“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.