At a security conference in Sweden earlier this month, European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius became the latest high-level European official to call for the creation of a European Union army, one which could replace US troops in Europe if necessary.
Kubilius also said he wants a European Security Council comprising key permanent members and several rotating members.
He’s not the first to do so, and is unlikely to be the last. As long ago as 2018, long before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and US President Donald Trump began threatening Greenland, French President Emmanuel Macron made it clear that he believes Europeans cannot be protected “without a real European army”.
Such grand statements, however, only serve to make many European countries nervous, not least as such grand talk (which would require years, perhaps decades of considered negotiation) deflects attention from Europe’s real defence autonomy concerns, which are far more mundane, and with the political will in place, far easier (and quicker) to fix.
What Europe actually needs is spectacularly unglamorous: ammunition contracts, drone factories, satellite fallback systems, and logistics that work. Acquiring and creating these would take perhaps two years of focused effort.
Simple fixes
Europe has made some progress of late. Its ammunition production climbed from 300,000 rounds in 2022 to two million in 2025, but Ukraine alone needs that many every ten months. The 500 million euros ASAP programme meanwhile is addressing propellant bottlenecks. But production remains shackled to short-term national contracts and peacetime procurement habits.
The fix is deliciously simple, comprising multi-year purchase guarantees, standardised calibres, and framework agreements treating ammunition much like office supplies.
Russia’s edge (it may have produced as many as seven million shells in 2025) comes from running factories at industrial scale with long-term contracts. Europe has the factories, supply chains, metallurgy. It lacks the paperwork. Stockpiles win wars faster than the latest wonder-weapon.
The drone revolution nobody ordered
Ukraine is now producing around four million drones per year. First-person-view models costing 300 to 5,000 euros now cause 60 to 70 per cent of Russian equipment losses. Mass beats sophistication when the things are disposable.
Germany’s Helsing churns out thousands of loitering munitions. France’s EOS Technologie wants one million units annually by 2030. Kubilius reckons Europe needs three million drones yearly just to defend Lithuania.
Ukrainian manufacturers are already establishing operations in Slovakia, Finland, and Denmark. The industrial base exists. What’s missing is treating drones as consumables rather than prestige projects.
Last March, America suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Satellite data became a bargaining chip, given that much of Europe’s military nervous system (targeting data, secure communications, satellite surveillance) runs through American infrastructure Washington can switch off whenever its fickle president decides to do so.
Europe does have alternatives in various stages of readiness. Galileo operates 25 satellites offering more accurate positioning than GPS. Germany is spending 35 billion euros on space security through 2030. Finland’s ICEYE provides synthetic aperture radar imagery every 30 to 60 minutes, unencumbered by American export rules. An Earth Observation Governmental Service should be running by 2028.
Digital sovereignty matters more than another tank brigade or a European army. Europe needs mandatory fallback protocols and EU-controlled military cloud infrastructure. Neither requires decades.
Twenty-seven ways to waste money
Europe runs 27 separate defence markets. America consolidated to five major players decades ago. The fragmentation costs a 45 per cent penalty on manufacturing, 110 per cent on services, much like a tariff Europe imposes on itself. Only 18 per cent of procurement happens jointly, well short of the 40 per cent target.
Brussels has launched the 150 billion euros SAFE loan scheme to encourage joint buying. But what Europe really needs is making joint procurement mandatory by default, penalising national-only contracts when wider European options exist.
The Nordic-Baltic ESSI initiative shows this works: 24 countries standardising air and missile defence through actual coordination. Europe doesn’t lack industrial capacity. It lacks purchase orders of sufficient scale.
The logistics nobody mentions
Then there’s logistics. Moving armies across Europe takes months. The Military Mobility Package identifies four priority corridors and 500 ‘hotspot’ projects such as bridges needing reinforcement, tunnels requiring widening, or ports lacking heavy-lifting gear.
Funding has so far brought 1.7 billion euros through 2027 for 95 projects, but this is nowhere near the actual final bill that could be closer to 100 billion euros. Logistics, alas, generates few headlines. Pre-positioned spare parts, fuel depots, common maintenance standards, or rail corridors upgraded for military loads do not make for rousing speeches in the way that calls for a European army do.
Again, the fix is quick. New regulations would cut cross-border permissions from months to three days in peacetime.
A precedent exists
Europe decoupled from Russian energy remarkably fast, with gas imports dropped 75 per cent between 2021 and 2025. REPowerEU cost 300 billion euros. Politically excruciating, technically dull, but achieved quickly once incentives aligned.
Defence spending jumped from 218 billion euros in 2021 to 343 billion euros last year. The ReArm Europe programme targets spending of 800 billion euros by 2030. Germany rewrote its constitution last year to allow for unlimited defence borrowing. Nineteen countries signed letters pushing for defence bonds.
This suggests that money isn’t the constraint. The mechanisms exist. What’s needed is treating defence like the industrial policy that built Airbus.
The boring path forward
Europe doesn’t need grand treaties or a federal army. It needs contracts with ammunition makers, drone factories scaled to millions annually, mandatory European backup systems for satellites, penalties for going-it-alone procurement, and the 100 billion euros actually required for military logistics.
Russia’s advantages are currently multiple, in the shape of mass production, mobilisation capacity, and tolerance for casualties. Europe’s advantages are potentially greater, however, such as a deeper industrial base, better technology, and much more money. Strategic autonomy means converting the latter into usable power. Two years of focused work could buy meaningful independence. Seventy-five years of drift, of treating defence as something other countries worry about, has brought dependency.
The question isn’t whether Europe can afford to defend itself. It’s whether Europe can put aside its grand dreams and simply get down to getting the simple things right.
Photo: Dreamstime.
