Senior European officers are calling for mass-produced drones, interceptors, electronic warfare and faster procurement alongside traditional weapons. Their warning is not that tanks, aircraft and ships have become irrelevant, but that Europe cannot build a credible force around small numbers of exquisite platforms that arrive too slowly and cannot absorb attrition.
Senior European military commanders are challenging the assumptions behind decades of defence procurement, warning that future forces will need large numbers of affordable drones and interceptors, resilient communications and rapidly adaptable electronic-warfare systems alongside conventional high-end platforms.
At a defence conference in London, NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe Air Chief Marshal Sir Johnny Stringer argued that allies must reduce their dependence on expensive equipment that takes years to produce and place greater emphasis on low-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale. The commanders also identified deep precision strike, electromagnetic warfare and layered air defence as priorities.
German army commander Lieutenant General Christian Freuding said land warfare was changing fundamentally and urged forces to buy workable interim solutions rather than wait for systems that might be conceived in five years and delivered a decade later. British Army chief General Sir Roly Walker pointed to artificial intelligence as a way to compress planning cycles and process far more targets.
Together, the interventions amount to more than a conference discussion. They describe a conflict between the speed of modern warfare and the institutional pace of European acquisition.
The argument is sometimes presented as a choice between drones and tanks, or between cheap systems and sophisticated ones. That is too simple. Ukraine still needs armoured vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, engineering equipment and long-range air defence. The lesson is that these assets now operate inside a dense network of sensors, drones, decoys and electronic attack.
A modern brigade cannot rely on a few premium platforms while lacking reconnaissance drones, secure data links, counter-drone weapons or enough ammunition to continue after the opening days of combat. High-end systems create effect; mass-produced systems provide persistence, coverage and the ability to absorb losses.
Attritable equipment must also be designed for replacement. If a drone costs little but depends on a component with a two-year lead time, it is not truly expendable. European procurement needs production lines, standard interfaces and suppliers able to scale during a crisis.
The war in Ukraine has shown that capability is not only a platform’s technical performance. It includes the rate at which software can be changed, new frequencies introduced, damaged equipment repaired and feedback from operators incorporated into production.
Drone designs may change within weeks because electronic warfare quickly makes a previously effective control link unreliable. Traditional acquisition programmes often freeze requirements years before delivery. By the time equipment reaches units, the threat and available technology may have moved on.
Defence Matters has already examined how the UK defence spending row exposed questions about drones, procurement and NATO credibility. The commanders’ warning gives that national debate a European dimension: spending more will not solve readiness if money remains trapped in slow processes and narrow fleets.
Europe cannot replace every established programme with rapid commercial purchasing. Nuclear submarines, combat aircraft, air-defence radars and armoured vehicles require long-term engineering, testing and safety assurance. The challenge is to run two acquisition speeds at once.
The first must sustain complex strategic programmes. The second must allow units to buy, test and modify systems with much shorter cycles. Drones, software, sensors and electronic-warfare tools are especially suited to iterative procurement, where an initial capability is fielded and improved rather than held back until every requirement is satisfied.
The EU’s recent agreement to reduce defence procurement delays may help with thresholds, transfers and contract changes. Its success will depend on whether governments use the flexibility to place larger, coordinated orders instead of preserving fragmented national variants.
Air defence illustrates the problem most clearly. A missile costing hundreds of thousands or millions of euros may be technically effective against a drone costing a fraction of that amount. Used repeatedly, the defender loses the economic exchange even when every target is destroyed.
Europe therefore needs a layered system: electronic warfare, guns, low-cost interceptor drones, short-range missiles and premium systems reserved for the threats that require them. No single technology will work against every target, and adversaries will combine decoys, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and unmanned aircraft to overload the defence.
Scale is essential. Cities, ports, air bases, rail hubs, factories and deployed forces cannot all be protected by a small number of batteries. Production capacity and stockpiles must be treated as part of the weapon system, not as a budget question considered after procurement.
European defence companies have traditionally depended on small production runs and highly tailored national contracts. That model supports skilled engineering but raises unit costs and makes surge production difficult.
Common requirements could create longer production runs for drones, interceptors, radios and electronic-warfare modules. Open architectures would allow new sensors or payloads to be integrated without redesigning an entire platform. Governments can also fund dormant capacity and component reserves so that factories do not begin a crisis with empty supply chains.
The objective is not to turn every defence company into a drone start-up. It is to ensure that sophisticated forces possess enough affordable equipment to remain effective after attrition begins.
European commanders are now saying publicly what the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated operationally: readiness cannot be measured by the elegance of a procurement plan or the nominal number of platforms in service. It is measured by what can deploy, survive, adapt and be replaced.
Europe will still need expensive aircraft, ships and armoured systems. The next war, however, may be decided by whether those platforms are surrounded by thousands of cheaper capabilities and supported by an acquisition system fast enough to keep them relevant.