dossier <\/a>published last week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).<\/p>\nThe document, which assessed current progress and shortfalls in European defense, listed capability deficiencies across several critical domains. <\/p>\n
The first involves a lack of sufficient intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft as well as geospatial capabilities among NATO European countries. IISS estimates that it may cost Europeans up to $4.8 billion to replace the eight signals- and electronic-intelligence platforms that Washington currently allocates for NATO contingencies. <\/p>\n
While some European countries are starting to buy ISR aircraft and slowly develop national satellite constellations, American-made systems remain the core of NATO\u2019s capability in this area. For instance, according to IISS data, the U.S. operates at least 80 crewed ISR aircraft and 34 signals-intelligence planes, compared to 36 and 11 in Europe, respectively.<\/p>\n
A similar gap also exists in medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs used for intelligence operations.<\/p>\n
The report identifies space capabilities as another key shortfall, noting Europe\u2019s limited launch capacity and reliance on France\u2019s Ariane and Vega systems, despite efforts by countries like Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to expand their space architectures.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, it largely depends on the U.S. for access to space \u2013 SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 [launcher rocket] has conducted more launches in the first half of 2025 than the combined European Arianne and Vega launcher families since 2015,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n
Another important vulnerability concerns long-range strike capability. With few exceptions \u2014primarily France and the UK \u2014 European forces lack sufficient land- and sea-based missiles that can reach targets at ranges over 1,000 kilometers, limiting their ability to sustain high-intensity warfare.<\/p>\n
The report also points to a growing trend regarding ground-based air- and missile-defense, for which the European defense market has been found to increasingly lean on non-NATO suppliers \u2013 notably Brazil, Israel, and South Korea.<\/p>\n
Driven largely by the need to meet Europe\u2019s urgent military modernization, defense export contracts from these three countries were found to have increased by almost 1,000% from 2018-2021 ($2.48 billion) to 2022-2025 ($27.11 billion).<\/p>\n
IISS analysts further highlight that Europe\u2019s integrated air and missile defense is still underdeveloped. The continent urgently lacks sufficient layered air defense across short, medium, and long ranges, where even operational systems are not accessible in the required quantities. <\/p>\n
\u201cEuropean terminal-phase missile defense capabilities rely mainly on the U.S., either through U.S.-made systems operated by national militaries or American deployments to Europe \u2014 principally the Patriot,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Despite increased investments in homegrown weapons and systems, European nations are still facing major gaps in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,5606,5607,5602,135524,393,36,1824,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-408849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-circulated-defense-news","10":"tag-defense-news","11":"tag-dn-dnr","12":"tag-dsei-2025","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-london","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115171024204701789","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}