Defence Industries in Europe: Emerging Challenges and Functions

The role of Western defence businesses in the Kuwait War showed the value of industrial support for modern military operations, while the political and economic importance of defence companies continues to attract attention, not least because of European concerns about US domination. Defence businesses in Europe are faced with three simultaneous challenges - the need to take optimum advantage of a range of emerging technologies, military demands for equipment suitable for a range of missions and climates, and decreasing defence budgets, and there is a considerable variation in the policies of national governments with regard to how industry can meet these challenges. The authors identify a range of possible strategies for governments and industry, including concentrating on systems integration skills or on less technologically-sophisticated systems. However, they find that, if defence businesses in Europe are to produce equipment of comparable standard to that emerging in the US, they need to be further re-organised to acquire European reather than national characters: an Airbus-plus model for industrial organizations is advanced. Undoubtedly such change would raise significant issues for governments of how such industry would be sponsored and regulated, but the alternative appears to be national defence industrial firms in Europe with little commercial future or military value to their governments.