Scandal in perspective in Denmark concerning the acquisition of ATMOS guns from the Israeli Elbit Systems

At the beginning of the month of March, the Danish Ministry of Defense announced that it had selected the ATMOS cannon truck-mounted artillery system, designed and manufactured by the Israeli Elbit System, to replace the 18 CAESAR 8×8 guns initially acquired from France, and delivered urgently to Kyiv to support the defense effort against Russian aggression.

In the Danish press release, the decision to turn to the Israeli system to arm a Danish Army artillery battalion was based on more competitive financial conditions and a delivery schedule from the Israeli industrialist, in the face of offers from its European competitors, the French Nexter with the Caesar 8×8, and the Swedish Bofors with the Archer.

But it would seem that other factors were at work in this decision, much less objective. It is in any case what the Danish political news site Altinget says, in an article published on June 16. According to him, the whole of the competition led with drumbeats by the Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister of the country, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, would have been with an obvious bias to favor the Israeli offer.

In its investigation, the Danish site relied on numerous documents, emails and notes, sometimes confidential, as well as on interviews with the stakeholders in this decision. According to these documents, the Danish deputy minister would have presented a biased and even occasionally distorted vision to Danish parliamentarians, to promote the selection of the Atmos.

What's more, it would have artificially created a phenomenon of urgency to induce the parliamentarians to rush their decision, but also to deprive the competitors of the Atmos system, of the possibility of responding correctly to the expectations expressed by the Danish Army.

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