Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European rearmament wasn’t even a subject for discussion. The much-hyped and almost totally meaningless American demand for a 5% increase in defense spending has almost nothing to do with it. It’s essential.
A bit of background:
The fact is that the moldering military menagerie of European hardware needs a drastic upgrade anyway. Until the Russian invasion, the Germans weren’t interested, and the French, Spanish, and Italians were pretty much running their own shows as export industries.
The British were being typically British, despite many requests over the last several hundred years. An archetypal slapdash approach to acquisitions was a faithful reflection of historical British unpreparedness for wars of any kind. This has been the default national policy since the Spanish Armada.
There was even a flippant theory that the Royal Navy might need some actual ships. Of course, nobody believed it until about 10 years ago when they finally got around to designing and building them.
Modernization of any kind wasn’t exactly creating frenzies of interest in Europe, either. Despite BAE and many other major contractors and some very good tech overall, NATO was more or less comatose and as usual living in the past. German politicians idiotically equating modern German Bundeswehr soldiers with concentration camp guards didn’t exactly help.
Rheinmetall, also duly becalmed in this environment of total sweet-smelling incomprehension, soldiered along dutifully. The entire European defense sector had to waddle stoically along getting business outside Europe.
Then the Russians invaded Ukraine, setting off the worst defeat in Russian military history bar none. By comparison, the catastrophic 1905 Russo-Japanese War was a triumph of Russian arms.
Europe eventually woke up, some years later, and decided that it needed to massively upgrade. This was despite NATO’s participation in many operations over the decades and god knows how much operational and technical information.
It’s a matter of opinion whether a bunker buster could penetrate the political insularity of those times. You’d have to prove it.
Meanwhile, as the varying degrees of fossilization are removed from NATO thinking, the Ukrainian war has set off some practical responses. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, in a remarkably tactful press statement to Euractiv.com, spelled it out.
Herr Papperger patiently points out that integrated realistic pricing and capacity for meeting actual demand are vital. It seems there are also things called “components” and “ammo” that need understanding. This is a virtual shopping list for realistic military production.
Somewhat less tactfully:
Antiquated production methods can’t work.
Overly complex supply chains can’t work
Production needs to be fully automated and modernized.
Production demand will be based on combat realities.
Cost structuring is critical.
Military 3D printing on an industrial scale is quite feasible all the way to the front lines.
Integrated robotic systems are inevitable, probably at plague levels.
Cold War thinking has nothing to do with modern military realities.
Reciprocal upgrades are already underway in China and to a lesser extent in Russia.
Technical superiority must be maintained and enhanced.
The depth and scale of sustainable production capacity is the name of the game.
The Ukrainian war has rewritten the fundamentals of military economics. There’s no going back.
