On October 14, 2026, Defense News reported from the Warsaw Security Forum that European governments are encouraging their defence industries to develop and produce unmanned systems jointly with Ukrainian companies, while warning that tanks and armoured vehicles must stay in the inventory to defend NATO’s eastern flank. Dutch Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius said on October 12 that Dutch forces are training daily with Ukrainian know-how, because Ukraine has the most innovative army in Europe. At the same time, she said, the Netherlands is investing in its own defence industry, which had weakened after years of low spending, a problem she said is common across Europe.
The mix of old and new is the central theme. Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas told Defense News that his country’s planned purchase of six-wheel-drive Patria armoured personnel carriers from Finland is an example of allies cooperating on major land-force purchases, with the vehicles intended for the National Division, Lithuania’s main combat unit. Lithuania wants to be involved in research and development as well as assembly. Kaunas said the division, working with allies including the United States, Germany and Poland, can block an adversary near the border and then use drones and modern weapons to break it, and he argued that combining the two is crucial, as Ukraine has shown by adding anti-drone protection to its tanks.
Dovilė Šakalienė, a Lithuanian lawmaker and former defence minister, made the sharpest point, about how contracts are written. She said Europe needs “smart contracts” that deliver the newest technology, and cited Lithuania’s 2024 deal for 44 Leopard 2A8 tanks, which she signed in office. It requires that the tanks receive the latest anti-drone defence systems available at the time of assembly, not those that existed when the contract was signed. For this kind of technology, she said, three years is an eternity. That is a practical lesson from Ukraine, where drone tactics change faster than procurement cycles, and it suggests contracts with built-in technology refreshes may matter as much as the platform itself.
The same logic runs through the argument that drones cannot replace armour. Šakalienė said massive land manoeuvres cannot be completed with drones alone, and the Defense News piece shows allies bordering Russia buying heavy equipment while expanding spending on drones and counter-drone systems. It is also an industrial story. Poland, which hosted the forum, is trying to shift from buyer to exporter, and foreign manufacturers are expanding there. Boeing’s Vince Logsdon said the company already has about 1,000 employees in the country and wants many more, and is pitching its CH-47 Chinook as a complement to the 96 AH-64E Apaches Poland ordered in a deal worth around $10 billion.
There are reasons to read the forum statements with some caution. These are political remarks and sales pitches, not procurement decisions, and the article gives no numbers on how many drones will be co-produced or how the money will be divided between unmanned systems and heavy armour. Budgets are finite, so the “both” answer glosses over the real trade-off. Boeing’s Chinook offer is a commercial pitch, and Kaunas’s description of Ukrainian experience is one minister’s account. That is my own framing of the limits, not the article’s.
Ultimately, the debate is less about drones versus tanks than about how fast militaries can adapt the equipment they already have. The same lesson appears in our posts on the Royal Navy’s new interceptor-drone launchers and the Pentagon’s counter-drone pilot, where cheap drones are forcing expensive platforms to change. Three things will show whether Europe gets it right: whether joint production with Ukrainian companies moves from statements to contracts, whether technology-refresh clauses like the Leopard 2A8 one become standard, and whether defence budgets stretch to cover both the new and the heavy. Until then, the safe conclusion is that nobody is giving up on tanks, and nobody expects them to survive without protection from drones.
No comments:
Post a Comment