Europe’s imports of weapons made by the United States have skyrocketed in the past five years, raising serious questions about whether the continent can achieve its vaunted goal of defence autonomy.
New research released on Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a leading defence and armaments think tank, shows Europe increased its imports of weapons two-and-a-half times over in the past five years compared with the previous five years.
Two-thirds of those imports came from the United States.
Europe’s ability to build its own weapons will materially affect how well it can defend Ukraine after a US arms cut-off, Matthew George, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme, told Al Jazeera.
“On one side, you have states increasing arms to counter the ‘Russian threat’ but on the other, states will need to figure how they rearm and build up while also transferring stocks to Ukraine,” he said.
Most European Union members did not begin boosting their domestic weapons production until last year, the third year of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.
“The West wasted these three years and didn’t prepare itself for this protracted war or any kind of horizontal escalations,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, a land warfare expert for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera.
“We have an escalation in terms of increasing numbers of Russian troops and bringing North Koreans into the war. The West hasn’t been prepared, unfortunately, but better late than never.”
Some observers are optimistic Europe will turn itself around.
“There’s actually a slight advantage here for Europe,” retired US Colonel Seth Krummrich, who currently serves as vice president for Global Guardian, a security consultant, told Al Jazeera.
“The days of World War II mass armour attacks are basically going away in this new AI-drone-driven warfare in that dirt laboratory that is Ukraine.”
Swarms of drones would be more effective than heavy armour, he suggested.
“I see an incredible opportunity for Europe to actually do future investment in what the next phase of war looks like, and there’s enough smart thinkers there that they can nail it right out of the gates,” Krummrich said.
Ukraine seems to be well ahead on this path.
Last year, the government in Kyiv set itself a goal to produce a million first-person view drones.
By October, it said it had received 1.3 million from Ukrainian suppliers and expected the figure to rise to 1.6 million by the end of December.
SIPRI’s research also showed that in the past five years, Ukraine became the world’s biggest arms importer, absorbing 8.8 percent of global transfers – a fact at odds with its goal of greater autonomy.
“I think that things cannot truly be different right now. We need lots of weapons,” Ukrainian parliamentarian Inna Sovsun, who has knowledge of defence matters, told Al Jazeera.
“We are fighting the second biggest army in the world, and the conflict is immense,” she said.
But she also pointed out that Ukraine’s defence industrial base had gone from a turnover of 1 billion euros ($1.08bn) when the autonomy policy was announced in December 2023 to 20 billion euros ($21.7bn) today, according to information from the Ministry of Defence.
“According to recent estimates by the Ministry of Defence, around 40 percent of weapons we are using now are being produced in Ukraine,” Sovsun said.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, estimated that another 30 percent of Ukraine’s weapons were coming from the US and 30 percent from the EU and other allies.
European defence a market winner, Russia a loser
Europe in theory could turbocharge a similar build-up of its own industrial base.
According to SIPRI’s findings, even though the US remained the world’s top arms exporter, claiming 43 percent of the market, Western European firms claimed 30 percent.
France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Norway all increased their share of the global market in the 2020-2024 period, SIPRI showed. Poland’s share increased 40 times over.
The EU on Thursday announced it would authorise up to 800 billion euros ($868bn) in new debt for weapons procurement with $158bn earmarked to reward joint procurement from European firms.
Germany alone was mulling a 400-billion-euro ($434bn) defence spending boost.
“European defence has emerged as one of the biggest winners in global markets this year,” The Wall Street Journal wrote on Sunday.
Some of the largest European firms’ stocks have risen 67 percent or more, it said, beating market indices.
Russia, in contrast, lost two-thirds of its armaments export market over the past five years, including the three years in which its weapons have been on display in the war on Ukraine.
“The decline in Russia’s arms exports started before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” George said. “This was largely as a result of a decrease in orders from China and India.”
“For instance, India is shifting its arms supply relations towards Western suppliers, most notably France, Israel and the US. And despite recent public declarations from the two sides that relations between India and Russia remain friendly, the shift is also visible in India’s new and planned orders for major arms, most of which will come from Western suppliers.”
In China’s case, “its increasing ability to design and produce its own major arms means that it is far less reliant on arms imports than it was previously,” George said.
Krummrich was less charitable.
“Anyone out there with a cheque book, especially if it’s a limited budget, … they’re going to see what works and doesn’t work,” he said. “When they saw the Javelins blowing the [Russian] T-72 tank turrets 60ft [18 metres] into the air and stopping the entire first [invasion], … the best Russian forces destroyed in place, … no one’s going to buy that.”
While Europe is set to boost domestic production, it also has glaring weaknesses.
France’s Rafale, Sweden’s Gripen and the multinational Eurofighter have all lost sales to Lockheed Martin’s F-35, which is the combat plane of choice for most European NATO members. And Europe lacks air defence systems as proven as US-based Raytheon’s Patriot and its PAC-3 missiles.
