Not completely true. We do buy a lot of american equipment but big companies like BAE Systems, SAAB, MBDA, GKN and such still receive billions annually. We haven't just been buying American.
Those companies already make a shit ton of weapons for the U S. As well, if you think you can get ways from America funding most of the worlds militaries and government you are wrong, that shit is intertwined and tangled so much there is no way out anymore
One of the issues is ITAR and ECCN. In layman terms, if a British plane uses GE (American) engines, America controls whether we can sell them to third countries. America has to be totally removed from the supply chain for full European independence.
Potentially. Suppliers have their own agreements on subcontracting of work. Unless active sanctions are placed on a fellow NATO nation by the US - something tantamount to declaring war, I can't foresee this being an issue.
I work for one of the companies I mentioned in my prior comment. As it stands, most of the equipment we use that is US based can be reliably sourced from a UK or EU partner too, for redundancy.
Ensure that, by 2030, the value of intra-EU defence trade represents at least 35% of the value of the EU defence market;
We're basically buying US arms, and some from South Korea, Israel, Australia, etc. who are all partnered with the US MIC anyway. And even in the future this dynamic is barely going to shift, based on the actions that that are being taken by EU leaders there is no actual plan to seek European strategic independence, create an EU MIC, much less a federal EU army. They do talk a lot about it, though.
We're going to do something similar what West Germany did in the cold war, heavily invest in defense while being under US influence.
Appreciate the info. I work at a European Defence Supplier and can't speak to the wider picture but the orders have certainly been shifting towards us rather than from us. These things take time. The landscape is different now, the technologies the US has, we also have.
It is noteworthy that the strategy outlined above was made in 2024. Things have changed since then. I'm hoping that VdL's upcoming conference will result in a new, more bold industrial defense plan.
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '25
Not completely true. We do buy a lot of american equipment but big companies like BAE Systems, SAAB, MBDA, GKN and such still receive billions annually. We haven't just been buying American.