European Fragmentation Persists in Anti-Missile Defense
An analysis of how European allies struggle to address critical gaps in missile defense capabilities in the midst of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2026.
What is the Challenge in European Missile Defense?
With transatlantic relations fracturing, and Russia continuing to launch deadly attacks on Kyiv, Europe has made a conscious decision to buy more European, move faster, and close critical defense gaps. EU governments are striving to improve all aspects of air defense, including protection against hypersonic missiles, despite challenges relating to the supply chain issues and internal fragmentation.
In June 2026, Lockheed Martin reportedly said it could not guarantee delivery dates for PAC-3 MSE interceptors used by the Patriot system, even as it works to increase production, with implications particularly significant for Europe. Delays to Patriot deliveries undermine both the credibility and implementation timeline of the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), which relies heavily on the US-made system but also on the supply of Israeli equipment, which is subject to the same constraints given Tel Aviv’s priorities. Similar uncertainties could also affect Arrow 3, as Germany’s procurement of the Israeli interceptor has become increasingly politically sensitive amid the conflict in Gaza and growing domestic debate within Israel over defense exports.
European countries relying on such non-European suppliers, whose long-term reliability is questionable, are taking unreasonable risks. Countries are starting to look for European alternatives. Switzerland, which ordered Patriot systems from the United States, is now weighing the Franco-Italian SAMP/T as delays stretch into the next decade. Denmark has gone further, choosing the SAMP/T NG system, with deliveries due from 2028. These initiatives are still isolated, but could be replicated on a larger scale across Europe.
Yet, within Europe itself, national governments and EU institutions do not appear to have fully grasped either the strategic stakes or the urgency of addressing critical gaps in missile defense capabilities, despite Europe’s industrial capacity to tackle many of these shortcomings in the near term. As the example of Ukraine shows, military and industrial imperatives subject any key defense capability to two fundamental criteria. The priority is operational: fielding a system that works, given the urgent need to close a dangerous capability gap. The second is industrial: ensuring reliable European production capable of sustaining the necessary delivery rates. In missile defense, certainty is as important as performance. A nation cannot fully achieve sovereignty with a system that it cannot deliver on time, replenish in sufficient numbers, or use without political dependency.
Has Europe Understood the Problem?
At the policymaking level, EU decision-makers have publicly accepted that the old-world order is no more, and the way we consider questions of defense has evolved. In March 2025, Ursula von der Leyen told the Royal Danish Military Academy “the era of the peace dividend is long gone” and that Europe had entered “the age of rearmament.” She added a sentence that should frame every major procurement decision in the coming years: “We must buy more European.” Andrius Kubilius, the EU Commissioner for Defense and Space, has made the same point in sharper terms. In January 2026, he argued that “Defense Independence means that we need to be defense ready, inside NATO, but with much less American presence in Europe.”
The European Commission’s Readiness 2030 agenda reflects that shift. The EU has opened financial space for defense, including the ReArm Europe plan, and the European Defense Fund is now one of the main tools for collaborative defense research and development. The Commission says the EDF is designed to “reduce the fragmentation” of European defense investment and strengthen industrial competitiveness and interoperability.
That ambition is sound, but missile defense shows how difficult implementation still is. Europe already has credible systems. Alongside SAMP/T and Aster missiles, which France, Italy and the UK have used in demanding operational environments, and even more so by Ukraine, projects such as DSABC are emerging to create a wider European air defense architecture, combining KNDS, Thales, Saab and MBDA systems. Yet, rather than concentrating effort around quickly available sovereign systems, Europe has multiplied initiatives such as the aforementioned ESSI, which draws on expertise and creates dependencies outside Europe. This has gone so far as to cause political concern in the most active countries within the European BITD. In a 2023 report on ground-based air defense, French MPs Jean-Louis Thiériot and Natalia Pouzyreff criticized the ESSI as “a unilateral initiative with incoherent justifications and little regard for European sovereignty.” They argued that American and Israeli systems had largely overlooked Europe’s own industrial solutions.
Is Europe Competing Against Itself?
Europe has a remarkable ability to undermine its own efforts through procurement and funding decisions, pitting allies against one another in drawn out processes that undermine efforts to unify defense infrastructure. This shortcoming has become even clearer at the upper end of missile defense: countering hypersonic weapons. Combining extreme speed with maneuverability, these missiles dramatically reduce the time available for detection, decision and interception. Russia’s repeated use of the Kinzhal missile in Ukraine and the successful test launch of the DF-17 hypersonic missile by the Rocket Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have demonstrated that this is no longer a theoretical challenge, while Iran and North Korea continue to expand their own hypersonic programs. Meanwhile, European efforts are lagging behind: attempts to develop a robust hypersonic interceptor for the defense of Europe remain fragmented at a time of real urgency, with the limited reliability of foreign partners and internal procurement processes having negative effects.
Indeed, Europe has responded by funding two parallel programs under the European Defense Fund: EU-HYDEF, selected under the 2021 EDF call to develop “a European interceptor targeting the 2035+ threats”, and HYDIS, launched in 2023 with what OCCAR describes as “the wider European collaborative response to the pressing need for a new interception solution.”
The scale of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine confronted the Commission, which awarded the second contract directly to the consortium that had initially rejected, thereby increasing the chances of delivering a viable capability within the required timeframe. While this solution is prudent given the current military balance, such duplication and hesitation raise questions about the appropriateness of the selection criteria initially applied.
For strategically critical capabilities, should European funding continue to balance industrial and political considerations, or should it place greater weight on demonstrated military effectiveness, technological maturity and the ability to deliver a sovereign capability within the required timeframe? And, more broadly speaking, is the European Defense Fund the right instrument for capabilities in such a strategic segment, particularly when the EU has since demonstrated its ability to establish far faster and better-funded mechanisms, such as SAFE?
The Commission’s 2026 EDF work program, which includes the development of a European endo-atmospheric interceptor among its flagship priorities, suggests that difficult choices now lie ahead, which will either strengthen or undermine the credibility of instruments such as the EDF in addressing urgent capability requirements. As Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius argued, “Putin will not be dissuaded by a White Paper, but by action.” All this demonstrates how missile defense illustrates a broader challenge for Europe. In this field, procurement decisions must combine operational effectiveness, European sovereignty and timely delivery. How future programs balance these priorities will be an important measure of Europe’s defense ambitions.
