"Fortress Europe" overtones heard.

• Position: Defense

If NATO is not the place to go for armaments cooperation, we should look towards the European Defense Agency (EDA) and the European Commission, especially on homeland security issues. This is an area which absolutely should be pursued. Of course, EDA's first foray did not succeed: it was the effort with armored fighting vehicles. There was a study that found 23 different national armored fighting-vehicle programs in Europe. That is crazy. NATO is affected by this because allies are deploying to Afghanistan with different kinds of equipment and without common logistics, common supplies, and common ways to do maintenance. In Provincial Reconstruction Teams, with five or six different countries manning them, everybody's got different gear there, so I hope that the EDA re-attacks on this issue of armored fighting vehicles, and also with similar types of situations. There is no reason why we should have this many different programs. It is entirely within the prerogatives of the EDA and its board of defense ministers to tackle this. This is money wasted.

Recently I read the EU defense ministers' statement on Europe's "defense and technological industrial base study." It was very well crafted, a worthwhile effort by the EU to come at this issue of...