Together, European NATO members now spend the equivalent of almost 60% of the US defence budget. Europe has the second-largest defence expenditure in the world and has factories capable of building weapons fast, cheaply, and well – and yet nobody would call it nearly as formidable or as defensible as the US.

How is that possible? Europe runs 14 different types of tanks and 15 types of combat aircraft, whereas the US operates one tank and a handful of fighter jets. Each has a separate production line, supply chain, stock of spare parts, and maintenance regime, all which leads to more taxpayer money being spent overall across national armies than it would if these were consolidated.

A recent report by the Kiel Institute argues Europe gets 30-40% less capability for every euro it spends than a single, consolidated buyer would.

All for one and one for all?

One reason why Europe's defence looks this way is that governments are under pressure to spend their defence budgets on domestic contracts that create local jobs, rather than integrating more closely with other countries' defence industries.

“Where a country already has an established defence industrial base and a competing national product, buying from a foreign supplier becomes politically difficult regardless of broader EU market principles,” Tim Lawrenson, an independent defence consultant, told us.

This divided approach leads to short term gains that come with a long term loss.

“What must happen is the move towards a unified European market with a defence industry,” Slovakia's former defence minister Martin Sklenár, now at the Globsec think tank, told us.

“A defence company in Slovakia needs to obtain all the paperwork and stamps from Slovak authorities in order to supply the Slovak government, but then has to do the same for the 26 other governments if it wants to operate in Europe,” he said.

In other words, even trying to do things in a consolidated way means one product still needs 27 sets of approvals.

Each country also has its own military requirements for equipment design. To improve joint procurement, Sklenár would like to see an approach by which “we’ll take whatever we can get, as long as we can fight with it and it meets some basic requirements.”

For Lawrenson, a better system would see larger multinational orders, allowing governments to negotiate better prices and reducing duplication in research and development spending.

This would also benefit European defence companies. As Lawrenson describes it, bigger, steadier orders over a longer period of time give manufacturers the confidence to build new production lines and hire, something that European defence firms have been historically reluctant to do given a lack of demand in peacetime.

Military Schengen

Beyond costing us more, fragmentation also leaves us physically divided when our security is most under threat. If the EU or NATO’s eastern flank comes under immediate threat, “reinforcements must come from the West, where geography won't allow it,” Sklenár said.

“When military and equipment move, they have to pass through many countries, many borders, over many bridges, roads, and tunnels.” Europe does not have common military standards for infrastructure, and a tank stuck at a bridge in France is useless to a war waged in Poland.

The EU is currently working on a €1.7 billion military-mobility fund called “Military Schengen”, but even the Commission's own estimates place the true need at over €100 billion.

A move to autonomy

Consolidation is not only cheaper and enabling of improved crisis response, but would also help create a Europe that can act without reliance on the US.

Pooling demand builds independent European supply chains and would allow for a scale that no single country could achieve on its own.

In March, the European Parliament backed a report calling for a genuine single market for defence: reformed procurement rules, harmonised licensing, mutual recognition of security clearances, and a “Buy European” preference steering EU money toward EU industry.

“Fragmentation is inefficient. It is expensive, but on today's battlefield, we see that it can even be deadly,” said MEP Tobias Cremer, the author of the report. The Commission’s Industrial Accelerator Act and SAFE joint procurement defence loan point in the same direction.

Despite all of these efforts, national governments aren't as eager to make these changes. Many opposed the “Buy European” plan in fear of being locked out of faster, combat-proven, NATO-interoperable suppliers just as Russian threats make speed non-negotiable.

Other states publicly endorse integration while guarding their own industry or buying American anyway. Germany, Poland, Belgium, and Greece have all ordered roughly 300 F-35s in recent contracts with Lockheed Martin, worth about €25 billion.