In European Defence, a Sudden Reluctance To Buy American

In London a few weeks ago, taking a break from grim Washington and catching some early spring weather, I met a British defence executive for coffee on the concourse of one of the city’s smaller rail terminuses. He had recently left the London office of an American defence prime for a role with a British company.

‘Are you damn mad?’ was the response. (Well, the word wasn’t ‘damn’. After all, the colleague was a former fighter pilot.) ‘This place could close down next week.’

That is to say, a subsidiary built on selling U.S. arms to Britain and its European neighbours ‘could close down next week.’ Across Europe, we see growing reluctance to buy American, something that was once the default choice. Meanwhile, European countries’ interest in making defence equipment for themselves or buying from each other has surged.

Almost a year ago, after the first policy wobbles of the second administration of Donald Trump, I wrote, ‘Let’s assume, as prudence demands we assume, that the United States will not at any predictable time go back to being its old, reliable self.’ I suggested that European countries might need to strengthen their dealings with a new spirit of collaboration.

U.S. companies are looking at their footprint in Europe, and what happens if the U.S. ceases to be the partner of choice.

One campaign that appears to have hit trouble is a joint effort by BAE Systems and Boeing to pitch the T-7 Redhawk as the Royal Air Force’s next advanced trainer.

The project had much going for it in the eyes of some RAF seniors. The fighter-size T-7 might be expensive but, compared with other options, could take on more training hours that would otherwise be flown in the even more expensive F-35. More important, Boeing was offering finance to provide part or all of the curriculum as a service, music to the ears of the perennially cash-strapped British military.

Now, I understand, the T-7 train has been halted, and the people who were pushing it have been advised to relax their efforts while other solutions are explored.

The intended purchase of 12 F-35As, announced last year for facilitating RAF training and supporting nuclear deterrence with U.S.-owned B61 bombs, now seems unlikely. The cost of 12 aircraft that would be different to Britain’s F-35Bs has been reassessed, and the idea of an economically larger F-35A force has no traction. The nuclear mission was intended as a U.S.-positive story for a NATO summit that opened on the day of the announcement. The gesture was not rewarded.

My British trip included talks with industry and government observers, a representative from Saab and a meeting with people from the Global Combat Aircraft Program (GCAP) in their expanding headquarters in a brand-new, very-net-zero office campus in Reading, west of London. (The paint was barely dry but there were swans in the lake.)

Political stories make the headlines, but the GCAP International Government Organisation is growing and building working relationships among the founding partners – Britain, Italy and Japan. It’s doing so with a solid approach to developing and meeting requirements and a high degree of mutual respect.

The story is the same in other areas: there is renewed enthusiasm for collaboration, for adding MBDA’s CAMM missile or Diehl’s IRIS-T to ground-based air defence systems rather than reflexively calling U.S. suppliers Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.

As important as the Gripen fighter is for Saab, the company is working hard on opportunities such as the replacement of NATO’s joint airborne early warning (AEW) force. Until last year, it seemed next to certain that NATO would follow Britain’s lead and adopt the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, but NATO’s original plan was cancelled in November after the U.S. dropped its own Wedgetail plans and the RAF project ran into a minefield of schedule slips and cost escalation. With its GlobalEye AEW aircraft already selected by France as a replacement for the Boeing E-3 Sentry, Saab needs to overcome NATO insistence on a full 360-degree scan volume. The company can push the advantages of a proven system on a smaller aircraft.

Defence geopolitics may have encouraged France to go big on a related program, the replacement of its Dassault-Breguet Atlantique anti-submarine aircraft. The last of 18 of these veterans to be upgraded to Standard 6 (new radar, acoustics and displays) was delivered in February, and the plan under the Patmar Futur program is replace them by 2035 with the Airbus A321 MPA. This was the subject of a two-year study contract awarded in February 2025. The design will be based on the A321XLR airliner, with substantially greater range than the 737-800 used as the basis of the Boeing P-8.

A couple of years ago, the automatic assumption would have been that the future international anti-submarine aircraft market belonged to the P-8. But it doesn’t seem that the French government or Airbus agree, as they launch a large program with a barely double-digit domestic market.

Also, look at Britain’s Project Nightfall, launched with brief publicity in January. It’s aimed at producing a low-cost (U.S.$1 million per round) guided rocket with 500 km range and a 400 kg payload. At first, it’s supposed to be supplied to Ukraine, but the British forces could clearly use it, too, for defence suppression. What’s significant is that Britain hasn’t designed a system of this kind since the 1970s.

If I were running international business for a U.S. prime today, I’d be reconsidering the future of my European offices too.

Bill Sweetman is a veteran, award-winning journalist and aerospace industry executive. He is the author of Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: How the F-35 hollowed out the U.S. Air Force.

AI contributed no ideas to this article – Bill Sweetman.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).