“In the absence of an army, Europe will have to cooperate”

Recent events in Ukraine have brought the issue of defence to the fore­front in Europe. Full auton­o­my in this area pre­sup­pos­es an army with full-spec­trum capa­bil­i­ties. Mean­while, the USA and Chi­na have the means to finance this, whilst at the same time devel­op­ing the full range of defence tech­nolo­gies, the issue is dif­fer­ent for small­er states, includ­ing medi­um-sized pow­ers such as the UK and France, which have retained their ambi­tions in this area.

The debate, tra­di­tion­al­ly held at a par­lia­men­tary lev­el, is ham­pered by the severe bud­getary con­straints that lie ahead. In France, a recent report by the Court of Audi­tors high­lights the need to make trade-offs in order to avoid across-the-board bud­get cuts that would impair over­all per­for­mance. Instead, invest­ments should be made in those capa­bil­i­ties deemed cru­cial (such as cer­tain major pro­grammes for the Air Force and the Navy, intel­li­gence, cyber defence, or space), and Euro­pean and NATO coop­er­a­tion should be encour­aged for the rest.

With­in the frame­work of NATO, one option favoured by many Euro­pean coun­tries is the off-the-shelf pur­chase of Amer­i­can equip­ment. How­ev­er, such pur­chas­es are not with­out strate­gic con­se­quences, since the use of such equip­ment is part­ly reg­u­lat­ed by the Unit­ed States, which has spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions (Inter­na­tion­al Traf­fic in Arms Reg­u­la­tions, ITAR) to con­trol the man­u­fac­ture, sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion of defence and space-relat­ed objects and ser­vices. For instance, the urgent acqui­si­tion of Reaper UAVs by the French armed forces to make up for a short­fall in MALE UAVs, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly nec­es­sary in the Sahel the­atres of oper­a­tion, was only pos­si­ble by accept­ing one of the con­di­tions imposed by the Amer­i­can side: the Unit­ed States’ right of veto on the use of UAVs in operations.

This is why a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries, led by France, are push­ing the idea of “strate­gic auton­o­my”, which includes coop­er­a­tive weapons programmes.

But on what scale should this be imple­ment­ed: for the EU as a whole, or sim­ply between a few coun­tries? The cre­ation of the Euro­pean Defence Fund in 2020 rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in Euro­pean coop­er­a­tion on secu­ri­ty and defence issues. But it also high­lights the dif­fi­cul­ties: its cre­ation was heav­i­ly debat­ed, both on the size of the enve­lope and on its very exis­tence. Dur­ing the nego­ti­a­tions, at the insti­ga­tion of the Finnish Pres­i­den­cy, its appro­pri­a­tions were reduced from €13bn to €7bn. Nev­er­the­less, this fund con­firms the will of Euro­peans to sup­port the con­struc­tion of a coher­ent capa­bil­i­ty, which is essen­tial to meet the “ITAR-free” objec­tive¹ of Euro­pean strate­gic autonomy.

The design of mil­i­tary equip­ment is a com­plex mat­ter and, even between close allies used to work­ing togeth­er, coop­er­a­tion is not at all straight­for­ward: armies’ doc­trines of use may dif­fer, and indus­tri­al play­ers are caught up in the log­ic of “coope­ti­tion”. The devel­op­ment of new capa­bil­i­ties via a project man­age­ment sys­tem shared between sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries also comes up against ten­sions between the short term and the long term, bear­ing in mind that arma­ments pro­grammes often run over one or more decades. A recent exam­ple is the Future Air Com­bat Sys­tem (SCAF), a coop­er­a­tion between France, Ger­many, and Spain. This pro­gramme came under pres­sure when, wor­ried about the cri­sis in Ukraine, Ger­many decid­ed to increase its defence bud­get sig­nif­i­cant­ly but opt­ed to acquire the F‑35; at the same time the French, as is often the case, put for­ward their ambi­tions in terms of their strate­gic capa­bil­i­ties, as can be seen from Das­sault Avi­a­tion’s state­ments high­light­ing its « capac­i­ty to take on the pro­gramme alone ».

Aside from these polit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, there are oth­ers that are more sub­tle but no less impor­tant. The main one con­cerns design, which is some­times made more rigid and less inno­v­a­tive by coop­er­a­tion. Indeed, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of project man­age­ment between part­ners who know lit­tle about each oth­er rein­forces the pre­scrip­tive aspect, which often goes against the inte­gra­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal innovations.

It is with­in this con­text that the notion of an ecosys­tem, which has been pushed for­ward in par­tic­u­lar with the cre­ation of the Euro­pean Defence Fund, is inter­est­ing to explore. Coop­er­a­tion no longer takes place on a polit­i­cal basis imposed by states, but based on aligned busi­ness strate­gies and com­ple­men­tary skills. Among the suc­cess fac­tors of these ecosys­tems, which are more flex­i­ble than the defence indus­tri­al and tech­no­log­i­cal bases (DITB), is the inter­ac­tion between tra­di­tion­al defence play­ers and new civil­ian play­ers who have invest­ed heav­i­ly in gener­ic tech­nolo­gies such as AI, cyber, etc. such as those which can be observed in “New Space”, they hold the promise of a faster adop­tion of new tech­nolo­gies, but also of an eas­i­er return of the div­i­dends of the defence invest­ment in the civil­ian fields.

Nev­er­the­less, the ques­tion aris­es as to whether the strat­e­gy and the resources allo­cat­ed will enable the emer­gence of cham­pi­ons capa­ble of impos­ing them­selves beyond the bor­ders of the Union, and not just of cre­at­ing short-term indus­tri­al coop­er­a­tion. To achieve this, the mech­a­nisms for link­ing research to devel­op­ment and a strong polit­i­cal will to encour­age the most promis­ing play­ers, based on a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) mod­el, are needed.

Beyond fund­ing, the Amer­i­can exam­ple high­lights the prob­lem of struc­tur­ing an inno­va­tion ecosys­tem and the abil­i­ty of play­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the state, to lift bureau­crat­ic bar­ri­ers to bring about innovation.

There are many ini­tia­tives to ratio­nalise and encour­age Euro­pean coop­er­a­tion: joint equip­ment pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures, such as the Fran­co-Bel­gian CaMo part­ner­ship; joint oper­a­tional exper­i­ments to align NATO/EU require­ments, such as the Taku­ba task force; or coop­er­a­tion through­out the life cycle of equip­ment, such as the BeNe­Sam agree­ment between Bel­gium and the Nether­lands on the main­te­nance of frigates and marine fighters.

How­ev­er, an essen­tial ele­ment still seems to be miss­ing with­in these Euro­pean inno­va­tion ecosys­tems: that of a leader, capa­ble not of direct­ing the ecosys­tem like a “plat­form leader” but rather of doing what Elie Cohen calls in his lat­est book on Indus­tri­al Sov­er­eign­ty “accom­pa­ny­ing from the bot­tom up”.

Giv­en the absence, for the time being, of a leader with­in the EU, the ques­tion aris­es as to whether cer­tain more agile nation­al play­ers capa­ble of play­ing a facil­i­tat­ing role might not be able to ful­fil this func­tion. In France, this could be the Defence Inno­va­tion Agency: it con­tributes to the orches­tra­tion of defence inno­va­tion by posi­tion­ing itself as an inter­me­di­ary between the explo­ration and devel­op­ment phas­es, by bring­ing investors clos­er to project lead­ers, by sup­port­ing the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of acqui­si­tion pro­ce­dures, and by detect­ing and cap­tur­ing inno­va­tions from the civil­ian world for mil­i­tary use.

A large part of the chal­lenge for Euro­pean strate­gic auton­o­my there­fore lies in the devel­op­ment of new col­lab­o­ra­tions between states and indus­tri­al start-ups: this requires Euro­pean states to pro­vide indus­tri­al start-ups with the means, both finan­cial and in terms of sim­pli­fied access to mil­i­tary acqui­si­tions, to devel­op inno­v­a­tive and dis­rup­tive solu­tions for defence.