Europe’s Revolution in Defence Industrial Affairs

Abstract

The potential for the timely implementation of an RMA in the early years of the twenty-first century rests on a wide variety of considerations. These include the readiness of governments to spend significantly on defence and the capacity of armed forces to reshape their doctrine, training and organization to take full advantage of available technologies. As discussed by Bill Kincaid in Chapter 11 of this volume, tight equipment acquisition practices, involving precise and coherent requirements’ capture and the use of a variety of contracting arrangements, will also be needed. But much will also depend on the performance of the defence businesses that will be contracted to develop and produce the equipment involved. Defence industry is predominantly in private hands in the US, the UK and Germany. In states where state ownership of defence production has been the central tradition, most prominently France, Italy and Spain, there is a strong trend towards privatization. Defence industry, in short, is largely beyond the direct control of government, although government’s influence as a customer, regulator and sponsor of defence businesses is huge.