Europe’s biggest airshow of the year is set to open this week under the specter of two wars, with the Pentagon facing doubts it can hit a trillion-dollar budget topline and if it will play nice with NATO nations increasingly confident about going it alone.
The show that spans more than five million square feet — enough to fit 78 football pitches or 1,350 Concordes stacked wing to wing — has been running since the end of World War II and will launch tens of billions of dollars worth of deals. But with the U.S. delaying arms sales and hanging onto more weapons, the feeling is in the air that American credibility — especially their ability to clarify what they want from Europe and to meet demand — is on the line here at Farnborough.
“There’s no question that the primary subtext to this air show, last year’s air show, I’m sure next year’s air show, is going to be the geopolitical issues and the transatlantic issue in particular, and a lot of anxiety about what that means on both sides,” said a U.S. industry official. “Europe is far from a monolith. You have European countries that would absolutely like to push full on the gas to build an organic defense industrial base. You have others that are very clear they want to continue to buy American kit.”
“We still argue that we make the best stuff in the world, and everybody wants it,” added the official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But the Europeans are worried if they can get it.”
Scar tissue: Even as top European officials acknowledge they will need America’s help rearming, some are chafing at the Trump administration’s suggestions that the continent shouldn’t try to replace the U.S. defense industry’s role — even as the Pentagon is signaling that it is removing some U.S. forces from Europe.
“The U.S. is moving the goalpost while demanding Europe take ‘primary responsibility’ for its own defense while opposing the industrial-policy tools to do it,” said Oscar Jonsson, a specialist from the Swedish Defence University. “Most European states figured that buying American won’t reverse the trend of U.S. withdrawal, and it will only prolong an overdependence on the U.S. It’s not unlikely that there will be a compromise with some more buying American, but it’s only a slight delay to the structural shift.”