Spain Defence and Security Report Q3 2009

Spain's economic problems are beginning to impact on its ability to play a role on the world stage.

Defence spending is to fall by 4% this year, although the Spanish government says it will maintain spending on major procurement projects. Spanish forces were withdrawn from Kosovo and Chad earlier this year. An additional deployment of 600 troops to Afghanistan will only be for a few months to cover the August elections in the central Asian country.

The economic downturn led to a surge in applications to join the Spanish military in 2008, totalling some 78,575. The aim now is to achieve a ceiling of 86,000 professional military personnel. Major recruitment drives have been launched to attract female recruits and citizens of Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. Reservists have also been offered full-time contracts to rejoin the service for limited periods. In February 2009 the Spanish Ministry of Defence announced it would change military laws to allow transsexuals to serve in the country's armed forces after a potential recruit took court action against the ministry. Spanish military personnel deployed in Afghanistan were banned from logging on to 'sports' websites in April 2009 because they were overloading military communications satellite links.

The flagship programme of Spain's defence industry, the A400M military transport aircraft has entered a period of crisis after a key contractual milestone to fly the first prototype was missed on April 1 2009.

The customer nations are now reconsidering their options and have given EADS until July to come up with new proposals to move the troubled programme forward. The A400M is being assembled in Seville.

It was ordered in 2003 by Germany, Britain, Spain, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg to replace their military transport fleets and to support the increasingly global nature of operations. Turkey and Spain together account for 25% of the project, with Spain ordering 27 planes.

Spain's participation in the Eurofighter Typhoon project took a major step forward in April and May when partner nations agreed, subject to successful contract negotiations, to purchase Tranche 3 of the European combat aircraft. The country's army is also expected to benefit from the expected launch of competition to build a next generation of 8 x 8 armoured fighting vehicles to replace the existing fleet, which has been found to be vulnerable to insurgent IEDs in Lebanon and Afghanistan.