European countries can boast, on paper, possession of a imposing militar-industrial complex which, albeit considerably reduced to the period of the Cold Warstill includes prominent giants worldwide in the war industry that have managed to carve out important shares in the armament market. However, the reality is that, at least in Short and medium termthe European defense industries they will not be able to free completely the armed forces of our countries with armaments “Made in the USA” and Europe will be obliged to adopt compromise choices. The President of the European Commission Ursula von der leyen recently presented the European rearmament plan, now called READINESS 2030underlining the need for greater preparation of the European Union in the face of growing global challenges. The context of this initiative is marked by the war in Ukraine, by the aggression of Putin’s Russia and the commercial tensions between Europe and the United States, in particular the duties imposed by Trump.
What are the great industries that produce weapons in Europe
Currently there is no real organic level of European rearmament, even if there has been talk of the need for several parties that the countries of the European Union spend by 2030 A sum equal to 800 billion euros In order to completely reform and rebalance their military forces, with the primary objective of implementing a policy of deterrence towards Russia, following the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine war. Although, at the moment, we are still at the beginning of this project, public attention in Italy is already focusing on the actions of large European groups in the defense sector, to understand if they will be able to meet expectations.
Traditionally, European countries have always been great manufacturers of armamentsboth during the Cold War and in the decades following 1991. With the end of the Cold War that marked the end of the competition between Russia and the USA, also the extended West (United States, Canada, Western Europe, but also Australia, Japan, South Korea) had to review its priorities. This led to a reduction in the defense and downsizing budgets of the European military-industrial sector, with the closure of some production lines and the merger of independent and fundamental companies once.
Despite everything, the European continent is still the seat of several today Military production giants Like the British Bae systemFrench Thales GroupGerman Rheinmetallthe Spanish Navantiathe Italian Leonardo spa and the joint venture KNDSborn from the alliance of the German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and the French Nexter Defense Systems. If the READINESS 2030 project (before Rearm Europe) should have the green light, so the main weight of the industrial effort would fall on the shoulders of these already widely rodaic actors.
Europe is partially dependent on American weapons
However, it is necessary to remember that the fact that large war industries are present in our continent does not automatically mean that Europe is completely independent – from the point of view of military production – from its external strategic relations. Over 70 years of adhesion to BORN they meant that the sector European military-industrially integrated with the American onebecoming one partially dependent. European countries have purchased more and more American armaments, and the European armed forces have developed complementary skills. If they suddenly deprive the American support, the structures would therefore be incomplete or insufficient in key sectors.
In the same way, the European defense industries have been involved in the Washington military programsending up producing armament systems of American origin under license, or developing products that to be operational require the supply of critical components “made in the USA”. An example is the Swedish Multiruole hunting Saab Jas 39 Grippe, which flies thanks to the presence of a Volvo Reaksmotor 12 (RM12) engine, a Swedish version of the American General Electric F404. Even more delicate speech is that relating to the combat aircraft Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning IIthe final outlet of the multiple year -old project Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).
THE’F-35 It is an expensive and much discussed plane: it is the basis on which many European air forces are reorganizing their structures and doctrines, but to work at best it needs continuous updates of the software, whose codes are kept by the US Lockheed Martin. The F-35 (in the F-35B version) is also the only Stovl aircraft-short take-off and vertical landing-in production in the world. When British Harrier planes will be collected in the coming years, the European marines with small aircraft carriers or without catapulte will not have chosen if not to buy it to keep their aerial component operational.
A not easy solution
We are therefore faced with a problem of not easy solution. On the one hand, European countries are located on the eve of the approval of the most important rearmament program of the last decades, also driven by a series of concrete threats To their geopolitical security but, on the other, they rely on a military-industrial complex that no longer has the characteristics of “semi-autarchy” of the Cold War period.
In addition, numerous military programs have been developed over time in the union with a fundamental partner such as the United States of America who in the last period has been showing conspicuous signs of impatience and poor reliability towards traditional Eurotlandic partners. If the Europeans also decided to free themselves from American products and technology and wanted to adjust the common industrial policies in this sense (also by opting for allocations higher than that expected in the program Rearm Europe) It would take many years to obtain the desired resultsgoing far beyond the time horizon of 2030.
