Defense Industrial Cooperation
by Moritz Weiss and Felix Biermann
Abstract
This chapter examines to what extent Europe’s governments and defence contractors cooperate to provide European armed forces with military capabilities. Today, defence industrial cooperation has evolved as almost the default policy option for European powers to develop large military platforms. Yet, there is no uniform trend, but variation across country groups (i.e. major vs. medium vs. lesser powers), across sectors (i.e. land vs. air vs. sea), and with regards to the sources of cooperation (i.e. government-induced vs. investment-driven).
After a brief literature review, our chapter shows that while the European major powers largely can be observed to be in the driver’s seat of defence industrial cooperation both at the government and the corporate level, medium and lesser powers follow the trend towards more collaboration.
The defence-industry is still a highly politicized sector. Yet, private European defence champions have developed and companies are increasingly taking over the initiative in cooperation. Whereas the aerospace sector is already highly consolidated and subject to various cooperation projects, less collaboration can be observed in the land and naval systems. Even though cooperation is economically promising from a theoretical perspective, often-times only few of these benefits are realized. This is why the chapter, finally, addresses the question of whether cooperation or competition represents the most promising strategy towards a capable European Defence Technological and Industrial Base.
Keywords: Defence industries; cooperation; competition; consolidation; defence procurement; military platforms; security of supply; European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB); France, United Kingdom, Germany.
Chapter in H. Meijer and M. Wyss (eds) forthcoming 2017, Handbook of European Armed Forces, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Please contact Moritz Weiss or Felix Biermann if you are interested in the manuscript.