Europe Can Replace Shells, Not America’s Military Nervous System

NATO’s latest burden-sharing fight has moved from speeches to force lists. In June, Reuters reported that the United States had cut the pool of aircraft, drones, ships, tankers and other assets it pledges to NATO crisis forces, while Secretary General Mark Rutte said other allies were filling “many” of the gaps and that the “overall picture is looking good,” though some areas still “require more work” according to Reuters¹. That sounds reassuring until you look at what is being reduced: fighter aircraft, Reaper drones, aerial refueling tankers, maritime patrol aircraft, destroyers, bomber and carrier availability, and a cruise-missile submarine commitment according to the same Reuters account¹. This is the right moment to ask the question plainly. Can Europe replace American firepower, or is it mostly promising to do so?

My answer is: Europe can replace more than skeptics admitted five years ago, but not the parts that matter most in the first weeks of a high-end NATO war. It can add artillery shells, brigades, drones, short-range air defenses, armored units and logistics inside Europe. It cannot quickly replace the American military nervous system: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR; suppression of enemy air defenses, known as SEAD; air-to-air refueling; heavy strategic airlift; missile defense; military satellite communications; and command and control, meaning the people, networks and procedures that let many national forces fight as one.

That distinction matters because NATO crisis planning is not abstract think-tank gaming. In NATO’s own crisis-management process, warning leads to political decisions, then to military concepts of operations and operational plans under NATO’s published crisis-response framework⁵. Article 5, NATO’s collective-defense clause, says an armed attack on one ally is considered an attack on all, but NATO also stresses that each ally decides what assistance it deems necessary under the Washington Treaty framework explained by NATO⁴. In practice, then, deterrence depends less on the poetry of Article 5 than on whether the alliance can move, see, strike, coordinate and sustain forces fast enough.

The good news is real. European allies and Canada increased defense spending by nearly 20 percent in real terms in 2025, reaching more than $571 billion in 2021 prices, and NATO allies agreed at The Hague to spend 5 percent of GDP annually on defense and defense-related needs by 2035, including at least 3.5 percent for core defense requirements according to NATO³. The European Commission’s Readiness 2030 plan aims to mobilize €800 billion, including a €150 billion SAFE loan instrument for areas such as missile defense, drones and cyber security according to the Commission⁶. Europe’s shell production has also moved from embarrassment toward relevance: EU defense commissioner Andrius Kubilius said in February 2026 that Europe was producing more than two million 155mm artillery shells a year in an Interfax-Ukraine interview⁷.

Those numbers are not nothing. A munitions stockpile is the pile of usable war reserves on hand, not merely the annual factory run rate, and Europe still has to rebuild inventories while helping Ukraine. But production capacity is the precondition for stockpiles. Poland, the Baltic states, Germany, the Nordics, Britain and France are no longer debating whether Russia is a problem; they are buying for a land war on the continent. Germany has also begun stationing a brigade in Lithuania, its first long-term foreign brigade deployment since World War II, with full strength planned for 2027 according to AP⁸. That is exactly the kind of forward presence that makes a Baltic contingency harder for Moscow to treat as a quick fait accompli.

So I do not buy the lazy version of European helplessness. In a Polish or Baltic crisis, Europe does not need to duplicate the whole U.S. global military. It does not need eleven carrier strike groups. It needs enough ready ground combat power, artillery, air defense, engineering, logistics, drones and reserves to stop Russia from seizing NATO territory before politics catches up. On those categories, the trend is positive.

But firepower is the wrong word if it makes us stare only at guns and shells. Modern allied operations are built on enablers. Strategic airlift is the ability to move troops and heavy equipment over long distances. Aerial refueling keeps combat aircraft in the fight longer and lets them operate from safer bases. ISR finds targets and tracks enemy movement. SEAD opens airspace by suppressing or destroying enemy air defenses. Interoperability is the unglamorous ability of different national forces to communicate, share data, refuel, reload, repair and fight together under pressure.

Here Europe’s report card is much weaker. A Defense News survey of 16 European security experts found that Europe may need until the early 2030s for some critical enablers, that robust air and missile defense could take five to ten years, and that the United States provides high-end command and control, satellite intelligence and deep-strike capabilities that European allies either lack or have only in limited form according to Defense News⁹. The same survey was not uniformly bleak: analysts saw Europe as better placed in strategic airlift and refueling, and potentially able to close some gaps in battlefield command and control, unmanned ISR and long-range strike within five years according to Defense News⁹. But even that optimistic reading says “build,” not “already replaced.”

The historical evidence points the same way. In NATO’s 2011 Libya operation, after NATO took command, the United States still flew more than half the sorties and provided 80 percent of ISR and aerial refueling, virtually all SEAD, and a quarter of airborne command and control according to CSIS¹⁰. Libya is not the Baltics. A war in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland would be fought from NATO territory, with roads, rail, national sensors, ground-based air defense and prepositioned forces. But Libya remains a warning about structure. When NATO has needed the hard-to-see systems that make air campaigns and joint operations function, the United States has supplied the disproportionate share.

Airlift shows the trap in miniature. Airbus says the A400M can carry 37 tonnes and is working toward 40 tonnes on its A400M product page¹¹. That gives Europe a serious tactical and medium strategic transport aircraft. The U.S. C-17, by contrast, carries 164,900 pounds, about 74.8 tonnes, and can accommodate equipment such as an M1 Abrams tank according to the U.S. Air Force¹². For many intra-European moves, rail and A400Ms are enough. For rapid movement of heavy and outsized cargo after Russian strikes on ports, railheads and airbases, the difference is not academic.

The industrial problem is also less solved than the budget headlines imply. The European Parliament’s research service reported in March 2026 that only 18 percent of EU defense investment took place collaboratively, far below the 35 percent benchmark set by the European Defence Agency, and that higher spending had not yet produced matching growth in joint acquisition according to the European Parliament¹³. This is where European defense efforts often go soft: twenty-seven procurement cultures, national champions, different threat perceptions, different weapons stocks and different political caveats. More money helps. Common procurement turns money into interoperable capacity.

The strongest argument for optimism is that Europe only has to hold the line in Europe, not police the world. I take that seriously. A defensive fight on NATO soil would use local infrastructure, national reserves and ground-based systems in ways an expeditionary war could not. The EU’s roadmap is also aimed at the right baskets: air and missile defense, strategic enablers, military mobility, artillery, missiles and ammunition, drones, counter-drones, ground combat and maritime capability according to the Commission⁶. If Europe executes that list, it will be a much more serious military actor by 2030.

But the word “if” is carrying too much weight. The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2025 that replacing key U.S. conventional contributions to European defense would cost about $1 trillion over a 25-year lifecycle in an open-source assessment¹⁴. That estimate is not a reason to despair; Europe is rich enough to do far more. It is a warning that replacement is not a press release, a summit target or a factory opening. It is trained crews, spare parts, depots, secure networks, satellite constellations, missile inventories, headquarters staffs and exercises brutal enough to reveal what still breaks.

So the honest map looks like this: Europe can realistically replace much of the American contribution in ground combat mass, artillery ammunition, short-range air defense, drones and logistics within Europe if budgets survive domestic politics and procurement becomes less fragmented. It can partially mitigate gaps in refueling, airlift, long-range strike and command systems over the next several years. It will remain dependent on Washington for the highest-end enablers, especially space-based ISR, military satellite communications, integrated air and missile defense, SEAD, heavy lift and the command architecture for a large multi-corps war.

That should shape how NATO talks about the U.S. drawdown. If Europeans present partial backfill as full replacement, Moscow may see overconfidence and Washington may see an excuse to leave faster. If Europeans admit the gaps while buying against them, the shift can strengthen deterrence rather than hollow it out. I would watch three indicators more than any summit communiqué: whether joint procurement rises sharply from 18 percent, whether air and missile defense orders become fielded batteries with missile stocks, and whether NATO exercises prove European-led command and control under realistic attack. Until then, Europe is becoming a harder target. It is not yet a substitute for America.