PARIS \u2014 It\u2019s a head-scratcher for European governments: getting their defense industries ready to pump out hundreds of thousands of drones or other pieces of armament in case of possible war, without ending up with warehouses full of obsolete kit.<\/p>\n
Europe has yet to resolve the conundrum, said Francois Arbault, the European Commission\u2019s director for defense industry, at the Forum Innovation D\u00e9fense in Paris last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can we be ready, in that we\u2019re ready to embrace the scale that it takes to be at war, or in a conflict of whatever sort, without actually piling up equipment?\u201d Arbault said. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of the most core questions that we need to be able to answer today. How is it to be defense-ready, when you are not yet at war?\u201d<\/p>\n
European leaders have been reluctant to adopt the dramatic rhetoric of French President Emmanuel Macron, who called for a shift to a \u201cwar economy\u201d several months after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And while all European NATO members have lifted defense spending, none have retooled their economy to prioritize the war effort \u2013 France included.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has something \u201cessential and different from us, and that is they have a need to survive,\u201d said J\u00e9r\u00f4me Cerisier, the chief executive officer of French night-vision equipment maker Exosens, speaking on a panel about future industry and the war economy. \u201cWe\u2019re not as confronted as they are by the need to go very, very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine as a country at war \u201chas no choice but to frantically scramble\u201d to develop counters and offensive edges, and the same war mode cannot be expected from European countries, the European Commission\u2019s Arbault said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we have to be ready,\u201d Arbault said. \u201cAnd we see that innovation is going so fast that readiness doesn\u2019t mean piling up thousand or hundreds of thousands of drones in a warehouse, because if one day we\u2019re attacked, those drones will for sure be totally obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drone-development cycle in Ukraine is around eight to ten weeks, while product development in Western Europe is counted in months or years, according to Andr\u00e9 Loesekrug-Pietri, chairman of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative, a non-governmental organization looking to accelerate European innovation, who cited a recent visit to the country.<\/p>\n
A way to circumvent the equipment stockpiling dynamic is having industrial and technological building blocks and components available \u201cfrom which we\u2019re going to make lots of possible systems,\u201d said Marie Nicod, general partner at investment firm Jolt Capital. \u201cFrom there, we have a mass of things, but which are not immobilized stock, and which will be used for many different use cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exosens has been scaling up its production capacity for drone cameras \u201clittle by little\u201d in order to be ready to react quickly should the need arise, without taking too much initial risk, Cerisier said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really need to talk about the war economy not necessarily in terms of implementation, but already in terms of preparation,\u201d Cerisier said. He said companies need not just orders but also visibility on future demand to justify investments, something France\u2019s military budget programming can bring.<\/p>\n
The defense industry should prepare for a larger conflict by training scenarios of accelerated production to see where processes break down and to identify bottlenecks, said Sylvain Rousseau, CEO of Aresia, which makes aerospace equipment including weapon-release systems for aircraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s stopping us from tripling our capacity, maybe it\u2019s just a single machine, maybe just one piece of technology,\u201d Rousseau said.<\/p>\n
The European Union in March 2024 presented its first defense-industrial strategy, calling for \u201cdefense industrial readiness,\u201d with then-European Commissioner Thierry Breton saying a few months later the European defense industries need to \u201cmove into a war economy mode<\/a>,\u201d one of the rare instances of the term being used at a European level.<\/p>\n Some European governments other than France have recently been pushing the industrial aspect of defense, with Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans in March saying the war in Ukraine has become a war between industries, calling a strong defense industry \u201cthe backbone of our security.\u201d<\/p>\n