From The Editor: Europe Ups Its Game In Defense
The Americans are playing a strong technical game across the whole aerospace spectrum, and the Europeans are going to have to streamline their management, organize their resources better and cut through the national bureaucracy if they are to have any hope of keeping up the pace,” Aviation Week’s editor-in-chief wrote from the Paris Air Show—50 years ago.
The Americans are playing a strong technical game across the whole aerospace spectrum, and the Europeans are going to have to streamline their management, organize their resources better and cut through the national bureaucracy if they are to have any hope of keeping up the pace,” Aviation Week’s editor-in-chief wrote from the Paris Air Show—50 years ago.
The 1975 show was an acrimonious affair, with American pilots chafing over stringent flying rules imposed by the French government. The “hit of the show” was the F-16 prototype, built by General Dynamics, proclaimed Aviation Week. Serge Dassault, the air show’s commissioner general, countered that the prototype was not a true combat aircraft, like the Dassault Mirage F1E, but merely “an aircraft only for an air show.”
A half-century on, there is still plenty of transatlantic sniping as we head into Le Bourget. But today the stakes are much higher. The Trump administration’s skepticism toward defending Ukraine and its ambiguity about the NATO alliance have raised the question of whether Europe can still count on Washington to defend the continent against Russian aggression. This year’s air show is going to feel different.
As Aviation Week’s data analysts recently calculated, Europe is on pace to outspend the U.S. in the procurement of military equipment for the first time since World War II. After years of missing NATO spending targets, most European members have fallen in line. And a number of collaborative projects could help Europe achieve military independence from the U.S. if they come to fruition, including a tactical airlifter, next-generation rotorcraft, air-to-air missiles and hypersonic interceptors (AW&ST June 2-15, p. 45).
However, a robust defense industrial base cannot be created overnight after years of underinvestment, which means a European military buildup will offer plenty of opportunities for U.S. contractors at the air show. The continent still relies heavily on North America for military aircraft, C4ISR platforms and other equipment. Witness all those Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter sales, which no doubt irritate Dassault as much as the F-16 once did.
There is an argument to be made that, 80 years after the end of World War II, it is time for Europe to stand on its own feet. We are once again in a bipolar world, except that the old Soviet Union has been replaced by a technically ascendent China. Talk of the U.S. needing to pivot its military focus to the Asia-Pacific goes back to the Obama administration, around the time that many European leaders were turning a blind eye to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s land grab of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
But it would be incredibly foolish for the U.S. to throw away its alliance with Europe, which has been a reliable strategic and economic partner for longer than most of us have been alive. America’s security umbrella has given Washington sway over the nature of the transatlantic relationship. The two sides historically have shared common commitments to democracy, stability and the rule of law, and their economies—especially in aerospace—are intertwined.
Aviation Week guest columnist Richard Aboulafia opines that concerns about the upcoming NATO summit on June 24-25 and U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 50% tariffs on EU imports next month will cast a cloud over this year’s air show. But with NATO now raising military spending targets to levels on par with the U.S., perhaps it is time for U.S. Vice President JD Vance to tone down his anti-European rhetoric. The military spending for which his boss has long called is finally starting to flow.
