It will take a lot of time before the EU can hope to match the production volume of the US defense industry, even if the bloc doesn't want to replicate all the range of its weaponry, Jacques Sapir, director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, told Sputnik.
“So far, the defense industry is far more developed in the US than in Europe. Only the US has built a full range of weapon systems. Even more crucially, the US defense industry operates at a significantly higher production level than Europe’s,” he noted.
NATO will ask European allies and Canada to boost their stocks of weaponry and equipment by about 30% in the next few years, Bloomberg reported earlier, citing a senior alliance official.
German soldiers load tank howitzers for transport to Lithuania at the Bundeswehr army base in Munster, northern Germany, Monday, Feb. 14, 2022.
© AP Photo / Martin Meissner
After a series of discussions, new targets for the military capabilities of NATO allies will purportedly be adopted sometime in early June, when the alliance’s defense ministers gather in Brussels.
However, reaching such new levels would demand a hefty financial commitment from most European allies and Canada, while US spending would remain unchanged, officials noted.