Defence industry

In 2014 the world spent more on defence than ever before, with three players standing out as essential drivers of this trend: China, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Are their heavy investments in defence having an impact on their behaviour in their respective regional environments?

As the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) programme celebrates five years of successful flight operations, this Alert provides an overview of this multinational initiative which has provided even very small European countries with a strategic transport capability that they would...

This Alert offers a preliminary sketch of what a Europe-wide security of supply regime could look like. Should such a regime follow an emphasis on maintaining open markets and ensuring competitiveness, or should it follow an insistence on greater protection and a ‘buy European’...

What steps is the US taking in order to ensure that it remains technologically superior to its rivals when it comes to defence matters? Is there still a role for Europe in the race to stay ahead of the game?

EU member states have long avoided applying EU law to defence by extensively relying – implicitly or explicitly – on Article 346. Using recent case law, this Brief shows how this is now becoming increasingly difficult.

Since the end of the Cold War, the armaments sector in the Visegrad countries has gone through an important downsizing process. Shrinking home markets and the disruption of the Warsaw Pact cooperation mechanisms have put defence industries in the region under enormous pressure.

Exploring the effects of the high levels of military spending in the Arab world, this Alert seeks to underline the importance of the security-development nexus. What can military expenditure tell us about the likelihood of both intra- and inter-state conflict breaking out?

At present, the European defence market is fragmented and characterised by a plethora of national standards. But with the need for defence standardisation becoming increasingly critical in an era marked by declining defence expenditure, what steps can be taken to ensure success?

Although the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will not directly cover to the defence sector, dual-use goods and technologies are increasingly blurring the lines between defence and civilian commercial realms. What impact will the TTIP have on small...

As EU member states try to juggle decreasing budgets and increasing costs in the face of an ever more unstable neighbourhood, is Europe trying to maintain its defences by cutting everything that makes them viable? This Brief suggests a few answers by looking at some of the latest...