BRUSSELS — United States arms-makers are being frozen out of the European Union’s massive new defense spending plan, which aims to splash the cash for EU and allied countries, according to defense spending plans released Wednesday.
Also left out — for now — is the United Kingdom.
I feel like Europe has a leg up in this situation and can scale into it faster than people expect as well. Many European nations have experience in joint projects either with the US (like Germany with the Leopard 2 coming out of the same program as the US M1 Abrams and probably being the biggest export MBT outside of Soviet tanks from the Cold War) or with each other (like with the Eurofighter, the standardization of ammunition, and every NATO nation using the Rheinmetall L7 120mm smoothbore cannon as the gun on their tanks). Every NATO nation - and even plenty outside of it - are already on a standardized logistics platform, and moving that away from any American standard would be as easy as using an American standard, and could prove difficult for American arms manufacturers if the two diverge and NATO nations suddenly become an “export market.”
What I mean is they have to streamline it. The Leopard 2 currently has to compete with the Leclerc and the Challenger 2. Having 3 tanks means 3x R&D and more costly manufacturing and support. Eurofighter has to compete with Rafale and Gripen. Just the eurofighter engine has 4 manufacturers and must be a coordination nightmare. How many rifle designs are there? How many IFV designs? APC designs? Streamline this and you get a better quality product at a lower cost and you have a more competitive product for export. Even for non export there are 2 carrier designs, 2 nuclear Sub designs, etc.