EU buys too much defense equipment abroad, especially from US: Report
European Union countries are buying too much of their defense equipment abroad and failing to invest in joint military projects, a landmark report warns.
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Oh, they invest in a lot of joint projects.
Everyone loves joint projects in cooperation with the US to develop something again that they could already have bought from that pesky competition of a neighbouring country.
At the moment, Germany and France are cooperating in the development of a future MBT and a future fighter jet without the US.
Recently the discussion was more about, why the Europeans, especially Germany, are developing own equipment instead of buying already market ready US equipments. This is how we ended up buying the F-35 (yet there was an additional strong time constraint on that one).
At the moment German companies are cooperating with US ones to produce yet another MLRS system competing with existing ones.
At the moment Norwegian companies are cooperating with the US to develop their next iteration of air defense based on German missiles even that is part of a complete system already.
At the moment UK is cooperating with Italy and Japan to compete with the French-German jet project you already mentioned.
At the moment Poland is heavily cooperating with South Korea to develop huge parts of their modernized vehicle fleet while buying the rest from the US.
See how they all prefer to either buy from or develop with countries further away to avoid their neigbours perceived as competition?
As far as I remember, Poland chose to cooperate with SK, as the German companies did not allow technology transfer and manufacturing of components in Poland, while South Korea did. Additionally it was also about the manufacturing capacities and the time frame of delivery. So, they didn't chose SK over Germany, just because Germany is their neighbour.
The coordination between France and Germany in developing the FCAS was already a mess and only improved as the current MoDs harmonize on a personal level. Germany would take the leading role in developing the future MBT, while in exchange France was allowed to lead the development of the FCAS. Involving even more countries doesn't improve that aspect.
Personally, I also would prefer, if the competences would be coordinated on EU level to avoid this haggling. While some competence is beneficial to the outcome, a lot resources are wasted as too much work is done redundantly.
Personally, I also would prefer, if the competences would be coordinated on EU level to avoid this haggling.
That would only work in a perfect world. In the real one you just replace haggling with lobbying...
Most of the US orders Germany placed had no proper European alternative:
Those are some large orders, but the rest is mostly European, with maybe some US components. Honestly the German procurment is not especially bad with American components.
MBT both Leopard2 and Leclerc are ITAR free. For fighters Rafael is ITAR free and Eurofighter is pretty close, Austria did have problems with GPS components, but there are alternatives available. Turkey is interessted because Eurofigther is close to that. Only Gripen has a lot of problems.
Patriot has SMP/T as a European alternative.
Also there was no SMP/T when Germany got Patriot systems. So replacing an already existing and working system operated for decades with another one just because it's from the EU is a completely different story than choosing US equipment over existing European ones.
Exactly, but in the media, it was framed as we are always doing our own thing instead buying from US, as this would be faster and cheaper. However, the radical shift of US politcs in the last weeks shows, it was a good choice to avoid US products where possible and we have to develop replacements for those US systems we are currently using too.
Thanks for the information about the cerification procedure of the Eurofighter. I've thought it was more about the time this would take instead of the inherent transfer of knowledge that would go along with it when providing all documentation and blueprints.
It is not inherent transfer of knowledge, as much as it is US politics forcing that transfer. There are already US made weapons integrated into Eurofighter.
Perhaps it's carrying nuclear boms on behalf of the US is what makes this special. It's not like a regular bomb or missile.
I didn't want to write "industrial espionage", but effectively it's not very different from that, except it doesn't happen secretly.
