Ukraine and Europe’s path to self-sufficiency in defense: challenges and solutions

You might be wondering whether Ukraine and Europe can defend themselves on their own, without U.S. help. Let’s try to answer that.

In 2024, the U.S. provided equipment worth $20 billion. These are the volumes that will need to be compensated. It might seem that $20 billion is a drop in the ocean for the EU and the UK, whose combined GDP exceeds $20 trillion.

But the problem is not only about money. It all comes down to the physical presence of weapons in stockpiles and the ability of countries to produce that much military equipment.

Over three years of a large-scale war, the European Union and the UK have emptied their own stockpiles and started to rebuild their atrophied industrial base. However, it turned out that even catching up with Russia’s production volumes after 30 years of stagnation is a highly challenging task.

This is clearly illustrated by the European Union’s supply of 1 million new 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine, which took almost two years to deliver, instead of the initial 12-month plan. The United States also missed deadlines and is producing fewer artillery shells. By the end of 2024, they had only reached a production capacity of about 55,000 per month—less than the German company Rheinmetall alone produces.

The U.S. has large stockpiles, the ability to contract its allies, and the capacity to negotiate ammunition supplies for Ukraine by leveraging its political influence and connections. The EU countries are doing something similar, delivering 500,000 shells in 2024 through the “Czech initiative,” where shells were bought worldwide.

Only through joint efforts were the allies able to supply Ukraine with the minimum necessary number of shells to continue resistance. If U.S. ammunition deliveries fall off, a “gap” could emerge, which would be quite challenging to fill.

In 2025, EU countries plan to produce 2 million shells on their own, fulfilling record government orders for defense companies and purchasing a certain amount on the global market. However, this is still significantly less than the production capabilities of Russia and North Korea. Furthermore, not all of the newly produced shells will go to Ukraine.

The U.S. also plays an important role in supplying armored vehicles. If we focus solely on the origin of military equipment, excluding U.S. financing contracts and international connections, according to Oryx data, most of the tanks supplied to Ukraine come from the EU. Meanwhile, the U.S. has supplied about a quarter of all BMPs, half of the armored personnel carriers (APCs), and two-thirds of the four-wheeled armored vehicles.

The U.S. has provided half of the towed artillery deliveries and manufactures a lot of high-tech weaponry, which is hard to find alternatives for: various radars, engineering equipment, HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and their missiles, Patriot missile defense systems along with their munitions, AIM-9M air-to-air missiles, ATACMS ballistic missiles, AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles. Ultimately, Ukraine also uses data from U.S. military reconnaissance satellites and Starlink communications.

The EU and the UK can replace some U.S. systems with their own analogs. For example, Swedish CV-90 or German Puma vehicles instead of Bradley fighting vehicles; German IRIS-T systems instead of HAWK air defense systems; French-Italian SAMP-T systems instead of Patriot systems.

However, attempting to dramatically increase European production of new weapons, especially high-tech ones, could run into scaling problems just like with ammunition. To quickly fill the gap created by the lack of U.S. supplies, the EU will need significant changes in its defense-industrial policy.

For example, countries will need to find ways to prioritize military equipment deliveries to Ukraine. They must remove restrictions on defense industry financing by the European Investment Bank and increase military budgets to send a positive signal to private creditors and defense companies. Overcoming the personnel shortage that emerged due to the rapid deactivation of production facilities will also be crucial. Additionally, the EU needs to establish logistical infrastructure and the production of critical components.

But the biggest challenge for the EU will be learning to act together: jointly purchasing weapons and building supply chains.

The problem is that European military equipment is expensive even by U.S. standards, and its orders are fragmented—each country searches for a supplier, negotiates the price, and sets its own standards. This leads to duplicated defense capabilities, a loss of economies of scale, and a lack of predictability for companies investing in production development.

Instead, European countries need to unite, pool their resources, plan future purchases, strategically define a group of contractors, sign long-term contracts with reasonable prices, and become a major player in the global arms market.

The first steps toward joint weapon purchases were taken by EU countries in November 2024. However, the budget for these purchases will be a modest 300 million euros. But the mechanism has potential for future scaling.

Another challenge is that the EU must strategically decide what it will produce itself and what it will buy abroad.

Developing and scaling production of U.S. weapon system analogs could take a long time. Some European military equipment models may significantly lag behind U.S. products in terms of price, quality, and production speed, which would disadvantage the end user—the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

However, certain EU countries may lobby for orders specifically for their companies for political reasons, rather than prioritizing efficiency. A vivid example occurred during the development of the joint “Sky Shield” air defense system, when Germany insisted on the “quick and reliable” procurement of U.S. Patriot air defense systems, while France favored the “slow, but European” supply of French-Italian SAMP-T systems.

Given the obvious weaknesses in the European defense-industrial base, it’s likely that some of the weapons will still have to be purchased from the U.S. The Trump administration is considering a scenario where European countries could buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine. This way, the Ukrainian Armed Forces wouldn’t lose critical supplies of U.S. equipment, and Europe would simply pay more, with the U.S. profiting from this rather than spending on military budgets.

This idea doesn’t seem so bad, considering that the EU has more money than it can realistically spend on its own defense plants. However, when it comes to the option of “buying up” scarce weapons from the U.S., caution is needed, as the U.S. could at some point stop issuing export licenses for certain types of weapons or technologies, trying to avoid escalating the conflict with Russia.

It’s also not worth overestimating the risk of a potential U.S. arms embargo. It’s unlikely that the U.S. would take drastic steps to lose one of the world’s largest arms markets and push European competitors to replace U.S. technologies.

In the long run, it is politically and economically more advantageous for European countries to buy weapons from themselves, developing their industry and providing jobs. Moreover, localizing production would give priority in supplies to the European customer in the event of a military escalation elsewhere in the world, such as in Asia or the Middle East.

However, in the short- and medium-term, European “protectionism” will inevitably be limited by its inability to produce certain types of weapons cheaply, quickly, and with high quality. Therefore, relying to some extent on external purchases may be a saving grace.

You’ve just read a fragment of my article about Europe’s maturation. There’s much more interesting content, so read the full text on Ekonomichna Pravda. The link is in the first comment.

Finally, I’ll say that Ukraine’s bet on developing its own defense industry has fully paid off. We have no other choice but to continue developing our own weapons production and attracting more European investments into the defense sector. The political situation is very favorable right now.

In the photo: French-Italian SAMP-T. The European analog of the large “Patriots.” The Ukrainian army has only one such system.

Bogdan Miroshnichenko

Ukraine Front Lines

Tags: europe investigation Ukraine