Europas 1-Billionen-Dollar-Wettlauf um den Wiederaufbau seiner Verteidigungsindustrie

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> Europe’s $1 Trillion Race to Build Back Its Defense Industry
> Alistair MacDonald, Cristina Gallardo
> 9–12 minutes
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> Jan. 24, 2026 11:00 pm ET
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> President Trump’s overtures about acquiring Greenland are now reviving questions among the U.S.’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies over whether Europe can make enough of its own weapons to fight independently of America.
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> Defense analysts and lawmakers mainly conclude yes, but not just yet.
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> The continent’s once-sclerotic defense industry is churning out drones, tanks, ammunition and other weaponry at its fastest pace in decades as the region looks to rearm in the face of Russian aggression and divides with Washington. But there is still some way to go. The cost of replacing current U.S. military equipment and personnel in Europe would be around $1 trillion, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Some holes remain in the region’s manufacturing capability, including stealth fighters, long-range missiles and satellite intelligence.
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> While Europe has increased its defense production in recent years, its fragmented industry currently lacks the capacity of its U.S. peers, which are financed by the world’s largest military budget.
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> Still, sharp increases in military spending across Europe and renewed efforts in research and development are bringing operational independence closer—and in some cases it is happening surprisingly quickly.
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> In late 2024, Clemens Kürten started a company to sell drones to European militaries without a design or staff. Within a year the German company had sold hundreds of units.
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> There is growing urgency to find a response to what the U.S. intends to do, not just in Greenland, but with the broader security alliance that has bound it to Europe since the end of World War II.
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> If Americans “will start to diminish their presence on the European continent…of course, we need to start to plan how we shall build what we can call a European pillar of NATO,” Andrius Kubilius, the European Union official in charge of revitalizing the defense industry said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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> That includes replacing so-called strategic enablers, like space satellites, that Europe currently relies on the U.S. for, he said.
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> Trump had already pushed Europe to spend more on defense. A U.S. increasingly focused on Latin America and Asia will likely redeploy American assets out of Europe. More recently, clashes between the White House and Europe over Ukraine and now Greenland have raised concerns that the U.S. could cut off the supply of American weapons and even stop Europeans from using those they own.
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> On Wednesday, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said in Davos that his country’s fleet of U.S.-made fighters can’t fly without the U.S.
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> Jets typically need spare parts and hardware and software updates from their maker to function over time.
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> The country must instead trust that Washington will continue to help them fly, which he said it was in their interests to do.
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> Industry executives say the pivot toward a self-sufficient defense industry is well under way.
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> Kürten, CEO of Twentyfour Industries, said his Munich-based company was able to start production so quickly because European investors are now willing to finance defense companies and talent is willing to work for them, and because local government procurement agencies move quicker.
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> “That wouldn’t have been possible five years ago,” said Kürten, who was a drone consultant when he and a partner founded the company.
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> The process is being lubricated by the biggest jump in European military spending since the Cold War.
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> Last year, Europe spent an estimated $560 billion on defense, according to analysts at Bernstein, double what it spent a decade ago. By 2035, its spending on equipment will be 80% of the Pentagon’s, up from less than 30% in 2019, Bernstein said.
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> This could have repercussions for the U.S. defense sector if the region turns to homegrown weaponry. Europe accounts for up to 10% of American defense manufacturers’ revenues, according to U.K.-based research group Agency Partners.
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> In a sign of what could happen, Germany’s Rheinmetall has opened or is constructing 16 new factories since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Italian defense giant Leonardo has increased its head count by almost a half to 64,000 people in just over two years.
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> By spring of last year, MBDA, Europe’s largest missile maker, could make 40 short-range Mistral air-defense missiles a month—up from 10 before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and had doubled the production of antitank missiles to 40 a month.
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> Drone manufacturers, such as Twentyfour Industries, have sprung up across Europe. A global market leader in land drones is the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia.
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> In some cases, European production has surpassed the U.S.
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> Rheinmetall alone will soon be able to produce 1.5 million 155mm artillery shells a year, more than the combined U.S. defense industry.
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> Europe almost exclusively supplies its own armored vehicles, with Germany’s Leopard the world’s most popular tank. The region also makes all its own ships and submarines, vessels that outsell their U.S. peers globally.
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> There are indications that some European countries are already choosing local rather than U.S.-made weapons. Between 2020 and 2024, 79% of Danish defense imports came from the U.S. Last year, as Trump ramped up pressure on Denmark to sell Greenland, over half of Denmark’s weapon purchases came from Europe. Copenhagen has denied this is deliberate.
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> Still, a watershed moment where Europe moves away from the U.S. hasn’t happened yet, said Pieter Wezeman, whose think tank, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, analyzes data on military spending.
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> Some European defense officials say European defense companies aren’t moving fast enough, particularly in aerospace.
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> France’s Dassault has a backlog of 220 Rafale jet fighters to make. Last year, it was delivering two a month, with each aircraft taking three years to make; deliveries will go up to three a month this year, the company says.
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> The fact that Poland buys arms from South Korea shows that Europe, along with the U.S., isn’t ramping up defense production as fast as needed, Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, said at Davos on Wednesday.
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> Roberto Cingolani, chief executive of Leonardo, which makes military helicopters, radar systems and other military components, said that a barrier to speedy European rearmament is fragmentation.
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> “Every country wants to have its own tank, its own aircraft, its own ship, and of course the dispersion in terms of investment, R&D [and] procurement does not favor” European rearmament, he said in an interview.
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> There are also capability gaps.
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> Europe is at least 10 years away from a locally produced stealth jet fighter. Meanwhile many of the 13 European nations that have either bought or ordered the U.S. F-35 continue to add to their fleets.
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> Europe lags behind the U.S. on satellite intelligence and is mainly dependent on U.S. companies for the cloud computing that manages battlefield data. Despite Germany’s inventing the ballistic missile over 80 years ago, Europe has almost no production of this essential weapon or other types of very long-range missiles.
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> America’s long-range missile defense remains the system of choice for European nations.
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> While Ukraine has reduced its dependence on U.S. weaponry, American air defenses, such as Patriot batteries, are invaluable, and the country can’t get enough of these system’s interceptors, said Mykola Bielieskov, an analyst at a Ukrainian NGO called Come Back Alive, which helps fund weapons procurement for Kyiv.
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> Some European nations are now trying to address their shortcomings.
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> Several projects under way are aimed at producing missiles with a range of over 1,000 miles after 2030, and the U.K. recently established its own military satellite constellation after being reliant on the U.S. Other Europeans are sending more into space. French President Emmanuel Macron recently said that two-thirds of Ukraine’s satellite intelligence comes now from his country.
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> “Could Europe arm itself? Yes, but over time,” said Matthew Savill, a director at the Royal United Services Institute think tank. “The volume is not there yet, and we need to accept that in some areas the stuff is not as good,” he said.
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On the bright side of all this, we’ll get some wicked sick strategy games out of this – think Broken Arrow/World in conflict type games.

US vs EU vs Russia

Neat.

Do it now!!!

Clapped analysis – Europe makes its own long range missiles already. Stealth fighters are a truly multinational program, no one can make them without the others (the US included), and Europe has Copernicus for satellite intelligence and Galileo for GPS.

Makes you wonder when articles like these appear, whats the agenda? Is it pro-american trying to pursuade Europeans that they can’t go it alone, or the European defence industry trying to pursuade politicians to spend even more money?

It has been four years. Germany has built how many cruise missiles?

As long as that doesn’t include a continent wide nuclear weapons program including glide vehicle research we’re still fucked.