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Opinion: US-European Allies’ Partnership Key to Defense Industry Revitalization

Defense Security Cooperation, Europe, General News, North America
February 25, 2025February 25, 2025By Arthur McMiler
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Opinion: US-European Allies’ Partnership Key to Defense Industry Revitalization
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

The United States and its European allies need to collaborate and share risks to revitalize their defense industrial sectors at a pace that can match the rising global threats, two executives wrote in an opinion piece on the New Atlanticist blog on Monday.

James Hursch, a nonresident senior fellow at the Transatlantic Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and his co-author, Kristen Taylor, TSI assistant director, emphasize the need for strong U.S-European industrial synergies through strategic risk-sharing.

Hursch, a past Wash100 awardee, and Taylor point to the collaboration between Polish defense manufacturer PGZ and American industry on the production of anti-tank weapons in Poland as a promising example of this synergy. They also highlight the NATO Supply and Procurement Agency’s efforts to facilitate U.S. co-production of Patriot missiles in Germany, where COMLOG – a joint venture of Raytheon and MBDA Germany – is expanding European production of Patriot Advanced Capability 2 missile interceptors under a $5.6 billion agreement.

Cooperative Sentiment Growing

The blog post underscores a growing sentiment among U.S. allies and partners to collaborate on U.S. security priorities while sharing investment risks. Hursch and Taylor believe this evolving sentiment could ultimately inspire the U.S. defense industrial base to develop innovative solutions to enhance domestic production capacity. This would involve sharing investment risks with international partners when establishing new manufacturing facilities or upgrading existing ones.

The authors argue for removing bureaucratic barriers under industrial cooperation between the U.S. and European defense sectors to achieve meaningful progress in addressing production constraints. They suggest that recent amendments to the licensing requirements of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations under the trilateral AUKUS agreement could serve as a potential model for future initiatives focused on defense trade and cooperation.

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