Patria TRACKX: Next-Generation Vehicle for Emerging Challenges

The war in Ukraine has undoubtedly been a shock to military leadership worldwide, as old doctrines of warfare have been put to the test there – and in many respects, outright discarded. As a result, every army’s leadership has been forced to consider how to respond to these newly emerged challenges. For arms manufacturers, the task has become figuring out how to meet these needs.

In this regard, an illuminating example is provided by Patria, a manufacturer of military vehicles, which has unveiled a new armored personnel carrier equipped with a machine gun – the Patria TRACKX. This is a next-generation vehicle that specifically incorporates lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.

One such lesson is the threat posed by drones, which until now has scarcely been taken into account in military vehicle design. TRACKX brings a change in this area, as its protection is designed specifically to neutralize drone attacks.

Another key issue highlighted by the war in Ukraine for military vehicle design is the requirement for high performance in challenging conditions. For this reason, TRACKX runs on rubber tracks but can also move at high speed when needed. This has been demonstrated in practice, as TRACKX set a new world speed record for tracked vehicles in the spring – 88 kilometers per hour.

Patria expects that, due to these innovative features, there will be significant demand for the vehicle both within the EU and beyond. According to the company, serial production will begin in 2027.

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Renaissance of the Finnish Defense Industry

Now that Finland has withdrawn from the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, it is time to take practical action. This means starting Finnish production of anti-personnel mines for both domestic use and for Ukraine.

The reason for this is, of course, the military threat posed by Russia—something that can no longer be ignored since Putin’s “special operation” initiated the attempt to conquer Ukraine. This is true even though the Russians have been unable to bring the operation to completion; instead, it has become more like a Moloch’s maw, fed with the lives of Russian soldiers.

The Finnish arms industry is currently doing quite well in general. A sign of this was, for example, the clear growth in both turnover and operating profit for the defense equipment manufacturer Patria in the January–June period.

Turnover increased by around 12 percent and operating profit by as much as 35 percent. In addition, the company’s order backlog showed a modest increase. In the future, most of the growth is expected to come from the armored vehicle sector, but the company has also recently invested—based on lessons from the war in Ukraine—particularly in drone technology.

It remains to be seen whether the Finnish defense industry is experiencing a renaissance now that the country is a member of the Western defense alliance NATO and has the best preparedness in Europe to take advantage of a networked economy—something that will be a key factor in high-innovation sectors like defense in the coming years.

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The EU Needs Innovations That Drive Climate Neutrality

As a result of human activity, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is considered one of the greatest future risks, as scientific models indicate it raises atmospheric temperatures and thereby causes major changes around the world. For this reason, for example, the European Parliament has approved a climate law that raises the EU’s 2030 emissions reduction target from the previous 40% to 55%, and makes climate neutrality by 2050 a legally binding objective.

To achieve this goal, we can either return to the Stone Age or develop new technology. Finnish company Elementic has chosen the latter and is currently building a pilot plant based on its own innovation. In practice, this means producing a construction material similar to bricks, using lignin — the natural binder found in wood — as the key ingredient.

Since lignin makes up about one-third of wood, this would significantly increase the value of forests and allow the forest-based industry to grow without compromising the production of its current products. As an added bonus, carbon dioxide emissions from construction would disappear, as a house built from lignin bricks would store more carbon than is emitted during its construction.

To top it off, there are two more noteworthy advantages. First, production can be scaled up quickly by modernizing existing brick factories in Finland and elsewhere in Europe — there’s no need to build new production facilities for lignin bricks. Second, lignin as a building material is non-flammable, weather-resistant, and rot-proof.

It remains to be seen whether the Finnish company will succeed in selling its new product to construction firms — and whether, as a result, the EU’s goal of climate neutrality might be achieved much more easily than it seemed not long ago. In any case, it is already clear that the EU needs more innovations like the one described above to drive progress toward climate neutrality.

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China uses Western universities to educate its youth

China was for a long time known as a country, that copies technology from more developed societies and wins markets by lower production costs. That worked well for a long time, but more recently China has put a huge effort to become a developed - science-based - producer of high technology and entrepreneurship. 

In order to have well educated working power, China has allowed - and even encouraged - students to move overseas. Thereafter the Chinese government launched a program to recruit and nurture high-caliber, early-career expatriate scientists who return to China. 

A recent study examined how effective the program has been, and how well it has supported the young scholars’ productivity when they returned to China. The comparison was made to their peers that remained overseas.

The investigation found that the scholars outperformed overseas peers in last-authored publications - typically showing the leading position among the authors - because of greater access to larger research teams and better research funding in China. However, although the returning scientists were generally of high caliber in research they fell below the top category in pre-return scientific productivity.

Taken together, the study has important implications for global academic mobility and international competition between East and West. 

The Chinese students form a large share of the US and EU PhD graduates and are among the most productive one. And in the future China probably continues to invest in higher education and academic talent, which results in more and more Western-trained Chinese students returning to China, because their universities can be expected to become more attractive locations for Chinese students with poor future options in Western countries. That will bring huge support to Chinese research and innovation, and ultimately narrow the technological gap between China and Western countries.   

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Strong statement or intellectual dishonesty in COP27?

A historical decision was made in COP27 meeting in Egypt. According to that, wealthy countries will pay for developing ones from damages attributable to the climatic change, which is considered to happen due to the wealthy nations.

The decision was made, and I can only accept it. I would, however, like to hear if developing countries are willing to give up those modern things, which were created along the development that led to the compensations decided. That is: vehicles, flights, internet, phones, electricity etc... 

I think that would be a great sign of their willingness to refuse from such a negative developments, that their innovators are expected to pay for their existence. In others words, staying in each nation´s own innovations would make a strong statement on their willingness to stick in a sustainable way of life. 

If no one shows any willingness to give up those harmful innovations, I am afraid that the decision of compensation made in the COP27 meeting looks like intellectual dishonesty and only a new way to transfer money from north to south. Which may or may not be well justified due to some other reasons. 

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China is betting on scientific excellence

There are two great powers in the world. That includes both military and economic strength - and the two powers are USA and China. 

Still today USA is much stronger in its economy and also in military force, although statistics still claim Russia would be in the second place in the latter dimension - a claim shown to be wrong by Ukraine. Therefore it was interesting to read about ideas of Xi Jinping in China.

According to the article, Xi opened the Communist party meeting - where he was nominated to his third period as a president of the country - by saying that "regard science and technology as our primary productive force, talent as our primary resource and innovation as our primary driver of growth". That is: China has become to a situation, where they aim to increase their technological readiness above all other countries in the world.

Actually they have been looking for that already for quite a while. During the last years their intention has been to increase the R&D intensity by at least seven percent every year, and if that continues until 2035, it could reach the average of 2,7 percent for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from the current 2.4 percent of gross domestic product. 

There are, however, obstacles in China´s way towards the leading power of the world. Russian attack to Ukraine has warned political West from relying too strictly on Chinese products, which may reduce monetary income and investments to Xi´s empire. And at the same time, restrict the spread of western innovations to China. 

Even more difficult obstacles might appear from the Chinese cultural tradition restricting criticism towards elder colleagues, which decelerates the spread of novel innovative ideas. Also the decrease of Chinese population due to former one child policy may increase burden to people in working age and cause serious instability in the society. And that would certainly affect negatively also the scientific realm. 

Despite all these obstacles, in my opinion Xi´s decision to bet on scientific excellence is wise. Even if any of the fears turns real, scientific approach is the the best option to find solutions. 

That should also be remembered in the USA, where many universities have fallen to a crisis caused by ultraliberal ideology ("wokeism") questioning even many scientific facts and demanding their replacement with politically correct beliefs. Even though the purpose of liberals may be good, they have forgotten the fact Chinese have realized: a stable, competitive and ultimately fair future can only be built on scientific truth. 

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