Post by GLOBSEC

📡 FIRST LIGHT | One idea worth your morning Europe is spending more on defence than at any time since the Cold War. It still isn't enough. The problem isn't the budgets. It's that governments and their defence industries are stuck in a mutual chokehold, each waiting for the other to move first. For decades, governments treated arms makers as contractors to manage at arm's length, with small, unpredictable orders. So industry optimised for margins, not mass production. The result: a defence base that's innovative but structurally unready for war. The gap is concrete. Russia produces around 3 million artillery shells a year, roughly three times what the entire EU can manage. And Western intelligence assesses Moscow could threaten NATO's eastern flank within a few years. Major European procurement takes about five years to reach delivery. What works isn't more communiqués from Brussels. It's binding, multi-year national contracts that give industry a real reason to build, the way Poland and Romania have done. To push this, GLOBSEC is launching a new European Defence Initiative. Europe has woken up to the threat. Now it has to get out of bed. Read the full commentary by Rob Bauer, Admiral (Ret.) and Martin Sklenar 👇 https://lnkd.in/eXSQ63rD #FirstLight #Defence #NATO #EuropeanSecurity #Deterrence