(Bloomberg) — For European countries that just approved the biggest increase in military spending in decades, “Buy American” is looking a lot less appealing than it once was. They may have no choice.
As the allies rush to rebuild their fighting forces, leaders are confronting the reality that they’ll have to rely on the US for many of the new weapons they’re planning to buy, a sales pitch driven home by President Donald Trump on his visit to Europe this week.
They fret that they may be put at greater risk if they deepen their dependence on a US whose president has embraced their main enemy – Russia – and rattled some with threats to annex their territory. Those deeper ties have become an increasingly hard sell at home, with electorates cautious about a closer embrace with the US.
Allied leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have pushed for relying on European companies to provide the weapons and the EU fast-tracked a €150 billion facility for just that purpose after Trump was elected. Canada is considering pulling out of the US-led F-35 fighter program and buying Swedish planes instead.
“We should no longer send three-quarters of our defense capital spending to America,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier 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 defense 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, fueling fears that the US might hobble American-made weapons in a crisis. The worries 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 buildup — worth as much as €14 trillion ($16 trillion) over the next decade if related infrastructure is included, according to Carlyle — is far beyond the current capabilities of a fragmented European defense 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 defense-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 defense 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 defense and air-to-air refueling. While simpler weapons like howitzers are easier for allies to produce, they still require US satellite systems for precision targeting.
The UK said this week it would buy at least a dozen new F-35As, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer hopes will help curry favor with Trump.
European defense 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 defense contractors are lining up cooperation deals with European counterparts to hedge against any shift away from American weapons.
“As these European defense 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.
(Updates with quote by former US ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith in the 10th paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) — For European countries that just approved the biggest increase in military spending in decades, “Buy American” is looking a lot less appealing than it once was. They may have no choice.
As the allies rush to rebuild their fighting forces, leaders are confronting the reality that they’ll have to rely on the US for many of the new weapons they’re planning to buy, a sales pitch driven home by President Donald Trump on his visit to Europe this week.
They fret that they may be put at greater risk if they deepen their dependence on a US whose president has embraced their main enemy – Russia – and rattled some with threats to annex their territory. Those deeper ties have become an increasingly hard sell at home, with electorates cautious about a closer embrace with the US.
Allied leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have pushed for relying on European companies to provide the weapons and the EU fast-tracked a €150 billion facility for just that purpose after Trump was elected. Canada is considering pulling out of the US-led F-35 fighter program and buying Swedish planes instead.
“We should no longer send three-quarters of our defense capital spending to America,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier 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 defense 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, fueling fears that the US might hobble American-made weapons in a crisis. The worries 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 buildup — worth as much as €14 trillion ($16 trillion) over the next decade if related infrastructure is included, according to Carlyle — is far beyond the current capabilities of a fragmented European defense 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 defense-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 defense 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 defense and air-to-air refueling. While simpler weapons like howitzers are easier for allies to produce, they still require US satellite systems for precision targeting.
The UK said this week it would buy at least a dozen new F-35As, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer hopes will help curry favor with Trump.
European defense 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 defense contractors are lining up cooperation deals with European counterparts to hedge against any shift away from American weapons.
“As these European defense 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.
(Updates with quote by former US ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith in the 10th paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
https://protect-ca.mimecast.com/s/3G0WCE8k3qiWk4K2HNap63?domain=ftp.us-midwest-1.vip.tn-cloud.net
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
