Europe is rushing to build its own drone and cheap weapons industry, following the war in Ukraine and uncertainty about the US commitment to NATO. A new generation of European defense startups is producing $2,000 interceptors designed to take down Iranian Shahed drones worth $30,000, while the EU has pledged 800 billion euros for defense over four years, writes The Guardian.
In a small workshop in East Midlands, England, the engineers of the British startup Skycutter are designing weapons for Ukraine. A row of 3D printers is producing the fuselage for interceptor drones, while parts such as engines and navigation chips are manually assembled. The same process is repeated hundreds of thousands of times a month in partner factories in Ukraine.
The swarms of cheap, lethal, and often autonomous drones deployed in this war have already completely changed the way of fighting. Troops far behind the front line must constantly move to avoid aerial attacks, traveling through tunnels covered with nets and landscapes furrowed by fiber optic cables used to guide drones over radio interference. Cities are terrorized by guided missiles that are cheaper and, therefore, much more widely used than before.
European armies are rushing to keep pace, in an effort to spend billions on armaments – with additional pressure from Donald Trump, who wavers on the NATO alliance, and from the insistence of the American president for members to increase their defense budgets.
The disturbing combination of Trump and a war at Europe’s doorstep has exacerbated long-standing criticisms that the continent has relied too heavily on American arms manufacturers.
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