For decades, Europe talked about strategic autonomy much the way people talk about staying in shape: everyone agreed it was a good idea, but few were willing to change their established way of life.
American fighter jets were readily available. American missiles were battle-tested. American intelligence worked. American satellites could see farther. American logistics made it possible to move entire armies. And the American nuclear deterrent answered the ultimate and most terrifying question of European security.
Europe could argue with Washington over trade, climate policy, China, the Middle East, or digital taxes, but when a critical moment arrived, the underlying assumption remained unchanged: the United States would stay where it had been for decades, standing behind Europe.
That certainty is now disappearing.
A quiet defense revolution is beginning across the continent. The European Union is not simply trying to produce more weapons. Its objective is far more ambitious: to remove American technology from European weapons systems wherever possible, establish its own supply chains, satellite systems, software, artificial intelligence, missiles, drones, air defense systems, and precision-strike capabilities, and ultimately gain the ability to export, upgrade, and deploy them without political authorization from Washington.
Several developments have converged to accelerate this shift: disagreements with the United States over Ukraine, trade tariffs, threats of reduced American involvement in NATO, and Washington's broader strategic pivot toward confrontation with China.
But the most interesting part comes next.
Europe has suddenly discovered that buying independence is much easier than building it.
Washington Controls More Than the Weapons. It Controls the Right to Use Them
For advocates of European autonomy, the main problem with American weapons is no longer their price.
The problem is called ITAR.
The United States' International Traffic in Arms Regulations were created to protect American military technology. But in Europe, ITAR is increasingly viewed as a mechanism that allows Washington to retain political and technological control far beyond U.S. territory.
Particularly sensitive is the so-called see-through rule.
If a system contains an American component, even a relatively minor one, exporting that system may require U.S. authorization. In certain cases, approval is required not only for exports, but also for upgrades and the transfer or relocation of equipment.
And this is not a theoretical problem.
The United States has previously blocked deliveries of French Falcon Eye satellites to the United Arab Emirates and SCALP missiles for Rafale fighter jets destined for Egypt.
There is another mechanism of dependence as well: Foreign Military Sales.
When a country buys an F-35 or a Patriot system, it is acquiring more than a fighter jet or an air defense system. The purchase creates a long chain of maintenance requirements, software updates, ammunition supplies, spare parts, licenses, and U.S. administrative procedures.
In other words, buying weapons also creates a political relationship.
Data is another issue.
The CLOUD Act, adopted in the United States in 2018, allows U.S. authorities under certain conditions to request data from American companies even when the servers holding that data are physically located outside the United States.
For the defense sector, that kind of dependence is particularly sensitive.
F-35 software, including the ODIN system, is tied to American update and support infrastructure. In theory, dependence on software and spare parts means that operational autonomy over a weapons system can never equal the autonomy a buyer has over an ordinary machine that can be purchased and then controlled entirely by its owner.
This is precisely why Germany and other European countries are beginning to develop their own control frameworks and scrutinize components subject to ITAR restrictions more carefully.
Potential export restrictions are not the only concern.
To obtain approvals, European contractors must disclose detailed technical information to U.S. regulators. For a defense company, this means that a foreign government may potentially gain access to sensitive information about products, technologies, and manufacturing processes.
Berlin Ordered 400 Tomahawks. Then It Discovered That America Needed the Missiles for Itself
Dependence also has a much more mundane dimension.
Sometimes America does not prevent Europe from buying weapons.
America simply needs those weapons itself.
The crisis surrounding the Tomahawk is a telling example. After intensive U.S. expenditure of munitions in the Middle East, with initial estimates referring to more than a thousand weapons expended, Germany faced the possibility that its order for 400 missiles could be delayed.
Following negotiations, the American side promised to resume fulfillment of the order in August.
But the episode itself was deeply uncomfortable for Berlin.
Germany had expected to acquire an important long-range deterrence capability, only to confront a simple reality: when an American priority emerges at the same time, the European order is no longer the priority.
A European equivalent in a comparable class is not expected until 2030.
War, crisis, or the need for deterrence will not wait for Europe's production schedule.
This is Europe's fundamental dilemma: to become independent ten years from now, it must invest in its own industry today. But to remain secure today, it still has to buy American weapons.
Every urgent purchase from the United States closes a military capability gap now while simultaneously reducing the economic space available for a European alternative tomorrow.
58 Percent Dependence: Europe Is Paying America for Its Own Strategic Vulnerability
The scale of the problem is visible in the numbers.
American weapons account for about 58 percent of external defense procurement by European NATO members.
By another calculation, the United States accounts for roughly 63 percent of European defense imports originating outside the EU.
Yet even those figures do not reveal the full picture.
European Union countries direct as much as 78 percent of relevant defense procurement spending toward external suppliers. Beyond the United States, substantial sums go to manufacturers in South Korea, Israel, and the United Kingdom.
Amid Europe's urgent rearmament, the share of procurement conducted within the EU has fallen from roughly 62 percent to 44 percent and, during some peak periods, dropped to approximately 22 percent.
Moreover, even European spending remains deeply national.
Countries award as much as 75 to 80 percent of domestic contracts to their own manufacturers rather than to companies in neighboring EU states.
The result is a paradox.
Europe possesses an enormous industrial, financial, and scientific base, yet it continues to operate not as a unified defense market but as a collection of competing national systems.
Brussels is trying to change that.
The goal is to raise the share of defense procurement conducted within the union to at least 50 percent by 2030.
The New Label on European Weapons: ITAR-Free
Just a few years ago, the ITAR-free label was primarily a commercial advantage.
Now it is becoming a political argument.
The logic is straightforward: if a system contains no American components, Washington has far less ability to influence its export or modernization.
The European Defence Fund and EU rearmament programs already take technological autonomy into account when evaluating projects.
During the competition to replace the G36 rifle, Germany explicitly required that the final product contain no components subject to ITAR restrictions.
Even more revealing was Denmark's decision to select the European SAMP/T air defense system rather than the American Patriot. Political considerations included the risks associated with U.S. export controls and tensions generated by statements from President Trump regarding Greenland.
France's MBDA already produces MICA missiles without American components.
Lithuania's Tactical Photonics has developed an ultralight laser target designator for drones weighing less than 2 kilograms. In the original specifications, it is contrasted with the approximately 15-kilogram L3Harris Wescam system, costs roughly half as much, and does not require authorization from the U.S. State Department.
Similar logic underpins THUNDART, the long-range ground-based missile system developed by MBDA and Safran and unveiled in April 2026.
The first launch, designed to validate the missile's structural design and propulsion system, took place on April 14.
Europeans are applying the same principle to Eurodrone, the large unmanned aircraft being developed by Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.
Avio Aero's Catalyst engine has acquired particular significance because it was designed from the outset to avoid ITAR restrictions.
Meanwhile, Finland's Agate Sensors received a contract from the Swedish defense authorities for software-controlled spectral chips. Here Europe is attempting to solve a dual problem: reducing its dependence on both the United States and Taiwan in advanced microelectronics and optical sensors.
A different configuration is taking shape in military aviation.
Edgewing, a joint venture bringing together Britain's BAE Systems, Italy's Leonardo, and Japan's Mitsubishi, received a $6.14 billion contract to develop a next-generation fighter aircraft targeted for 2035.
Funding covers the first 18 months, during which the concept assessment phase of the Global Combat Air Programme is expected to be completed before detailed design work begins.
This is happening against the backdrop of serious problems facing the Franco-German project to develop its own sixth-generation fighter. Cooperation has encountered such deep disagreements that the original concept of a common program has effectively been placed in jeopardy.
Europe Spends More Than 300 Billion Euros. Why Is It Still Short of Weapons?
The greatest obstacle to European defense autonomy is not in Washington.
It is inside Europe itself.
The United States has something close to a single defense market.
The Pentagon acts as the central customer, establishes standards, and concentrates production around a limited number of platforms.
The M1 Abrams family illustrates the model in armored vehicle production: the M1A1, M1A2, and their various derivatives. The production system is centralized around the only remaining U.S. tank manufacturer.
The European model is the opposite.
The EU consists of 27 defense markets, 27 budget systems, different planning cycles, individual national requirements, and domestic manufacturers that governments protect for the sake of jobs, tax revenues, and technological expertise.
Germany is betting on the Leopard 2 and the industrial base represented by KNDS and Rheinmetall.
France supported the Leclerc for decades.
Poland and other Eastern European countries simultaneously continue to operate various modifications of Soviet-origin platforms.
Efforts to create a common European tank are once again running into politics.
The Main Ground Combat System, or MGCS, which is eventually supposed to replace the Leopard and Leclerc, has been bogged down by competition between French and German companies and disputes over work allocation, technology, and intellectual property.
If the political situation in France changes and Marine Le Pen's National Rally comes to power, the future of MGCS could become even more uncertain. Le Pen herself has demonstrated a highly critical attitude toward transferring defense sovereignty to supranational European institutions.
This produces Europe's defense "boutique collection."
Plenty of good weapons.
Plenty of national manufacturers.
Plenty of models.
Small production runs.
High prices.
Weak economies of scale.
The EU spends more than 300 billion euros on defense every year, an amount comparable to China's defense spending and exceeded only by that of the United States.
But studies of Europe's defense industry reach an extremely uncomfortable conclusion: because of fragmentation, Europe obtains approximately 30 to 40 percent less defense capability for every euro invested than it could achieve under a genuinely unified market.
Six Years of Orders Ahead and a War Europe Expects in 2029
Even if European governments reached an agreement tomorrow, industrial capacity could not instantly be multiplied several times over.
Rheinmetall, KNDS, BAE Systems, and MBDA already have order books extending roughly six years into the future.
At the same time, there is a shortage of skilled personnel.
Energy remains expensive.
Small and medium-sized technology companies are often capable of producing an excellent prototype but then lack the financing needed to transition to mass production.
There is also a financial problem.
European venture capital is insufficient to scale a number of promising deep-tech companies. As a result, they are forced to turn to American investors, and with that capital comes a gradual risk of losing control over strategic technologies.
The conservative investment practices of pension funds and institutional investors, combined with strict regulation, further restrict developers' access to capital.
All of this is unfolding against projections suggesting that European countries need to be prepared for a possible major military crisis around 2029. That timeline has appeared publicly in statements by German defense officials and in assessments by European intelligence organizations.
Europe has virtually no time for the traditional cycle: ten years of design, five years of testing, followed by slow serial production.
Ten Gaps in European Defense and a 500 Billion Euro Bill
Expert assessments identify ten critical areas without which European strategic autonomy will remain little more than a slogan.
They are command-and-control systems; robotic platforms; long-range ground-based precision-strike capabilities and sixth-generation aviation; multilayered air defense; satellite intelligence and communications; independent access to space; persistent airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; military cloud platforms, software, and artificial intelligence; strategic airlift and operational support; electronic warfare and capabilities for suppressing enemy air defenses.
The estimated cost of closing these gaps is about 500 billion euros over the next decade.
But money solves only half the problem.
The other half is eliminating fragmentation.
SAFE: Brussels Has Found a Way to Make Europe Buy European
The new architecture is being built around the European Defence Industrial Strategy, EDIS, and the EDIP program.
The key benchmark has already been established: by 2030, at least 50 percent of procurement should come from EU countries.
One of the principal financial instruments is the Security Action for Europe program, SAFE.
The 150 billion euro fund was created in May 2025 and provides countries with long-term concessional financing for large-scale rearmament and the expansion of defense production.
But the rules contain a fundamental barrier.
The share of components and supplies originating in countries outside the EU must not exceed 35 percent in eligible projects.
This is no longer merely a declaration of strategic autonomy.
It is a financial mechanism for reshaping the market.
A new model is also emerging: capacity contracts.
In effect, the government pays a company not only for missiles or shells already produced, but also for maintaining production lines in a condition that allows mass output to be rapidly expanded during a crisis.
Europe's defense economy is shifting from a "just in time" model to a "just in case" model.
Readiness 2030, previously known as ReArm Europe, envisions the possibility of mobilizing approximately 800 billion euros in additional resources by 2030.
Financing a transformation of this scale through government budgets alone is difficult.
That is why attitudes toward ESG are changing.
Until recently, many investment funds treated weapons manufacturing as an undesirable asset class.
Now security is increasingly being regarded as an essential component of sustainable development.
At the same time, Europeans want to accelerate the adoption of dual-use technologies, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and robotics, while shortening the traditional multiyear certification cycles.
Not an EU Army, but a Multi-Speed Europe
The complete centralization of defense in Brussels remains politically impossible.
A more pragmatic model is therefore emerging.
NATO continues to define military requirements and interoperability standards.
The European Union is becoming the financial and industrial organizer, overseeing production, infrastructure, military mobility, and energy security.
Specific programs, meanwhile, can be implemented through coalitions of willing countries.
France, for example, could lead long-range strike development.
Germany could lead air defense.
There is no need to wait for all 27 countries to agree on every project.
Readiness 2030 is already incorporating this principle.
BeHorizon research on a "two-speed Europe" proceeds from the assumption that the unanimity requirement could itself become a threat to effectiveness. Several countries can approve a multibillion-euro defense contract far more quickly, begin production, and then expand the program to include additional participants.
Otherwise, Europe's rearmament risks losing the war not to Russia or the United States, but to its own decision-making procedures.
A European Starlink, 100 German Satellites, and a Space Bill Exceeding 50 Billion Euros
Europe's deepest dependency today lies above its head.
GPS.
Starlink.
American satellite intelligence.
Without space infrastructure, a modern military is effectively blind.
That is why the EU is building its own space shield.
The central project is IRIS, valued at more than 10.6 billion euros and intended to provide secure government and military communications.
Galileo is expected to acquire more explicitly military functions and the corresponding accreditation.
Copernicus is being treated as an important foundation for European Earth observation.
Germany is separately investing approximately 10 billion euros in a constellation of 100 low-Earth-orbit SATCOM Stage 4 satellites, often described as Germany's military equivalent of Starlink.
Systems for detecting and countering threats are being developed in parallel.
Odin's Eye II is intended to provide early warning of missile launches.
TWISTER is expected to use space-based surveillance to counter missile threats.
The private sector is also becoming part of this architecture. Digantara is developing independent space-monitoring and intelligence infrastructure.
But a modern satellite network must do more than detect threats and protect itself.
It must also be repairable.
The OrbitAID project is developing technologies for servicing and refueling satellites directly in orbit, which would extend their operational lifespans and allow them to maneuver away from threats when necessary.
The next question is what Europe will use to launch a replacement for a destroyed satellite.
Europe is counting on Ariane 6 while simultaneously seeking to develop a fleet of commercial micro and small launch vehicles.
Large-scale development of this infrastructure is planned for the 2028–2030 period.
Cooperation with innovative operators such as India's Agnikul Cosmos is also under consideration: the technology is not European, but crucially, it is not American either.
Total investment in Europe's space shield, communications, intelligence, and associated infrastructure is estimated at more than 50 billion euros over the next decade.
Ukraine Is Breaking Europe’s Defense Industry Faster Than Any Brussels Directive
The most unexpected part of Europe’s defense transformation is not taking place in Paris or Berlin.
It is taking place on the Ukrainian front.
The joint EU-Ukraine security commitments adopted in June 2024 established an official framework for industrial cooperation, including the protection of intellectual property and the creation of complementary production chains.
Ukraine is effectively gaining the status of a special partner of Europe’s defense industry even before joining the EU.
The integration of Ukraine’s defense industry is enshrined both in the White Paper for European Defence and in the European Defence Industrial Strategy.
A dedicated EU-Ukraine task force under the European Commission is intended to transform the front line’s short-term requirements into long-term industrial production programs.
The reason is simple.
Ukraine has taught Europe something that a peacetime defense bureaucracy could never have learned on its own: modern weapons sometimes become obsolete not in decades, or even years.
But in weeks.
A drone algorithm.
Communications frequencies.
An electronic warfare system.
Software.
A guidance method.
The enemy adapts, and the technology loses its advantage.
That means updating software once every several years is pointless.
Weekly cycles are required.
Ukraine has become a real-world proving ground for Western technologies, where the cycle from prototype to combat experience is sometimes compressed from several years to just a few months.
Particularly important is the Delta battlefield management system, which integrates satellite data, drones, radars, and other sources into a single secure digital environment. Its architecture is being viewed as one of the reference models for new European C2 command-and-control standards.
But the real revolution has occurred in drones.
Ukraine produces as many as 200,000 FPV drones per month.
Europeans are no longer thinking in terms of thousands. They are considering how to build the capacity to manufacture millions of drones and munitions every year.
Germany’s Quantum Systems and Dutch developers are establishing production directly in Ukraine or creating closely integrated cooperation arrangements with Ukrainian companies.
The Czech Czechoslovak Group manufactures fuzes and explosive charges for 155 mm ammunition, after which final assembly takes place in Ukraine.
There is another, less visible but critically important front: batteries.
Ukrainian companies have begun replacing Chinese components with Samsung lithium cells from South Korea and assembling battery packs, including 6S2P configurations, for drones, electronic warfare systems, and field power supplies.
Previously, China supplied as much as 90 percent of the relevant component market.
After Beijing imposed strict export restrictions on drone components, that dependence became a direct vulnerability.
In this way, Ukraine’s experience has unexpectedly converged with Europe’s strategy of reducing dependence not only on the United States, but also on China.
Maybe Europe Should Simply Wait for Trump to Leave Office? No
This is one of the most dangerous temptations in European politics.
It is possible to assume that the current tensions are primarily connected to President Trump and that once the administration changes, transatlantic relations will return to their familiar model.
But European strategists increasingly consider that assumption mistaken.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has described the problem in stark terms: Europe is no longer the primary center of gravity of U.S. foreign policy, and this shift is structural rather than temporary.
Washington is looking toward the Indo-Pacific.
China is becoming the United States’ principal long-term competitor.
For U.S. military planning, the Pacific, high-technology warfare, space, submarine forces, long-range missiles, unmanned systems, and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly important.
Even record defense budgets do not automatically mean that Washington is prepared to finance the old global structure indefinitely.
The United States maintains a network of roughly 750 military bases and facilities in approximately 80 countries.
The estimated annual cost of sustaining this global infrastructure is about $55 billion to $80 billion.
Against the backdrop of budget deficits and record national debt, pressure on such expenditures is likely only to intensify.
Washington’s demands that Europeans increase their own contribution to security are therefore unlikely to disappear with any particular president.
Europe Is Buying F-35s Today. The Dependence Could Last Into the 2080s
There is another reason why the old system cannot simply be restored.
Modern weapons remain in service for decades.
An F-35 purchased today will undergo modernization, receive software updates, new munitions, and spare parts throughout an extraordinarily long service life.
Some estimates suggest that the associated infrastructure dependence could continue into the 2080s.
This is no ordinary export contract.
It is a technological marriage lasting half a century.
And it is difficult to imagine any U.S. administration voluntarily surrendering the political leverage that comes with being the supplier responsible for more than 58 percent of European NATO members’ external defense procurement.
Military dependence almost inevitably becomes bargaining leverage in both trade and diplomatic disputes.
But Poland Does Not Want to Say Goodbye to America
This is precisely where the European project begins to fracture.
France remains one of the main ideological centers of strategic autonomy.
President Emmanuel Macron has consistently promoted the idea of European defense independence.
Yet even France’s military establishment resists attempts by the European Commission to define national military requirements, regarding that area as a matter of state sovereignty.
Germany takes a more cautious position.
Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Berlin has adopted a harder form of foreign policy realism, but NATO remains the foundation of German security. Germany wants to strengthen Europe’s defense industry while preserving the American security umbrella at the same time.
This logic is even more pronounced in Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, and the Czech Republic.
For them, Russia is not an abstract strategic problem but an immediate threat.
And the United States is seen as the only ally capable of rapidly providing strategic air power, intelligence, air defense systems, missile capabilities, nuclear deterrence, and large ground forces.
Poland is the clearest example.
Warsaw is purchasing Abrams tanks, HIMARS systems, and F-35 fighters while simultaneously buying significant quantities of weapons from South Korea.
Poland’s approach is uncompromisingly pragmatic: if weapons are needed now, Warsaw has no intention of waiting ten years for France and Germany to agree on the allocation of intellectual property rights.
President Trump’s policy therefore pushes Europe in opposite directions at the same time.
It pushes Western Europe toward greater autonomy from the United States.
It pushes Eastern Europe toward even tighter military dependence on Washington.
And the more talk there is of an American withdrawal, the more willing some countries become to buy American weapons in order to make such a withdrawal less politically and economically attractive to the United States itself.
Europe Wants to Turn Fear of War Into a New Industrial Revolution
There is another dimension that is often lost amid discussions of tanks and missiles.
In Brussels, defense autonomy is not viewed solely as a military project.
It is also a reindustrialization project.
The projected 500 billion euros in investment over a decade would amount to approximately 0.25 percent of the EU’s projected cumulative GDP over that period.
At first glance, this looks like expenditure.
But defense technology almost never remains exclusively military.
Sovereign artificial intelligence being developed by companies such as Mistral AI and Helsing, quantum sensors, new materials, satellite communications, robotics, and Ariane 6 launch vehicles all have enormous civilian potential.
Europe expects defense procurement to create a guaranteed market for deep-tech companies, allowing them to scale within the EU and later compete globally without American ITAR restrictions.
The space sector is particularly revealing.
In 2025, SpaceX carried out 170 launches.
For Europe, that figure is a reminder of the enormous gap.
That is why Europe is developing micro and medium launch vehicles alongside Ariane 6.
At the same time, concepts are emerging for modular microfactories capable of producing ammunition, including solutions being developed by the Dutch research organization TNO.
The logic is straightforward: instead of relying on a handful of enormous factories that are vulnerable to attack and dependent on complex international supply chains, Europe wants a more distributed and flexible industrial infrastructure.
If it succeeds, military rearmament could become Europe’s largest industrial project in several decades.
Europe’s Main Opponent Is Not America. It Is Europe Itself
The European Union has capital.
It has universities.
It has an aerospace industry.
It has automotive and mechanical engineering industries.
It has Airbus, MBDA, Rheinmetall, Leonardo, BAE Systems, KNDS, Safran, and dozens of next-generation technology companies.
It has space systems.
It has its own navigation system.
It has an enormous market.
It has Ukraine’s experience of modern warfare.
It has a political understanding of the problem.
According to some estimates, technological sovereignty in key platforms, munitions, and software-defined systems could potentially be achieved within roughly five to seven years.
But there is one component that cannot be manufactured in a factory.
Political will.
Europe can build its own rocket engine.
It is considerably harder to make France and Germany agree on who receives the main contract.
Europe can build an excellent tank.
But economies of scale are impossible if every country insists on having its own version.
Europe can invest 150 billion euros through SAFE, mobilize as much as 800 billion euros through Readiness 2030, spend 500 billion euros over a decade closing technological gaps, and invest more than 50 billion euros in space autonomy.
But no amount of money can compensate for a system in which 27 countries are capable of blocking one another.
That is why Europe’s current defense shift runs much deeper than another rearmament cycle.
It is a test of the European model itself.
For decades, the EU demonstrated that states could surrender part of their economic sovereignty in exchange for a common market.
Then came a common currency.
Then common regulatory institutions.
Now the most difficult question is emerging: can Europeans partially integrate the domain that states have always guarded more jealously than any other, the ability to wage war and guarantee their own security?
Far more depends on the answer than the fate of contracts awarded to Rheinmetall, MBDA, or Lockheed Martin.
If the project succeeds, Europe could, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, transform itself from a territory protected by an American strategic umbrella into an independent military-technological center of power.
If it fails, hundreds of billions of euros will give Europe more tanks, more missiles, more drones, and more satellites, but not necessarily more strategic freedom.
Because weapons alone do not make a state sovereign.
Sovereignty begins where no outside power decides whether you are allowed to manufacture, modernize, export, launch, update, or use those weapons.
And it is precisely for that right that Europe is now preparing to pay hundreds of billions.