Production in the civilian sector is growing Dual Use: Europe’s Defence Accelerator Comes with Risks

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Europe’s defence industry is being asked to achieve within a few years what it was hardly designed to do after decades of limited demand: produce far more weapons and ammunition, bring new technologies into service faster and reduce dependencies at the same time. 

Expanding the factories of traditional defence groups alone will not be enough. Increasingly, the industry is turning to technologies, suppliers and production capacity originally developed for civilian markets. Semiconductors and sensors, artificial intelligence, cloud services, satellite communications, batteries and autonomous navigation have all become militarily relevant. Yet many are developed not by companies like Rheinmetall, KNDS, MBDA or Airbus Defence, but by companies serving automotive, telecommunications, space, IT and industrial markets. Dual use can shorten development times, reduce costs and expand the pool of suppliers. But defence companies also inherit the dependencies of global civilian supply chains. Europe’s armed forces can therefore become technologically more advanced without necessarily becoming more sovereign.