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On May 8, 2026, in Warsaw, Poland signed the first loan agreement of the SAFE program, 43.7 billion euros of European funds to finance its rearmament. Problem: Warsaw buys Abrams tanks, F-35s and South Korean howitzers. This is not an anomaly; this is what the texts authorize. The programs supposed to build Europe’s military independence were written in such a way that they could legally finance the American military industry.
Warsaw signs, Washington cashes in
43.7 billion euros. This is the envelope that Poland has just secured as part of the SAFE program, Security Action for Europe, endowed with a total of 150 billion euros joint loans for defense purchases by member states. Warsaw is the first country to take the plunge, on May 8, 2026, and its allocation is the highest granted to date.
Examining its portfolio of acquisitions is instructive. Poland buys Abrams tanks from the United States, F-35s from Lockheed Martin, K2 tanks and K9 howitzers from South Korea. The European arms industry hardly figures in this list. Warsaw, however, scrupulously respects the rules of the program it uses.
The reason lies in one number. The SAFE program explicitly allows 35% of financed components to be of non-European origin. This provision, negotiated during the adoption of the text by the Council of the European Union on May 27, 2025, mechanically opens the door to American subsystems, software and hardware subject to ITAR regulations, the American legal regime which controls exports arms and subjects their foreign buyers to a right of scrutiny from Washington. The drafters of the text included a clause prohibiting a third-country manufacturer from exercising remote control over the weapons produced. On the money that goes to the United States via component suppliers, this clause says nothing.
Emmanuel Chiva, Delegate General for the French Armed Forces, said that “There is no question that European money intended for the BITDE will be used to buy weapons outside Europe”. The SAFE rules allow it.
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What the texts really allow
SAFE is not the only mechanism involved. The EDIP, European Defense Industry Program, was officially adopted on December 8, 2025 and mobilizes 1.5 billion euros in subsidies for the period 2026-2027, with a work program approved on March 30, 2026. Its architecture is more restrictive: it imposes a threshold of 65% of components of European origin, and France obtained, through a tough fight during negotiations, a so-called “design authority” clause, which requires that a European industrialist retain the conceptual mastery of the financed product.
Mais l’EDIP pèse 1.5 billion. SAFE a bag 150.
It is within the framework of the second, more flexible, that most of the purchases will take place. France should theoretically benefit from 16.2 billion euros under SAFE. The eligibility rules negotiated on this amount led a French industrialist to qualify the result as “New Trafalgar”a reference to the French naval defeat of 1805 against the British, that is to say a total industrial capitulation in the face of better-armed competitors.
Several European countries ordered the F-35 without having really weighed against Washington in the negotiations.
The German case provides the most documented demonstration of this. Berlin initially wanted to acquire American F-18s to ensure NATO’s nuclear sharing mission, that is to say transport the B61 atomic bomb in the event of conflict. Washington deliberately removed the F-18 from the list of aircraft certified for this transport. Deprived of any certified alternative, theGermany had to turn to the F-35 from Lockheed Martin. Belgium, for its part, announced on the sidelines of the Munich Conference in February 2026 its intention to acquire 11 additional F-35As, bringing its future fleet to 45 aircraft. Switzerland jointly opted for the Patriot and the F-35A.
The F-35 brings with it a constraint that few European governments have publicly exposed. The aircraft is based on a closed IT architecture, centralized around the ODIN logistics system, managed from the United States. Operating contracts require synchronization with this system at least every thirty days. Without this connection, the device does not fail immediately. But its operational capabilities are gradually deteriorating: mission software updates delayed, threats database obsolete, supply chain disrupted. The American Government Accountability Office confirms that ODIN does not interfere with flight controls, but without updates managed from Washington, a European F-35 sees its operational efficiency erode over time.
In February 2026, the Dutch Defense Secretary publicly stated that he would be “Possible to modify F-35 software” to free ourselves from American restrictions. The United States also retains control over updates that activate or reduce stealth capabilities, that is to say the aircraft’s ability not to be detected by opposing radars and on-board sensors. Apart from Israel, no country equipped with the F-35 has obtained the right to integrate its own sovereign systems into the aircraft.
American lobbying in Brussels reflects the scale of the issues. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, it has increased by almost 40%. RTX, the former Raytheon Technologies, has increased its meetings with MEPs sitting on the industry and defense committees to influence the development of the European Defense Industrial Strategy. In 2025, Lockheed Martin’s annual revenue reached 75 billion dollarsup 6% compared to 2024, an amount greater than the value of the entire European defense sector.
Denmark chooses Thales. Isolated or previous case?
On April 21, 2026, Denmark signed with Thales and MBDA the first export contract for the SAMP/T NG, a Franco-Italian ground-to-air defense system developed by the Eurosam consortium, capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and combat aircraft. Deliveries are scheduled for the end of 2027, beginning of 2028. Copenhagen has ruled out the American Patriot, a competing system directly proposed by Washington.
The official Danish reasons combine two separate registers. The first is industrial: the Patriot’s delivery times are considered unacceptable, a four to five year wait due to the explosive global demand following the war in Ukraine. The second is political: the desire to support the European defense industry, reinforced by diplomatic tensions with Washington around the status of Greenland. The Trump administration produced, from this point of view, an unanticipated effect: by putting a Scandinavian ally under diplomatic pressure, it accelerated a reflex of European preference that years of institutional discourse had not been enough to anchor.
This choice comes seventeen days before the Polish signature on May 8, 2026. It demonstrates that an assumed European preference can, in certain geopolitical conditions, prevail over the Atlanticist reflex. It nevertheless remains an exception in an acquisition landscape dominated by American equipment.
The SCAF and the MGCS in disarray
SCAF, Future Air Combat System, is the Franco-German program intended to produce the new generation combat aircraft which will replace the Rafale and the Eurofighter by 2040. On April 18, 2026, the failure of a final mediation between Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defense and Space was officially recorded. The two mediators mandated to find a compromise, one French, the other German, submitted separate and divergent reports to the respective governments.
The German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the German ombudsman concluded in his document that a joint fighter jet was not « plus possible ». On April 22, 2026, Éric Trappier, CEO of Dassault Aviation, publicly declared that he was no longer negotiating with Airbus Defense and Space on the New Generation Fighter pillar, the heart of a program estimated to 100 billion euros in total. Airbus DS now proposes to refocus the SCAF on « couches communes » of software and data systems, by ruling out the common piloted aircraft, which amounts to dissolving the project as it was conceived during the Franco-German launch of 2017. On April 24, Emmanuel Macron declared from Cyprus that the SCAF was not “not dead at all”sending the file back to the Defense ministries without specifying a timetable.
The future Franco-German tank program, the MGCS for Main Ground Combat System, is following a comparable trajectory. In December 2025, Germany validated a partnership between Rheinmetall and KNDS Deutschland for the development of a national tank, officially presented as “complementary” at MGCS. Industrial observers saw, according to the expression which circulated in Berlin, “the first nail in the coffin” of the common program. France is now studying the acquisition of German Leopard 2 tanks to fill the capacity gap between the scheduled withdrawal of the Leclerc around 2037 and a hypothetical MGCS whose delivery date remains undefined.
France and its American catapults
Technological dependence on the United States does not spare the country which, within the European Union, most consistently defends the principle of military independence.
A report from the French Institute of International Relations published in 2025 documents how the ITAR regulation constrains all defense programs when only one component subject to this regulation is integrated, including programs designed without initial American participation. Concretely: if a European industrialist integrates an American sensor or software into a weapons system, Washington acquires the right to control the export of this system to third countries, even if the American contribution only represents a marginal fraction of its total value.
The French New Generation Aircraft Carrier, the PANG, will be equipped with EMALS electromagnetic catapults and AAG landing systems manufactured by the American General Atomics, as part of a so-called Foreign Military Sale contract, a device by which the government American sells military equipment directly to foreign governments by serving as an official intermediary, which gives it a right to review the use made of it. The 2026 draft budget provided for the financing of a third EMALS catapult runway, in addition to the two already programmed. The entry into service of the PANG is anticipated around 2038: Paris is committing to American technological dependence on its most emblematic power projection tool for the next three decades.
These purchases, added up across the entire continent, deprive European manufacturers of the order volumes necessary to achieve the economies of scale allowing them to compete with Lockheed Martin or RTX. In 2025, the members of the Atlantic Alliance increased their military spending by 20% compared to 2024, the largest increase since the 1950s according to the annual report of the Secretary General of NATO published on March 26, 2026. The Hague Summit in June 2025 set a target of 5% of GDP devoted to defense and security by 2035, including 3.5% strictly military. These hundreds of billions of euros constitute a market currently being formed. The Polish signature of May 8, 2026 indicates, for the moment, in which direction it is moving.
