Canada is considering pulling out of the US-led F-35 fighter programme and buying Swedish planes instead.
“We should no longer send three-quarters of our defence capital spending to America,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said this month.
When a group of US legislators went to Copenhagen this spring to encourage Danish officials to buy more US weapons, the message they got was clear: we like your arms, but Trump’s very public threats to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, were making buying them politically difficult, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
Some Danish politicians have gone further.
“Buying American weapons is a security risk that we cannot run,” Rasmus Jarlov, a conservative lawmaker who heads the defence committee in parliament, said in a post on social media platform X in March.
Trump’s abrupt decision to briefly suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine earlier this year alarmed allies, according to officials, fuelling fears that the US might hobble American-made weapons in a crisis.
The concern got so bad that the Pentagon had to issue a public reassurance that the F-35 fighter didn’t have a “kill switch”.
But the planned build-up - worth as much as €14 trillion over the next decade if related infrastructure is included, according to Carlyle - is far beyond the current capabilities of a fragmented European defence sector that’s been hollowed out by decades of cuts since the end of the Cold War.
And the US lead in key areas, especially missiles and other high-tech weapons, means there’s often no real alternative to buying American.
“For those countries that are assuming that they can immediately pivot to a world where Europeans will only purchase European-made capabilities, I think that is entirely unrealistic for the foreseeable future,” said Julianne Smith, a former US Ambassador to Nato, now at Clarion Strategies.
Tuure Lehtoranta, a senior executive at Finnish defence-tech firm Insta Group Oy, said: “There’s not enough production, there’s not enough design in some areas”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose government is planning to nearly double spending on core defence items this year, said the European industry needs an overhaul to meet the demand.
“We have far too many systems in Europe, we have far too few units, and what we produce is often far too complicated, and therefore too expensive as a result,” he said this week.
At the Paris Air Show last week, executives from Airbus SE and Dassault Aviation SA sparred openly over who should take charge of their next-generation fighter jet project.
European allies will have no alternative but to buy American weapons to meet alliance targets, especially with stocks depleted by supplies given to Ukraine, a senior Nato official said, asking not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue.
Allies also lack key technologies.
“Who is the European Palantir? Who is the European Planet?” asked Pierre Vandier, a top Nato commander, referring to the US technology and satellite companies that the alliance recently signed contracts with.
“It’s a huge stimulus for Europeans to do all they can. If they don’t get started now, they can’t cry if there are violent power struggles later.”
Europe Depends on US Weapons
Europe has no rivals as advanced as Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 fighter or RTX Corp’s Patriot anti-missile, which has been critical to protecting Ukraine from Russian attacks.
Allies have no competitors for key capabilities like ballistic-missile defence and air-to-air refuelling.
While simpler weapons like howitzers are easier for allies to produce, they still require US satellite systems for precision targeting.
The United Kingdom said last week it would buy at least a dozen new F-35As, which Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hopes will help curry favour with Trump.
European defence companies are hopeful.
They’ve seen share-price increases of 50% or more this year, ahead even of the big gains of their US competitors, as investors anticipate the huge boost in business.
“More urgency is there now,” Micael Johansson, chief executive officer of Saab AB, which makes Gripen fighters, said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say we have seen a dramatic shift now to buy more European, but I think that’s the trend.”
US defence contractors are lining up co-operation deals with European counterparts to hedge against any shift away from American weapons.
“As these European defence budgets increase, that’s where we’re spending our time,” Stephen O’Bryan, president of Northrop Grumman Corp’s international business, said in an interview, referring to partnerships in Norway, Germany, and Denmark.
Lehtoranta of Insta said his company already partners with big US manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, including by providing avionics maintenance and other support for F-35 jets. But they see American companies are even hungrier to join forces now.
“I can see in the US that it might be a little bit of a fear in the air. US companies think that they might lose opportunities if they don’t find the right partners,” he said.
“There will be change, there will be probably more European investments in European factories and European acquisitions, but still, we cannot survive without the US industries.”
- With assistance from Wojciech Moskwa, Thomas Seal, Matthew Boesler, Michael Nienaber, Sanne Wass and Alex Wickham.
