprise," said Ingolia, a patrol deputy for five years.
"This technology is amazing."So amazing that the Pinellas County Sheriff's
Office bought four of the "Mobile Plate Hunters" and installed them this
week. The $20,000 devices are essentially a pair of mounted cameras that can
scan thousands of license plates during a deputy's shift and check them
against a database of stolen vehicles.

One day, officials said, the cameras could be connected to other databases,
including a list of wanted fugitives and scofflaws.

"We feel this is going to be a great tool and we hope to get more units as
time goes by," Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats said Thursday.

"Obviously folks who are involved in stealing cars are also involved in
other criminal activity," he said. "This will help us identify those
offenders."

Coats said he thinks his agency is the first in the Tampa Bay area to
acquire the technology, which is beginning to appear at law enforcement
agencies around the country and is already widely used in Europe.

The plate hunters can read as many as 10,000 plates in a single shift,
according to manufacturer Remington Elsag, a North Carolina company. By
hand, an industrious deputy might check 250 in a day, officials say.

The technology is not without critics who raise concerns about invasions of
privacy, potential abuse and erroneous traffic stops.

Bruce Howie, chair of the legal panel of the Pinellas American Civil
Liberties Union, said he fears mistakes could lead to wrongful traffic stops
and violate Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches.

"When you turn the job over to machines, you have to redouble your concerns
that errors are going to occur," Howie said.

Howie said such license-plate-scanning devices, like facial recognition
technology, are producing a society in which a person's every move will one
day be recorded and scrutinized.

"Ultimately the government will have the ability to track people without
probable cause, or even with any particular interest, and then use that
information after the fact to invade privacy," he said.

But Coats said scanning license plates is standard police practice. Adding
cameras to the mix simply helps law enforcement officers do their jobs more
efficiently and find stolen cars, he said. Sheriff's officials said an
agency in Ohio saw its recovery of stolen vehicles increase by 50 percent.

"Law enforcement has a responsibility to enforce laws and apprehend
criminals," Coats said. "This is just another tool for making our job
easier. I don't see in any way where it even begins to infringe on someone's
rights."

And a lot of cars are stolen - 4,195 in Pinellas last year and 6,264 in
Hillsborough.

As of June this year, 547 vehicles have been stolen in the Pinellas
sheriff's jurisdiction, but only 267 have been recovered. The Sheriff's
Office covers unincorporated parts of the county and several municipalities,
including Dunedin, Seminole, Safety Harbor and Oldsmar.

The cameras can be mounted on different parts of the cruiser, either to scan
tags on vehicles ahead of a deputy or pointing straight out to scan tags of
parked cars, as Ingolia did at Tyrone Square Mall. Deputies could even angle
the lenses to scan cars while they park alongside a road writing reports.

Using infrared light, the cameras work day or night - even in the rain - and
automatically snap photos of passing license plates up to 40 feet away. They
even catch tags bolted to vehicles moving at 75 mph.

A computer in the cruiser's trunk then converts the picture into number and
letters, using character-recognition software.

It instantly checks the plate number against a database of 100,000 stolen
vehicles and plates, updated daily by the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement.

An alarm sounds when a match is made - it takes milliseconds - but a deputy
will always verify the accuracy of the match before making a traffic stop,
officials said.

On Thursday, Ingolia demonstrated how the device works. With the cameras
mounted on the trunk, he drove around the Sheriff's Office parking lot where
a car had been planted with a stolen plate.

Once, he hadn't even backed out of a parking spot before the cameras found
the target plate, spotting it from an odd angle. The alarm sounded in the
passenger compartment.

"See," he said, "these things are good."

AIR FORCE RESERVE COMMAND OFFICIALS MULL PURSUING OWN JCA FLEET

Friday, July 28, 2006
Inside the Air Force
By: Carlo Munoz

Top Air Force Reserve Command and Air Force Mobility Command officials have
initiated preliminary discussions focused on possibly adding the
next-generation Joint Cargo Aircraft to the AFRC toolkit, a service two-star
tells Inside the Air Force.

Maj. Gen. Martin Mazick said plans and requirements officials from both
organizations, as well as representatives from each organization's strategic
plans and programs shops, have been working closely on looking at assigning
some number of JCAs to Reserve units.

"They've been talking about this," Mazick said, adding he and AFMC Commander
Maj. Gen. Tom Kane have discussed plans for how AFRC officials would buy
JCAs.

Those talks have focused on "the construct of what type of mission the JCA
would perform," Mazick said during a July 26 telephone interview. The Office
of the Secretary of Defense late last year directed the Air Force and the
Army to merge their separate airlifter programs under the JCA umbrella and
seek a common airframe.

Earlier this year, the Army -- which defense officials say has the lead on
the joint program -- issued a solicitation seeking proposals to build the
new dual-service airlifter.

The JCA request for proposals paints a broad sketch of an agile,
medium-mobility plane commanders intend to use for hauling cargo, taking
supplies directly to troops deployed in rugged areas and performing "aerial
sustainment missions" according to officials and documents.

The services expect to garner final approval for a joint program office
charter by July 1.

The multiple-mission skill set envisioned for the JCA dovetails neatly with
a service-wide movement to transition non-active units into a more
operational force, Mazick said.

He added that with the service's Guard and Reserve units expected to carry
more of the operational workload, the JCA could provide those reconstituted
forces with the equipment to do so.

"Our Air Force is not afraid to ask their Reserve component to get into
multiple missions," the two-star said. "I can tell you that, and AFMC is
very happy to have us included on any mission multiplier [platform] that is
out there."

Issued March 17, the JCA solicitation states the cargo hauler will perform
"wartime operations, non-wartime operations and homeland security missions."
The RFP describes an airlifter that could carry a varying amount of cargo
and reflects the Army and Air Force officials' desires for the plane to take
off and land from "unimproved runways" in austere.

But Mazick was quick to point out that the airlifter's eventual operational
attributes must jibe with Guard and Reserve deployment time lines for AFRC
to field a JCA fleet. As an example, the two-star cited AFRC C-17 units that
are deployed for no more than two weeks, adding that setup "lent itself" to
the command's construct.

"Depending on how the JCA operational construct is going to look, would I
have to deploy people and for how long?" Mazick said.

He added the deployment issue is the subject of the ongoing internal service
discussions between AFMC and the Reserve command. Alenia Aeronautica and L-3
Communications are offering a C-27J aircraft, an upgraded version of the Air
Force's retired C-27 Spartan. The C-27J, based on the C-27 airframe, will
have a different avionics architecture, propulsion system, landing gear and
more.

Raytheon and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company's CASA North
America have teamed up to offer two aircraft for the Army's FCA program --
the C-295 and CN-235. Lockheed Martin indicated last week it will pitch a
shorter version of its C-130J airlifter.

As the next-generation airlifter moves "from paper to being real," it would
be difficult to assess any details regarding AFRC procurement or deployment
of the aircraft until the services' gain a clearer picture of the just what
the plane will be capable of, Mazick said.

"I don't think there is a plan yet," Mazick said. "We're still in kind of a
dialogue as they settle on how many JCAs there will be, who should fly them
and those sorts of things. What I can tell you is that we are not excluded."
-- Carlo Munoz

EUROPEANS MAKE INROADS IN THE U.S. MILITARY MARKET

The Army's choice of an EADS unit to build helicopters confirms the
Pentagon's lack of investment in such craft.

By Tim Ripley, Financial Times

Last month's selection of Eurocopter, a subsidiary of the European aerospace
consortium EADS, to supply more than 322 light helicopters to the U.S. Army
was the first major penetration of the American military helicopter market
by a European defense company. And it represents a major shift in Pentagon
procurement policies.

European helicopter executives are now gearing up for a major push to win a
crown jewel of current global helicopter deals - the U.S. Air Force's CSAR-X
rescue helicopter program. The contract, valued at $8 billion to $10
billion, is due to be awarded by the end of the year.

Although Italy's AgustaWestland, a unit of Rome-based Finmeccanica,
celebrated winning the contract to make the VHX U.S. presidential helicopter
with an enhanced version of its Merlin last year, the deal was for only 19
aircraft.

Industry analysts said that the Army's light utility helicopter deal was a
more important one for European companies to win because it would result in
their products ending up in day-to-day use with the largest operator of
helicopters in NATO.

By awarding the UH-145 contract to EADS, the Army has confirmed that the
U.S. helicopter industry's lack of investment over the last 15 years may
have allowed the Europeans to gain a lead in conventional helicopters.

This was the consequence of the Pentagon pumping billions of dollars into
projects such as the V-22 Osprey tilt rotor and the now-canceled high-tech
Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter, and effectively starving the U.S.
helicopter industry of work on more mundane aircraft for more-routine
missions.

EADS also successfully followed AgustaWestland's lead and teamed with a U.S.
prime contractor, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. of Stratford, Conn., and promised
to assemble the UH-145 at its expanded facility in Columbus, Miss.

This allowed EADS to defeat U.S. rivals Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. of Fort
Worth and MD Helicopters Inc. of Mesa, Ariz., as well as AgustaWestland.

The $1.7-billion light utility helicopter program could grow near $3 billion
if EADS can deliver the helicopters on time. The first aircraft are expected
to enter service next year.

The next six months are expected to see U.S. and European helicopter giants
wind up their campaigns to win the CSAR-X project.

About 141 large rescue machines are wanted by the Air Force to replace its
aging HH-60 Blackhawks.

AgustaWestland and its teammate Lockheed Martin Corp. hope to capitalize on
its success in the presidential helicopter contest and is offering a version
of its Merlin to be built in the U.S. Boeing Co. hopes its proven Chinook
will fit the bill, and Sikorsky wants its S-92 to win.

Sikorsky has had to fund the development of the S-92 out of its own
resources and so far has only secured major military orders from Canada.
Without a U.S. government order the fate of S-92 is uncertain.

AgustaWestland's Merlin also needs an orders boost if it is to remain in
production well into the next decade.

Work on the VHX has allowed Merlin production facilities in Britain and
Italy to keep going for the rest of the decade but delays by Britain and
Italy in buying new Merlins have raised fears that the company might run out
of Merlin work.

Overall, though, business prospects in the rotary-wing sector remain good.
Last month EADS won an additional order for 34 NH-90 transport helicopters,
and AgustaWestland finally secured a deal worth around $1.5 billion to
upgrade 80 British Army and Royal Navy Lynx helicopters.

America's helicopter manufacturers also have strong order books from the
Pentagon to keep them in work for many years. Bell is producing 368 armed
reconnaissance helicopters under a $2.2-billion contract for the Army, as
well as replacing the Marine Corps' fleet of Cobra gunships and Huey utility
helicopters.

Boeing has a large backlog of Apache and Chinook work for the Army and
several international customers, as well as a large stake in the V-22 tilt
rotor program which is at last moving into production.

Sikorsky is also a shareholder in the V-22 and has good order book for new
versions of its Blackhawks from the Army, while the Navy is moving to
replace its Sea Hawk maritime helicopters with new helicopters from the
Connecticut company.

U.S. ARMY MAY GET $10B EQUIPMENT BOOST

WASHINGTON, July 28 (UPI) -- Congress may give the U.S. Army and Marines $10
billion extra to replace and repair equipment used in America's wars.
U.S. House of Representatives appropriators want to add at least $10 billion
to the supplemental bridge fund for military operations contained in the
fiscal 2007 Defense spending bill that the House passed in June,
CongressDaily reported Thursday.

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young,
R-Fla., and ranking member Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., both said Wednesday that
the military's ground forces needed billions of dollars guaranteed by Oct.
1, the beginning of the next fiscal year, to repair and replace equipment
destroyed or damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This is a serious problem and this is not something you want to put off,"
Young said. "It doesn't need to wait until next year to get fixed."

U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker has said repeatedly that the
Army needs $17.1 billion in fiscal 2007 to "reset" or restore the service's
equipment stocks. The Marine Corps has estimated it will have an equipment
bill next year that could soar as high as $11.9 billion, though Young
estimated that number to be between $2 billion and $5 billion, CongressDaily
said.

Schoomaker has lamented the slow-moving pace of enacting wartime
supplemental spending bills, which he says have led to delays in depot work
for much-needed ground equipment.

The base fiscal 2007 Defense spending bill and the accompanying bridge fund
now set aside $6 billion to reset Army equipment, and a lesser amount for
the Marines. Army leaders had hoped to have around $12 billion approved for
their equipment needs by the beginning of the fiscal year, the report said.

Alcatel Alenia Space Expands the Implementation of Seemage

Seemage Eliminates CAD Drawings
Boston, MA-July 20, 2006-Seemage, the leader in facilitating
communication by making product data interactive, today announced that
Alcatel Alenia Space, a global player in satellite space programs has
increased its performance and efficiency with Seemage's solutions.

As reported in "Industrie et Technologies," Alcatel Alenia Space is
constantly under pressure to work faster and more effectively. The Assembly,
Integration, and Test (AIT) division of Alcatel Alenia Space validates and
qualifies satellites under design and construction. Alcatel Alenia Space
turned to Seemage to improve product collaboration, creation of technical
publications and the definition of assembly instructions.

Pierre Lipsky needed to significantly reduce the cost and delivery time of
the satellite validation processes. "I had to work along two axes: solve the
difficulties in working with large assemblies in CATIA V4 and find a way to
repurpose CAD data from multiple CAD tools in order to improve the processes
of the integration engineers and assembly planners," explains Pierre Lipsky,
in charge of AIT.

Through the implementation of Seemage's product suite, Alcatel Alenia Space
was able to reduce time spent on the generation of assembly instructions and
design of test configurations by 25 percent. "Using Seemage we were able to
quickly visualize the test configurations that we were unable to see using
CATIA," Lipsky said. Very quickly, the suppliers benefited from the tools
through a qualitative improvement in exchanges. We ended up doing project
reviews between sites, enabling us to directly manipulate complex models."

AIT has expanded the use of Seemage's software across the entire product
lifecycle. "The exchange and communication of data has been dramatically
improved with Seemage's products," said Lipsky. "The overall gain is 50
percent over the old process. Moreover, the fact that we can directly
repurpose CAD models ensures that we have all the data needed to establish
processes rapidly and accurately."

This fall AIT will completely eliminate the process of using CAD generated
drawings. Instead operators will use the Seemage suite of tools to validate
designs, installation procedures and general assembly steps.

"Alcatel Alenia Space is a great example of a customer that has discovered
huge returns by improving the way they communicate product information,"
said Chris Williams, CEO of Seemage. "Our tools' ability to deal with large
multi-CAD assemblies is allowing the worlds largest manufacturing companies
to improve their methods for communicating product information to assembly
and field service personal. Through our tools customers are justifying their
PLM investments by extending the PLM reach through communicating
contextualized Product Data to all organizations and functions involved
throughout the product lifecycle. A number of our customers are using
Seemage tools to deliver complete 3D interactive, serial number specific,
Product Information to their customers."

About Alcatel Alenia Space
Alcatel Alenia Space is the European leader in satellite systems, at the
forefront of orbit infrastructures. Created in July 2005, the company brings
together the vast experience and know-how of Alcatel Space and Alenia Spazio
to form a new leading force in European space technology. Alcatel Alenia
Space represents a worldwide standard for space development that impacts
everybody's future: from navigation to telecommunications, from meteorology
to environmental monitoring, from defense to science observation. Alcatel
Alenia Space is an affiliate of Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) (67%)
and Finmeccanica (Milan: SIFI.MI, FNC.IM) (33%)

About Seemage, Inc.
As the market leader in presenting interactive product information, Seemage
greatly increases the effectiveness of individuals involved with product
information for product development, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and
customer service.

The Seemage application suite can be deployed as part of a PLM solution
through an open XML architecture or as a desktop productivity tool. In
either scenario the Seemage authored information are fully associative to
changes made within the CAD data.

Seemage currently serves a wide range of manufacturing and engineering
firms, including John Deere, PSA Peugeot Citro?n, Renault F1, Faurecia,
Delphi, SNECMA, Alcatel Alenia Space, and Thales.

For more information about Seemage, visit the company Web site at HYPERLINK
"http://www10.mcadcafe.com/goto.php?http://www.seemage.com"www.seemage.com,
call 781-482-1021, or send an e-mail to HYPERLINK
"http://www10.mcadcafe.com/common/request_form/request_form.php?email=aW5mb0
BzZWVtYWdlLmNvbQ==&subject=Seemage%20Eliminates%20CAD%20Drawings&attach=no&a
rticle=yes&articleid=290404"Email Contact.

GKN Aerospace Wins $50m Contract to Supply the Complete Future Lynx Airframe

(Source: GKN Aerospace; issued July 25, 2006)

With the announcement on Thursday 22nd June by the Minister for Defence
Procurement, Lord Drayson, of the award of the Future Lynx contract to
AgustaWestland, GKN Aerospace has signed, in parallel, the Partnering
Charter and Future Lynx contract with AgustaWestland.

GKN Aerospace will supply the complete, assembled airframe for 70 Future
Lynx helicopters for the Royal Navy and Army. The Company will be
responsible for managing the entire supply chain for this work and will
assemble the airframe at its base in Yeovil, prior to delivery to
AgustaWestland. This contract is valued at approximately ?50 million through
to 2016.

Rob Lewis, General Manager & Operations Director, GKN Aerospace ? Yeovil:

"This represents the culmination of three years of effort to secure the
contract and is the result of a true team effort to provide an elegant and
efficient solution which delivers significant cost reductions for the Future
Lynx Airframe."

The airframe for the Future Lynx represents a considerable progression from
the current Lynx airframe which is also supplied, fully assembled, by GKN
Aerospace Structures at Yeovil. GKN Aerospace has worked with the
AgustaWestland design team throughout the development cycle to achieve a new
and less complex design. The result is a new Lynx airframe that will
continue to be manufactured in aluminium but will incorporate monolithic
machined components to reduce the component count by some 30%.

GKN Aerospace has been supplying assemblies for the Lynx airframe for over
20 years, and was contracted to supply the complete, assembled airframe some
5 years ago. The Company has supplied all Lynx airframes to AgustaWestland
since that time including airframes for a number of successful export
programmes.

Future Lynx is the launch programme under the new Strategic Partnering
Arrangement (SPA) that the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and AgustaWestland
(AW) have signed. An integral requirement of the SPA has been the back to
back signature by AgustaWestland of the Future Lynx Contract and Partnering
Charters with the six major suppliers to the Future Lynx Programme ? one of
these being GKN Aerospace.

GKN Aerospace is the aerospace operation of GKN plc, one of the world's
largest engineering companies. GKN Aerospace has a turnover in excess of
$1bn and some 6,000 personnel employed in 21 'centres of manufacturing
excellence' around the globe. The company specializes in the supply of
lightweight metallic and high performance composite structures, transparency
systems and equipment, and engineering services to prime airframe
manufacturers.

In a number of its fields of expertise GKN Aerospace holds the world lead,
including the production of composite assemblies for airframes and engines,
specialist metallic processes and the manufacture of advanced cockpit
transparencies and coatings. As part of the company's UAV development
strategy, GKN Aerospace is also involved with the J-UCAS programme.

BOEING MACON LOSES AIRCRAFT BID

Macon Mississippi Telegraph Star

By: Gene Rector

Boeing Macon apparently will not be a player in final assembly of the Joint
Cargo Aircraft, a decision that leaves 500 employees with no immediate
options should local work on the C-17 be discontinued next year.

Alenia North America had mentioned the Macon plant as a possible assembly
and final checkout point for its C-27J, one of four aircraft competing for
the pending, new U.S. Army and Air Force joint cargo program.

Instead, the Alenia group that includes L-3 Communications and Boeing chose
Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Fla.

"Cecil Field is an ideal location for final assembly of the C-27J," Boeing's
Ron Marcotte was quoted in a news release issued last week at the
Farnborough Air Show in the United Kingdom. "The site has everything
required in terms of infrastructure. We also have access to a highly trained
work force already in the Jacksonville area as we further strengthen
Boeing's presence in the region."

Boeing Macon currently assembles about 30 percent of the C-17's fuselage.
The Air Force's current buy is for 180 of the large cargo jets with delivery
of the final aircraft scheduled for 2008.

The Defense Department's fiscal year 2007 budget likely will add three
replacement aircraft. Nine more C-17s may be sold to Australia, Canada and
the United Kingdom. But none of the 12 are on contract.

The Senate Appropriations Committee added a glimmer of hope last week,
directing the Department of Defense to "continue funding C-17 production in
the Fiscal Year 2008 budget." But Gary Lesser, spokesman at Boeing's C-17
final assembly plant in Long Beach, Calif., said the company needs a
long-term commitment from the U.S. government to keep the production line
operating past next year.

"Boeing is encouraged by the Senate action," said Lesser by telephone
Tuesday. "But we must still receive that commitment by early to mid-August.
Otherwise, we will be forced to issue stop-work orders to our suppliers and
begin the process of shutting down the production line."

Lesser said Boeing has used company funds to purchase components for 22
additional C-17 aircraft.

"But we can't continue in that mode forever," he said. Lesser stressed that
Boeing has made no final decision to shut down the program although the
company faces what he called a difficult decision unless additional orders
are received.

The fate of the Joint Cargo Aircraft is also uncertain. The U.S. Senate
stripped virtually all of the $109 million requested by the Army in its
fiscal year 2007 budget submission. The U.S. House approved the funding,
leaving a Senate-House conference committee to make the final decision.
The Air Force and Army signed a memo of agreement in June to work together
on the JCA program.

The plan calls for an initial buy of 75 aircraft by the Army and 70 for the
Air Force. The C-27J's competition includes the CASA C-295 and CN-235
offered by Raytheon and EADS CASA North America.

Lockheed Martin in Marietta has offered a shorter version of its C-130J.
Lesser said Boeing Macon could get some manufacturing and sub-assembly work
if the JCA program goes forward and the Alenia group wins the contract.

"During the C-27J team's site selection process, they were impressed with
Macon's capabilities," he said. "In the coming months the team will look at
additional sites to place various elements of manufacturing work."

Russian Bid to Launch 18 Satellites Fails

Breibart

A Russian rocket that was to put 18 satellites in orbit crashed shortly
after liftoff early Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported.

The Dnepr rocket crashed about 15 miles south of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan but caused no injuries or damage on the ground, Interfax quoted
Russian space agency deputy chief Yuri Nosenko as saying.

The rocket was carrying a Russian satellite and 17 from other countries,
including the United States and Italy, Russian news agencies reported.

Interfax, citing an unidentified Mission Control official, reported
preliminary information indicated a problem occurred when the rocket's third
stage detached. RIA-Novosti and ITAR-Tass, also citing unnamed officials,
said the engine shut off 86 seconds into the flight.

Russia's space program has recently suffered several embarrassing failures,
jeopardizing its hopes of earning more revenue from commercial launches of
foreign satellites.

The launch of a rocket carrying a European weather satellite was postponed
indefinitely last week because of a problem discovered minutes before
liftoff.

Germans Debate Need for New High-Tech Fighter Jets

Deutsche Welle

The European aerospace group EADS handed over four Eurofighter jets to the
German air force this week. The aircraft are part of a controversial
billion-euro deal, which has the opposition questioning the project's aim.

The Eurofighter deal is one of the largest defense projects in Germany. The
first four aircraft -- at a price of 74 million euros ($94 million) each --
landed at the air force base in Bavaria's Neuburg an der Donau this week.

The European aerospace group EADS will deliver 180 fighter jets over the
next few years to Germany in a contract totaling over 21 billion euros.
These will form the backbone of the country's air defense, replacing the
Phantom aircraft.

But this controversial acquisition by the German armed forces Bundeswehr has
long been the focus of criticism. When the Eurofighter Typhoon was developed
25 years ago, the world still looked very different. It was the Cold War;
the Warsaw Pact still existed.

War scenarios at the time were still based on the assumption that western
Europe could be attacked from the East. So a fighter jet was planned that
could compete with the Russian MiG aircraft. In the meantime, these air
battles over Europe are scenarios from the past.

Eurofighters contribute to German soldiers' safety abroad

In view of the changed situation in the world, it has thereby become
controversial whether the German armed forces even really need 180 fighter
jets. And how should they be deployed?

"I think the general security situation shows that the number of
Eurofighters is absolutely necessary," said Bernd Siebert, defense spokesman
for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). "They
will be a significant part of ensuring our soldiers' safety on foreign
deployments."

He said German soldiers increasingly faced dangerous situations on their
operations abroad. The German armed forces long ago changed from an army for
national defense to a mobile deployment force, operating worldwide to secure
peace.

"If I look at the development in Afghanistan, I can imagine that it will
become necessary to deploy our Eurofighters for intelligence and for
protecting our soldiers, which have gotten into trouble," Siebert said.

Opposition: Eurofighter not needed for peacekeeping

The opposition Green Party fought against the Eurofighter for a long time,
as it considered the billion-euro defense project to be outdated. It doesn't
agree with the conservatives on the purpose of the deal."In all of the
conflicts, in which the Bundeswehr is deployed under a UN mandate or with an
alliance, there isn't one single case where a weapons system such as the
Eurofighter is needed," said Andreas Bonde, the Green's defense spokesman.

He added it was an instrument required for warfare between highly armed
nations.

"But in our missions today, where it's about nation building and
stabilization measures, we don't need weapons systems like this," Bonde
said.

No longer meeting the Bundeswehr's needs

Both the CDU and the Greens agree that the Eurofighter should be deployed
for a very clear purpose within Germany's borders, namely in air
surveillance or "air policing."

"But we don't need 180 of them for that," Bonde said. He said there were
military strategists who believed there would be a return to national
defense, with the classic threatening scenario of highly armed old-fashioned
war between nations.

"I luckily consider this scenario to be unrealistic and in this respect, I
have serious doubts that security policy investments are being made in a
meaningful direction with this defense system," Bonde said.