Europe's becoming Ukraine's arsenal as Scholz urges 'mass production' of arms

Europe's becoming Ukraine's arsenal as Scholz urges 'mass production' of arms
By Mathieu RABECHAULT
Paris (AFP) Feb 12, 2024

European nations have pumped billions into defence spending and military aid since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but analysts say the continent's defence industry is still far from able to supply Kyiv alone.

About $44.5 billion in arms have flowed from the United States to Ukraine since Russian tanks rolled in on February 24, 2022.

But Washington's failure to agree to a new tranche of support and the potential re-election of Donald Trump to the White House in November could leave it up to Europe to plug a vast gap.

EU spending on aid has totalled 28 billion euros ($30 billion) over two years, with a further 20 billion planned this year, according to the bloc's top diplomat, Josep Borrell.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has nevertheless urged allies to "do more".

Individual member states have upped defence spending, with France's President Emmanuel Macron even talking of a "war economy".

But just nine of the 27 member states spent more than NATO's nominal floor of two percent of GDP on defence last year.

Germany, France and Italy -- the EU's wealthiest countries, with world-class defence industries -- were not among them.

"European countries have not massively increased their budgets since the invasion of Ukraine, and they haven't been ordering much either" from manufacturers, said Renaud Bellais, an economist specialising in the defence industry.

- 'Fragmented' -

Production lines are rolling out equipment, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, shells and cannons, whether heading for Ukraine or rebuilding depleted national stockpiles.

The EU has fallen short of an initial goal to ramp up production of critical 155mm artillery shells, but expects to build 1.4 million of them in 2025 -- 200,000 more than the US plans.

"European production capacity isn't so negligible, but it's quite fragmented -- for instance, 15 shell manufacturers spread across 11 countries -- and not at all coordinated," Bellais said.

Meeting Ukrainian demand "will take time, because we haven't got organised to do it", while actually building military equipment can take "several months or even years", he added.

"Currently the European defence and technology-industrial base is not able to meet wartime demands," analyst Christian Moelling of German think tank DGAP wrote in a recent note.

With defence spending largely cut to the bone during the post-Cold War "peace dividend" years, European industry "lost the capacity to scale up production", he added.

Rather than rebuilding domestic manufacturing, some European countries have turned to "off-the-shelf procurement", especially from the United States -- already seen especially in Central and Eastern Europe as the indispensable security guarantor, Moelling said.

Of 100 billion euros in arms spending by EU countries from 2022 to mid-2023, 63 percent went to buy US products and 13 percent to South Korea.

- 'National egotism' -

Meanwhile European defence firms are reluctant to invest in ramping up production capacity without contracts guaranteeing sales for the long term -- fears Brussels is struggling to soothe by organising group orders among multiple states.

"It remains an open question whether increased defence spending in the EU will translate into strengthening EU industry... or, on the contrary, will deepen dependence" on allies such as Washington, Aleksandra Koziol of Poland's PISM think tank wrote in a research note.

Not all EU countries back the drive for "strategic autonomy" by leading members such as France, lacking a direct economic self-interest.

Central and Eastern European industries "are not in a position to contribute significantly to European projects" in defence, Moelling wrote.

Where states have national champions they are not shy about pushing them, leaving Europe in "a framework of national egotism", economist Bellais said, pointing to "tension between the language on defence and budget restrictions.

"People are scared, but not enough to change the way they do things," he added.

Nevertheless, "unless the Europeans fully integrate their defence effort and operate as a single entity, they will never be able to match the breadth and depth of US capabilities", said Mark Cancian of US think tank CSIS.

Some in Kyiv nevertheless believe the Europeans will one day be able to shoulder the Americans' share of the load.

"The process has already begun," one Ukrainian diplomat told AFP.

"It's going to take time, we just have to hang on."

Germany's Scholz urges 'mass production' of arms in Europe
Europe must ramp up production of armaments massively and urgently, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday, warning that the continent now "does not live in times of peace".

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony for Rheinmetall's new munitions factory, Scholz said European nations must pool together orders and financing to provide the defence industry with purchase guarantees for the next decades.

"This is urgently necessary because the painful reality is that we do not live in times of peace," he said, pointing to Russia's war on Ukraine.

"We must move from manufacturing to mass production of armaments," he said, arguing that "those who want peace must be able to successfully deter aggressors".

Weighed down by its militaristic past, Germany has in recent decades been circumspect about its defence forces and armaments industry.

But Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 upended Berlin's post-World War II pacifist tendencies, and forced its transformation into a proponent of heavy rearmament.

Germany is now Ukraine's second biggest weapons contributor, and Scholz has been vocal in pushing other EU nations to give more.

What happens in Ukraine will decide "if our peace order, our rules-based world has a future," said Scholz, adding that Russia must "fail with the attempt to swallow its neighbour by force".

- 'Rather empty' -

The chancellor also reiterated that armaments pledges from other EU nations for Ukraine were still insufficient.

The EU has set up a joint financing mechanism to meet Ukrainian demand for weapons, but the bloc has struggled to make good on promised deliveries.

Brussels pledged to provide a million artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024, but the EU last week admitted it can only produce just over half that by the deadline.

Scholz underlined that it was key to shift gears from years of under-investment in the defence sector to building up much-needed production capacity.

"Tanks, howitzers, helicopters and air defence systems are not lined up on the shelves. If nothing is ordered for years, then nothing is produced," he warned.

Rheinmetall's new factory in Unterluess is scheduled to begin production in 2025 with an initial production run of 50,000 shells a year, before progressively reaching its full annual capacity of 200,000.

Putting the volume in perspective, Scholz said that thousands of shells are fired on a daily basis at the frontlines in Ukraine currently.

In addition, the German army's own weapons store was "rather empty" even before the war.

Rheinmetall's boss Armin Papperger said the aim of the new factory is to help secure Germany's "strategic sovereignty in the large-calibre ammunition domain".

The company is aiming to churn out up to 500,000 shells this year overall, a seven-fold jump from the 70,000 annual production before the Ukraine war.