Czechia Threatens to Cancel CAESAR 8х8 Contract After First Delivered Units Fail Range Tests

Czech Ministry of Defense threatens to suspend payments for French CAESAR howitzers after the first two units failed to meet key performance specs during testing The Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic is threatening to freeze payments to French manufacturer KNDS and may even cancel its order of 62 CAESAR 8×8 wheeled self-propelled howitzers. The warning comes after disappointing results from tests of the first two units received under the contract, according to the Czech news media Novinky.cz.

Czech officials had hoped the CAESARs would bring modern firepower and long-range strike capability. However, the first systems failed to achieve the advertised 40 km range and could not perform MRSI firing — a technique where multiple shells land simultaneously on a single target by varying barrel elevation and timing. To make matters worse, France did not provide the necessary fire control tables. Without them, Czech forces cannot verify whether the systems meet NATO standards — a critical gap in documentation for a system already partially delivered.

Another serious problem lies in the fire control system itself. The CAESAR 8×8 for Czechia was equipped with the German-made Adler III system, which turned out to be incompatible with Czech-made 155mm ammunition. And yet, Prague had already spent additional 310 million crowns (€12.6 million) on acquiring the system. So far, Czechia has paid 7 billion crowns (€285 million) in advance and is expected to transfer another billion (€40 million) in 2025. But these technical and logistical issues are raising doubts about whether the deal should proceed as planned. Interestingly, the country is still continuing the production of 65,000 Polica 155mm shells for the CAESAR system at the STV Group's facilities, even as the howitzer itself undergoes scrutiny.

Defense Express emphasizes that despite the frustration, the Czech Ministry of Defense does not appear ready to walk away from the deal. Instead, it seems intent on pressuring KNDS to resolve the issues and deliver the full batch. One likely reason: the Czech Army urgently needs to replace its current fleet of 48 DANA howitzers, and sourcing 62 modern SPHs from alternative suppliers on short notice would be extremely difficult.

well, uh, good luck with your "pressuring"... bet you miss the old days when you could have just made that stuff at home (although technically that one was made in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, but still, Czechia was the more industrialized half, especially until after WW2 when industrial development of Slovakia started taking off)

Existing laws shielding biodiversity, drinking water, and public accountability will be voided to accelerate the regime’s aggressive military expansion. Poulsen, ranked by observers as the regime’s second or third most powerful figure, will gain unilateral power to approve projects such as American bases, private arms factories, and rare-earth processing plants. Municipalities, environmental statutes, and public objections will be bypassed. Poulsen will hold “the authority to make decisions, issue permits and dispensations, etc., issue orders and prohibitions, and impose administrative fines.” Independent oversight is absent and those impacted by his decrees will have no legal recourse.

Critics across Danish civil society, including the national association of water utilities, the Danish Bar Association and environmental NGOs, have sounded the alarm in their replies to the formal public consultation process for the bill. “There is no requirement that the military or a private defence company must present documentation that the project they want to carry out will be built and operated in the least damaging location and with the least damaging solutions,” says Anders Juel of the Danish Society for Nature Conservation.

Ammunition plants and rare-earth facilities, industries infamous for heavy metal contamination and toxic waste, could be placed directly on protected wetlands. There is no obligation to investigate alternatives. “If the relationship with Russia improves, we can roll back the military buildup. But the damage to nature caused by military installations and private defence companies cannot be rolled back,” Juel warns. “It can take a hundred years for nature to be re-established – if it comes back at all.” He adds that Denmark is facing a biodiversity crisis and states that allowing the destruction of nature is a step in the wrong direction.

DANVA (the Danish Water and Wastewater Association) as well as the organisation Danish Waterworks are warning against putting military considerations above the safety rules set in place to keep drinking water clean and secure the long-term protection of groundwater resources.

If water mains, sewers or heating pipes are in the way of new military construction, local utilities will be ordered to move them. This is a very costly operation but the new bill allows the regime to bypass existing cost-sharing legislation and decide the matter by decree, potentially leaving local utility companies, and ultimately local residents, to foot the bill. “We are concerned that it will be local citizens in the towns where the military installations are to be built who will bear the financial and environmental burden because military installations are being built hastily,” warns Karsten Bjørno of the DANVA. He is backed up by the organisation of Danish district heating utilities who writes in their reply that "it is unfair that citizens who are customers in local utility companies have to pay for government projects over their heating bill."

Perhaps the bill's most brazen feature is its elimination of the right for local residents and environmental NGO's to legally challenge military construction projects. The reason given by the Liberal Party-controlled Defence Ministry is that allowing complaints would ”potentially involve significant and real risks and uncertainties for the completion and progress" of military projects. Denmark’s legal establishment is recoiling. The Danish Bar Association is warning that abolishing the complaint process weakens openness, transparency and the rule of law, violating what was previously considered fundamental principles of the Danish legal system. The independent legal think tank Justitia warn that the law would hand over decision making to “a closed circuit, where it effectively becomes the government itself that assesses when ordinary legal safeguards can be disregarded... central legal safeguards and rule of law principles are being limited.”

Municipalities housing military sites share these fears. Fredericia Municipality bluntly states: “This law short-circuits local democracy and citizen influence.”

Despite the outcry, the bill is expected to sail through the Nordic hermit kingdom's rubber-stamp parliament, as it is firmly controlled by the regime and its loyalists.

The bill is merely a local symptom of a broader, unmistakable trend across the NATO bloc where democratic institutions are being hollowed out, retooled for war, and turned inward against their own populations. Since the defeat of the Soviet Union relieved Western elites of the need to compete ideologically with communism, the incentives to maintain the appearances of functioning democracies have eroded. The result is plain: in times of imperial decline, climate crisis, and domestic unrest, the public sphere is flooded with nationalism and paranoia, the military swells, and legal rights are repackaged as threats to national security.

In such a climate, clean drinking water, functioning democracy and the well-being of the civilian population is reduced to mere obstacles. And the citizens themselves, so troublesome and querulous, are best left outside the room.

Source: Forsvarsministeren vil sætte miljølove og klageret ud af kraft for at bygge militære anlæg og våbenfabrikker, Arbejderen, August 1st 2025

In a blatant escalation of the U.S. government’s anti-immigrant agenda, ICE launches a recruitment campaign offering $50,000 bonuses and student loan forgiveness to “patriots” who join its enforcement ranks. This policy deepens repression against migrants under Trump’s regime and reflects imperialism’s ongoing assault on human rights.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency recently unveiled a recruitment drive aimed at expanding its ranks with aggressive incentives, including signing bonuses up to $50,000 and partial student loan forgiveness of up to $60,000.

This campaign, framed around the slogan “Defend the Homeland,” calls for Americans to become “patriots” to rid the country of alleged “criminals and predators”, a thinly veiled code for migrants. These offers seek to boost ICE’s capacity to execute mass deportations and deepen the regime’s crackdown on migrant communities, fueling hatred and state violence.

According to ICE’s official messaging, recruits can choose roles as deportation officers, criminal investigators, or prosecutors under an orchestrated “mission” framework. These lucrative bonuses and employment benefits, ranging from health insurance to telework options, are part of a broader strategy to militarize migration enforcement by incentivizing participation in what progressives denounce as a racist, xenophobic apparatus.

Human rights organizations and migrant advocacy groups warn that these measures entrench policies responsible for thousands of family separations, detentions, and violations of basic human dignity across the U.S. and its border regions.

The recruitment campaign embodies the neoliberal, imperialist project embodied by the Trump administration. It transforms state violence into a lucrative career, where “patriotism” is weaponized against vulnerable populations fleeing poverty and violence, conditions largely driven by U.S.-backed neoliberal policies across the Americas.

The rhetoric of “defending the homeland” serves as ideological cover for the extension of settler-colonial systems and racial capitalism, scapegoating migrants while consolidating authoritarian controls over marginalized communities.

This campaign not only threatens the safety and dignity of migrants but also undermines social cohesion and fuels racist divisions within the population. Instead of promoting justice or addressing root causes of migration, the U.S. government doubles down on militarization and repression.

The international left and global human rights movements must urgently condemn these policies as they continue to dehumanize millions and perpetuate cycles of displacement, dispossession, and state terror.