Ramping Up the European Defence Industry: Why Money Is Not the Constraint Anymore

European defence budgets have grown faster over the last two years than over the previous two decades.
NATO allies have committed to 5% of GDP by 2035, the EU has adopted SAFE, and EDIP and national budgets are enshrining the new norms into law.
The question of whether Europe will spend has largely been settled.

What hasn’t been answered is whether the industrial system can turn that money into capability at the rate that deterrence requires.
The rate of scale-up has now become a variable in itself, as an adversary is less deterred by what Europe has in stock than by what it can credibly produce and how rapidly it can produce it.
Procurement, which measures output only, doesn’t capture this.

This whitepaper examines why the ramp rate now determines deterrence,
which four constraints govern it: demand architecture, supply-chain depth, innovation speed, and the financing and time factor, and what European buyers must state in order to get scalability rather than volume.
It uses the Netherlands as a use case for a different architecture (strongest in the unmanned area) and demonstrates where that architecture has yet to reach delivery.