Final Word from Monday, July 13, 2026
Hollywood stars are sometimes ranked by the amount their movies make at the box office, and by this measurement, Dustin Hoffman was the biggest name at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival this year, with at least $3.3bn. That doesn't mean he's a billionaire, because films are always a team effort and also have high production costs. And so it is with the Czech ammunition program. According to CEO David Chour of Czechoslovak Group, it had cost Kč 100-110bn as of last Oct. (not counting administration and coordination costs), and 55-60% of the 3.7m shells had been made or sourced by CSG. Chour said that he thinks the idea for the program was a team effort and that among those involved were Tomáš Pojar, Jana Černochová, Petr Pavel and people around Pavel. Based on this, it would perhaps be possible to say that Pavel, as the face of the ammo program, has brought in more money for CSG than Dustin Hoffman has for his studios. But unlike Hoffman, Pavel is only getting started. At the Ankara summit, he told The Telegraph that we should consider capacity payments for arms makers. Then Pavel would even get credit for shells not produced. [ Nato Turkey idle initiative weapons ]
Glossary of difficult words
to source - to obtain from a particular source;
capacity payments - are a defense-procurement model borrowed from the energy sector, whereby governments or international bodies pay defense contractors a fixed fee to maintain idle, ready-to-use production lines rather than just buying finished military hardware.