Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Kyiv and the European Union to advance their arms and defence strategies to increase production as much as possible, engineer European production and innovation possibilities, and lessen their dependence on the United States.
Author: Peyman Pejman
Some in Hungary are calling for the government to also think differently about the arms industry and help the country’s defence companies release their innovation and production possibilities, which in turn can increase revenue potentials and advance Hungarian defence profile.
Dependence on the United States would never go down to zero. Europe and Ukraine will continue to rely on certain US-made high-technology aircraft, warships –probably less so on intelligence gathering and air defence systems. For everything else, calculations have changed.
But even on sophisticated air defence systems such as the Patriots, Ukraine, with help from Europe, is now developing a low-cost alternative. Kyiv announced in June that it had conducted a flight test of a ballistic missile that will serve as a foundation for the future Freyja anti-ballistic interceptor. It has also developed FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometers which can penetrate deep into the Russian territory.
Those developments have caught the eye of President Trump. In Ankara early July for a gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), he said he would give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air defence systems.
Europe is America’s biggest arms importer. European arms and defence industry advancement could save Europe money and hurt US coffers. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 35 percent of US exports between 2020 and 2024 were to Europe, followed by 33 percent to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 12 percent of total US arms exports. The figures do not include military services, which, if calculated, would paint an even bigger picture of US military sales around the world.
“European countries don’t want to be in a position of being blackmailed by an American president, so they have really shifted their outlook in weapons. Ukraine and Europe are now building advanced defence systems together,” says Patrick Bolder, a retired Lieutenant-Colonel from the Royal Netherlands Air Force and a current Strategic Analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
EU’s defence commissioner and former prime minister of Lithuania Andrius Kubilius said in May that “Europeans produce what they call ‘haute couture’ production. Technologically very sophisticated, very advanced, very expensive, and impossible to ramp up,” he said. “Ukrainians produce what those European industries call ‘good enough’.”
He added: “The Ukrainians started to produce their own cruise missile Flamingo, and this year they are ready to produce around 700.” He said the EU made fewer than 300. Russia produced 1,200.
Barnabás Tomka, Founder&CEO of DANS Suppliers CEE, predicts the new Hungarian government will in time think about new opportunities for Hungary’s arms industry.
“Hungary does not have a classic defence industry. We don’t have that heritage … The government is new, but I am convinced that the right people will start looking at the issue in due time,” said Tomka, who headed the procurement entities of the Ministry of Defence between 2010 and 2016.
He says the previous government’s joint venture programs neither brought Hungary the level of income the government expected nor helped unleash the level of innovation that Hungarian defence industry companies can have.
While he accepts that Hungary needs modernisation in areas such as air defence, artillery, and drones, he says new government policies and investments can help Hungarian defence companies provide more proof of concept and equipment testing for European defence companies in joint ventures with Budapest.
Ukrainian officials argue that they have rapidly advanced their defence industry only because Trump has been less supportive than they had hoped.
“Before the war, relations with the United States were considered from the transatlantic security architecture point of view, whereas relations with the European Union were more in terms of economic integration,” says Luliia Osmolovska, head of the Ukraine office of GLOBESEC, a global think-tank committed to enhancing security, prosperity and sustainability in Europe and beyond. Osmolovska also spent more than a decade as a ranking foreign ministry official, dealing with European integration issues.
“But right now, with the recent developments and some strategic changes of some global players, and because of how the war is going, Europe is also becoming a quite powerful actor both in terms of European integration and security architecture,” she adds.
While both Russia and Ukraine used drones from the beginning of the war, Kyiv’s continuous upgrading of its drone technology and drone effectiveness on battlelines has drastically changed war tactics.
GLOBSEC’s Osmolovska says drone development was always part of Ukraine’s military-industrial infrastructure development plan, but the war sped it up.
“Unmanned vehicles, whether aerial or ground-based, as well as missiles, artillery, and ammunitions production, were already part of the 2021 Strategy for the Development of the Defense-Industrial Complex of Ukraine. The war certainly sped it up. The Russians were also using drones and, in some areas, they even forced us to speed up,” Osmolovska says.
“The development of these drone technologies effectively expanded the kill zone and literally demilitarised the contact zone because neither side can make significant advancements,” she adds.
But European defence independence is not assured. Experts also note that if Europe is serious about minimising its dependence on US military equipment, it needs to also be serious about continuously spending more in the long term.
“Within Europe, there is a lot of desire to increase independence, but a lot of time has been wasted. It’s been very slow going on the part of a lot of countries, particularly in the larger economies like the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and so there are still very significant gaps in what Europe is able to provide and what they are not able to provide,” says Colby Badhwar, a security and defence expert and a contributor to the Centre for European Policy Analysis.
“The length of time it takes to produce these capabilities can take decades,” he adds.
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