Almost 18 months into the war in Ukraine, Europe’s defense contractors — flooded with demand for everything from ammunition to shoulder-launched missiles and combat vehicles — face a dilemma. Do they gamble on expanding production, assuming that the war and tensions with Russia will last indefinitely? Or hold back until they get long-term commitments from governments that have spent the past few decades shaving or even slashing their defense budgets?
Well in France the defense historical budget has been voted few month ago and Nexter has already double the ammo production for Ukraine and is expected to double it again before the end of the year (so a 4x the production since the beginning of the war)
I think this article focuses more on the private sector of the arm industry. Precisely the problem is that the ramping up of production has the objective of ending the war in favour of Ukraine, and if it were so all of the industrial expansion that would require would have lost sense since there would be overproduction. On the other hand they are interested if the war gets prolonged, but it wouldn’t make much sense for the Ukrainians. Another interpretetion is that Europe needs not to take care of it and be dependant of the US military industry.
It all comes down for profits for the CEOs of the military industrial complex.
France has a doctrine of not depending nor trusting anyone, including USA and since France inject directly money to private arm industry with a budget voted for the period starting from now until 2030, the arm industry does not have to care about duration of the war. From what I know a lot of countries in Europe does the same (vote for a defense budget over a long period) unlike USA that vote every year. But USA prepare itself for a possible conflict over Taiwan and needs to buy a lot of arms and ammo to the private sector so the are not takeb by surprise so it would be better for them that the Ukraine war that empty their stock end soon.
Fair, but I doubt any one European country can take on the burden of being the one or biggest manufacturer in a way that can satisfy Ukraine’s needs, furthermore I doubt also that the US wants or will let that happen since they want to the industrial military complex monopoly in the West. Now that you mention it regarding the Taiwan issue, I think this could also mean the imperative need for a near end since they probably don’t want to have finance two such big projects at the same time, and they probably want some time between one and the other to stock some supplies.
