Companion files
EDF, EDIP, SAFE and NATO — the Instruments, the Rules and the Careers
Four Excel workbooks, corrected where they were wrong. The book opens with a warning about figures, and it is the right warning: budget data goes stale within eighteen months. So every figure sits in an input cell with its date beside it, and every relationship between them is a formula — replace six numbers next year and the whole picture recalculates. Alongside that: the 35 per cent content test, live; the proposal economics that decide whether a firm can afford to bid; and the four readiness checklists as working documents. Around them: three of the same workbooks with the inputs emptied, thirteen working documents to print, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases the book names and never takes to a number. 82 figures are checked against the book, and every checks sheet closes ALL OK.
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Eleven workbooks, the printable documents and the read-me. Each group below can also be downloaded on its own. Last revised 24 September 2026.
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These carry the book’s own figures, so that every number it prints can be traced to a live formula. Each now closes on a checks sheet. Download these four151 KB
Chapters 1 and 2
The build-up with the ratios the book states and the ones it implies: the prior-year value behind every growth rate, the implied GDP behind every percentage-of-GDP figure, the gap between each benchmark and the actual. The EUR 800 billion Readiness 2030 arithmetic taken apart — and the finding that the EUR 650 billion national component assumes an average deviation of about 0.9 per cent of GDP, sixty per cent of the 1.5 per cent cap the escape clause permits. The Roadmap targets with a live countdown. And a derivation worth the download on its own: the first EDIP call had EUR 165 million available, described as roughly EUR 470 million once industry co-financing is counted — a ratio of 35.1 per cent, which is exactly the industrial reinforcement co-financing ceiling. The EUR 470 million is not an estimate of industry's contribution; it is the arithmetic consequence of the ceiling. Which makes that ratio a fingerprint: it tells you which window and which ceiling a call sits in, and how much matched spend it expects, before you have read a page of the topic text. Revised: the one aggregate that does not close, the 2026 EDF results, now sits on a line of its own, so that the checks sheet can close and the gap still cannot be missed.
Download the workbook35 KBChapter 7
The most consequential arithmetic in the book, because it decides eligibility rather than score. Chapter 7's worked example reproduces exactly: 27.0 per cent on the first pass, 35.25 after the drill-down into European-built assemblies that turned out to contain foreign silicon, 33.0 after requalification. Then the same calculation on a tape of your own — sixty lines with a booked origin, a cost and an embedded-foreign-content column — where the booked origin passes at 30.7 per cent and the exploded share fails at 36.0. Then two sheets the book implies but does not supply. Headroom under stress moves the exchange rate, the supplier price and the design one at a time and together, because the chapter says a team carrying two points of margin into four years should put that in its risk register — and this is the sheet that goes in the risk register. Corrected: the two points absorb 9.31 per cent of foreign cost inflation over four years, 2.25 a year; the first version said 6.05 and 1.48, because it held the total fixed while the foreign side rose. And design authority, treated as what it is: a capability test that fails independently of the percentage, on items such as a firmware toolchain or a signing key that carry no cost on a bill of materials at all.
Download the workbook37 KBChapters 3 and 9
A twenty per cent funding rate on prototyping is not a subsidy decision — the consortium finds the other eighty per cent, and firms that discover this after the technical concept is written lose weeks and often lose the bid. The funding-rate calculator returns the effective rate, the co-financing gap in cash and what each bonus is worth. The co-financing sheet turns it into the board paper it really is: matched spend per year against a probability-weighted order, with the break-even probability computed so the case can be argued rather than assumed. Then the EDIP windows, where triggering the higher ceiling is priced. Then the threshold that kills: a proposal scoring 21.6 weighted points against a pass mark of 18 is rejected for scoring 3.8 on a criterion with a 4.0 threshold. There is no averaging away a weakness, and the practical consequence is that a bid team's marginal effort belongs on its weakest criterion, not its strongest. The scenario that sits exactly on both thresholds now does: 4.0, 3.5 and 3.0, which is 18.0 (the first version scored 18.6).
Download the workbook34 KBAppendices B, C and D
Checklists do not win anything on their own; what they do is stop the avoidable losses — the missing declaration, the expired registration, the clearance nobody started. Sixty-eight items across company, proposal, export-control and personal readiness, each with a status, a date, an owner and a note, and Chapter 13's six-month plan with a date against every month. The twelve job families with a scoring column, because the plan's first month asks you to choose two. Appendix B as a registration tracker, including the NATO sequence whose Declaration of Eligibility is issued by your government on its timetable rather than yours. Appendix D's twenty-five questions with the trap the book names for each, in the book’s words (the first version had twenty-two, and sixteen of its traps were paraphrases). A checks sheet now closes it too. And an opportunity tracker whose first three columns are the three questions practitioners answer in seconds: whose money is this, under which regime, and therefore which team does it belong to.
Download the workbook51 KBThree of the workbooks with every input emptied. The checks sheets count what is still missing and test what holds for any inputs.
Chapters 1 to 3, 7 and 9
The money and the instruments with every dated figure emptied, ready for next year’s European Defence Agency data; the content test with an empty worked example and an empty sixty-line tape; the proposal economics with your action, your co-financing plan and your call left blank. The regulation’s own rates, bonuses, ceilings and thresholds stay filled: they are rules, not your data. The tracker already arrives as a blank record, so it has no blank twin.
The book’s inputs are listed in a text file inside the archive. Type them back in and the book’s figures come back with them: 27.0, 35.25 and 33.0 per cent on Chapter 7, EUR 471.4 million behind the first EDIP call.
Download the blank set97 KBThirteen pages to print and use. A4, with margins wide enough for US Letter.
Chapters 1 to 14 · Appendices B and C
Whose money, which regime, which team, with the 2026-2027 thresholds. One page per target country, with the four questions of Chapter 4. The NATO route in sequence, with the pre-announcement as the trigger for the Declaration of Eligibility. The clearance plan, company and people. The 35 per cent content review and, on its own page, the design-authority test and the evidence file. The tender arc with what the buyer is really scoring, and a compliance matrix. The EDF or EDIP call on one page, worked back from the deadline. Offsets in credit. And the four readiness checklists of Appendix C, with the six-month plan and the first ninety days.
Download the documents38 KBA workbook that marks itself. Answer in the yellow cells; the marking fills in as you go.
All parts of the book
Eight on the money and the instruments, seven on the rules, the buyers, NATO and clearance, seven on the 35 per cent rule, seven on tenders, proposals and offsets, five on the careers, and six on the three cases below. Numbers are marked to a tolerance, multiple choice to the letter, and the score sheet counts your errors part by part: that is your revision list.
Nothing is hidden. The marking sheet holds every answer, every tolerance, and the reason for each answer.
Download the questions18 KBNew material, not a restatement. Three situations the chapters name and never take to a number. Each case is one workbook: the note is the first sheet, the model is the rest, and a checks sheet closes it. Type your own figures in and every finding recomputes.
Chapter 10 · Case one
Chapter 10’s radar bid, with figures: local assembly, a maintenance facility and a purchase from a machining firm the supplier already used. On a EUR 400 million contract with a 60 per cent obligation (ADDED), the package earns 215 of credit against 240: causality takes 30 and turns a surplus into a shortfall. Closing it with a new causal purchase costs EUR 1.0 million against 2.5 of damages; an over-promise to 100 per cent takes the package to 73.5 per cent of the margin, and in Sweden the same package is a phantom cost.
Chapter 4 · Case two
The German acceleration act permits advance payments and bonus-malus clauses; the chapter says to model the malus on the realistic schedule, not the promised one. On a EUR 50 million contract with a 20 per cent advance and 0.5 per cent a month of malus (ADDED), the package is worth 1.27 on the promised date and 0.70 on the realistic one. It turns negative at 7.9 months late, and a malus cap of 4.50 per cent is the number to negotiate.
Chapters 5 and 6 · Case three
The NATO registration chain and the clearance chain against one competition, anchored on the book’s four months and six months. A supplier that reacts at the request for proposals submits on day 224 for a bid due on day 105: 119 days late, lost on the calendar alone. Acting at the pre-announcement still misses by 59; registrations held in advance leave 8 days. With a classified annex, the facility clearance must have been applied for 12.5 months before the competition was even announced.
Download the three cases36 KB| Blue text | a hardcoded input — you may edit these |
| Black text | a formula — do not overtype these |
| Green text | a link to another sheet |
| Yellow fill | the assumptions that carry the answer |
| Checks sheet | the last sheet of every workbook: each control states its own verdict, and the file ends ALL OK |
| ADDED | a figure the book does not give, used in the cases and marked wherever it appears |
99 check lines across the four workbooks, 82 of them against figures the book prints; the rest are derivations the book implies and, on the tracker, the completeness of its lists. Every line reproduces, and every sheet closes ALL OK. Each line carries its own tolerance, set to the precision the book actually prints.
One reconciliation does not close, and it is shown rather than quietly adjusted. The 2026 European Defence Fund results are reported as EUR 1.07 billion allocated, of which EUR 675 million to development actions and EUR 332 million to research — those two add to EUR 1.007 billion. The checks sheet reproduces the two components and carries the EUR 63 million gap on a line of its own. The six EDIP work programme lines, which seem to add to about EUR 1.66 billion against a programme of EUR 1.5 billion, turned out to be nested rather than disjoint: un-nested, the work programme commits EUR 1,460 million of the EUR 1,500 million.
It is worth saying what they are not. The book’s own arithmetic is exact: Chapter 7's content example reproduces to the euro with no rounding at all, Chapter 9's scoring scheme closes, and the EDF budget splits precisely. The discrepancy sits in an aggregate quoted from a published source, which is where inconsistency in this field lives — and is exactly why the book warns about figures in its introduction. The corrections of 24 September 2026 were in the workbooks, not in the book: see the last section of this page.
Discover more of Julian R. Sterling's practical library of models, checklists and worked cases.
Browse Julian R. Sterling's books Browse all companion files Read the related analysisThe workbooks open in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers; the PDF prints on A4 or US Letter. They use no macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted. If your spreadsheet asks to update links on opening, decline — there are none.
Breaking Into European Defence Procurement by Julian R. Sterling. The workbooks reproduce the worked examples in the chapters; the book is where the reasoning behind them is set out. It is not yet on sale — these files are published ahead of it.
| 24 Sep 2026 | The four workbooks corrected and each closed on a checks sheet. The content test’s headroom absorbs 9.31 per cent of foreign cost inflation over four years (2.25 a year), not 6.05 (1.48). The EDF gap of EUR 63 million now has a line of its own. The scoring scenario on both thresholds is 18.0, not 18.6. The interview sheet carries all twenty-five questions of Appendix D with the book’s traps. Added: a blank set, thirteen working documents, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases. |
The other books with companion files. The full list of titles is on the author page.