Speaker 1: The war in Ukraine and the latest US decision on
Speaker 1: long range weapons will be in focus as European foreign
Speaker 1: ministers meet in Brussels today. They'll be discussing the situation
Speaker 1: in Ukraine with the country's foreign minister and also relations
Speaker 1: with the US ahead of Donald Trump taking office in
Speaker 1: January and his uncertain support for Ukraine and NATO. The
Speaker 1: Russia's invasion sparked a flurry of investment in defense, but
Speaker 1: what capacity does Europe have now to produce the military
Speaker 1: equipment it needs well. Joining us to discuss is Diana Demitrova,
Speaker 1: who is managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group.
Speaker 1: You've recently published a report on this subject. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us this morning. Diana, on the program, much
Speaker 1: of Ukraine's battle with Russia has depended on weapons that
Speaker 1: came from the US. We've been talking about some of
Speaker 1: the rules around how those weapons can be used on
Speaker 1: the program this morning. But how does that set us
Speaker 1: up for what happens next and how much Europe can
Speaker 1: step up to perhaps replace those weapons if US supplies
Speaker 1: seem less certain in the future.
Speaker 2: Be with you. I think in general, as we've seen
Speaker 2: in kind of the political conversation, Europe will continue to
Speaker 2: outspend what they have historically, will breach hopefully the two
Speaker 2: percent level. And as we dar Anthem analysis, we saw
Speaker 2: that China actually had crossed the barrier of how much
Speaker 2: they spent versus US as Europeans. And when I say Europeans,
Speaker 2: I mean France, Germany, Italy, Spain, in the United Kingdom
Speaker 2: in about two thousand and seven, So they now spent
Speaker 2: almost double what we spent on their military equipment. So
Speaker 2: I think the call for action is clear also in
Speaker 2: the context of the politics. But if we just look
Speaker 2: at the wrong numbers, it indicates how much we need
Speaker 2: to step up.
Speaker 3: How much I suppose has that changed in the almost
Speaker 3: thousand days that the war in Ukraine has been has
Speaker 3: been happening. I mean, how much does the build up increase.
Speaker 3: Europe's defense industry is still quite reliance on external supply chains.
Speaker 2: External supply chains absolutely. And also if we look at
Speaker 2: major program acquisition, Europeans take about forty percent of those
Speaker 2: that spend goes outside of the European Union, whereas in
Speaker 2: other countries like the United States, it's only about twenty
Speaker 2: percent that goes externally. So we are a defense I'll
Speaker 2: call it conglomerate that does look out more than others
Speaker 2: in the context.
Speaker 1: What's the risk if there are disruptions to trade. We're
Speaker 1: of course thinking about the potential of trade tariffs from
Speaker 1: the US under Donald Trump. What potential does that have
Speaker 1: to disrupt that supply into Europe's defense industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's an opportunity. We do need to
Speaker 2: reshow or think about how those supply chains come closer,
Speaker 2: and we have clear provenance of them, and we expect
Speaker 2: the Defense Review that hopefully will come out early next
Speaker 2: year will also indicate in that on that trend and
Speaker 2: in that direction. So we expect local OEMs, being German
Speaker 2: or British will need to think about how their supply
Speaker 2: chain comes closer to home.
Speaker 3: How quickly did you think that might be built up?
Speaker 3: Do you think that Europe might focus on a let's
Speaker 3: say three percent of GDP goal for defense spending.
Speaker 2: It's a great question. I think the exact target of
Speaker 2: the spend will materialize is we start to realize how
Speaker 2: much energy and effort it takes to build up those
Speaker 2: supply chains locally to home, but also build up the
Speaker 2: capacity in our respective nations. So For me, the percentage
Speaker 2: is just the outcome. I actually think the journey to
Speaker 2: get that closer to home needs to start now, because
Speaker 2: it does take years to get the reliability of what
Speaker 2: you need and also the specialization of what you need
Speaker 2: much closer to your manufacturing facility on the European continent.
Speaker 1: One of the issues that you've identified in your report
Speaker 1: that's a challenge in this area is interoperationability. So how
Speaker 1: I suppose things can be made in one country and
Speaker 1: used in another, How quickly can that be resolved? What
Speaker 1: is the best way for these countries to be able
Speaker 1: to improve that transferability of technology among them.
Speaker 2: Brilliant question, Stephen, And we think this is one of
Speaker 2: the main root causes as to why our spend is
Speaker 2: and perhaps as effective. When you think the America has
Speaker 2: kind of one battle tank, Europe has seventeen. That's seventeen
Speaker 2: different variants, seventeen different maintenance schedules, which makes everything much
Speaker 2: more complex. And one of the things we call for
Speaker 2: in our report is that coordination and coordination is twofold.
Speaker 2: The coordination is with industry, between ministries of defense and industry,
Speaker 2: but also amongst the nations themselves. And I think you
Speaker 2: saw in our report in Europe we have eighty plus
Speaker 2: kind of alliances in different conversation pockets. It's important to
Speaker 2: start to bring that too much fewer such that we
Speaker 2: can have that interoperability conversation, start to reduce the variance
Speaker 2: of the programs we buy, and then we can optimize.
Speaker 3: How I mean, we know that, but the European Foreign
Speaker 3: ministers are meeting in Bossels latter's day. How receptive do
Speaker 3: you think Europe is currently to that thinking? I mean,
Speaker 3: certainly Manue and Macon Schultz, they are sort of deeply
Speaker 3: involved in the issues with Ukraine. How responsive, how engaged
Speaker 3: you think Europe actually is given that that Germany is
Speaker 3: about to go to another election, Dvance's Macui is very
Speaker 3: much weakened in his political position. What's your assessment of
Speaker 3: how open and determined Europe is right now to do that?
Speaker 2: Given where we are globally and the fact that geopolitics
Speaker 2: considered continues to operate in a slightly kind of different tilt,
Speaker 2: I think that they will see that this is the
Speaker 2: only path forward in order to accelerate the pace at
Speaker 2: which we manufacture a scale. So I think we'll see
Speaker 2: a slight divorce of the politics to hopefully recognize that
Speaker 2: you need to create a flywheel within defense such that
Speaker 2: we can output much quicker given the fact we have
Speaker 2: conflicts that are borders and other conflicts that are escalating glibally?
Speaker 3: Is there one danger though, in the conversation around sort
Speaker 3: of military build up, certainly one of our former defense ministers,
Speaker 3: I think it was talked about the UK and Europe
Speaker 3: now being in a pre war set up versus the
Speaker 3: kind of post Second World War Cold War era? Is
Speaker 3: there a kind of danger of us talking ourselves into
Speaker 3: bigger and wider conflicts.
Speaker 2: I don't yet see that danger materializing. I think what
Speaker 2: we see as a re establishment of an independence in
Speaker 2: the defense industry in Europe, also because we had tilted
Speaker 2: the balance lately differently of World War two. I don't
Speaker 2: know that that makes anybody any more considerate should it
Speaker 2: come to having to escalate or continue conflict