Lessons learned from European defence equipment programmes
Posted on 2007-10-30.
von Jean-Pierre Darnis, Giovanni Gasparini, Christoph Grams, Fabio Liberti, Jean-Pierre Maulny, May-Britt Stumbaum
This Occasional Paper explores the issue of European armaments cooperation. Such cooperation between countries has often been difficult. Even so, European governments continue to collaborate on multinational equipment programmes for a number of reasons, and successful multinational programmes have manifold benefits. These benefits include, for instance, the possibility of meeting a capability requirement at an affordable price. Collaborative programmes allow greater economies of scale because of the larger order books. These savings also allow European governments to contemplate acquiring more advanced equipment (and share development costs), despite static defence budgets. Another advantage is the fact that common equipment can help countries work together on international missions: such interoperability is vital for the success of military coalitions. Also, governments gain political benefits from cooperation, and are perceived to be constructive EU partners. Moreover, multinational procurement encourages greater convergence of thinking about international security among EU governments, and this helps foster a common European strategic culture. Other positive side effects include technology sharing, technology development, common standards, integrated logistics and successful exports.
