Europe’s defence industry is being forced into a faster and more demanding era, with the war in Ukraine, rising military budgets and the European Union’s Readiness 2030 agenda all pushing manufacturers to rethink how quickly they can turn ideas into deployable capability.
According to the interview published by Shephard, Rafferty argued that the region is experiencing a historic shift, one in which procurement systems built for slower, more predictable programmes are strugg...
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ling to keep up with the pace of modern conflict. She pointed to Ukraine as a stark example of how uncrewed systems and software-led warfare are evolving in cycles of weeks and months rather than years.
That urgency is now reflected in EU policy. The European Commission and European Council have set out Readiness 2030 as a framework to expand defence production, strengthen the European defence industrial base and help member states mobilise substantial additional spending, with plans that could unlock up to €800 billion in defence investment by 2030. The package includes a €150 billion loan instrument for joint procurement and greater flexibility under the Stability and Growth Pact.
Rafferty said the industrial challenge is not just about demand, but about the economics and engineering of supply. Traditional defence manufacturing, she argued, was designed for low-volume, highly bespoke production. Today’s requirements are different: companies must be able to scale rapidly, adapt designs while production is under way and do so without sacrificing resilience or compliance.
That is especially difficult at a time when European buyers are insisting on local content, sovereign supply chains and tighter control over data and components. The report noted that national and regional compliance rules are now effectively part of market access, and that a single problematic part can threaten an entire programme during audit.
Plexus, the electronics manufacturing services company at the centre of the interview, is positioning itself as part of the answer. With facilities in Livingston and Oradea, it says it can help defence customers bridge the gap between prototype and volume production, while maintaining the same quality standards across different jurisdictions.
The company’s pitch is that many defence original equipment manufacturers have deep technical ideas but limited in-house capacity to design for manufacturability or to scale at speed. By contrast, an experienced manufacturing partner can help harden a concept from the outset, embedding testability, error-proofing and production efficiency early in the development cycle.
Rafferty also highlighted the growing importance of manufacturing readiness alongside technology readiness. In her view, a programme can have a promising prototype and still fail if it depends on manual tuning, fragile parts sourcing or a specialist workforce that cannot support large-scale output.
The strategic backdrop is also changing. The European Defence Agency has backed the Readiness 2030 plan as a response both to immediate support needs for Ukraine and to the longer-term task of rebuilding Europe’s military industrial capacity. At the same time, the European Parliament’s research service has noted debate over fragmentation, democratic oversight and whether such spending can be sustained economically.
Against that backdrop, demand is rising in sectors such as unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS technologies and secure battlefield communications. Plexus says it is seeing interest from companies working on advanced software and drone platforms, particularly where specialist engineering support is needed in areas such as thermal management, signal integrity and systems integration.
The broader trend, Rafferty suggested, is towards a more distributed European model in which cross-border industrial cooperation becomes normal rather than exceptional. She also pointed to the emergence of “autonomous mass” , a shift away from a small number of expensive legacy platforms and towards large numbers of lower-cost unmanned systems, which will place new pressure on sustainment, repair and supply-chain management.
For Europe’s defence makers, the message is clear: capability now matters only if it can be manufactured, localised and delivered at pace.
Source: Noah Wire Services
