Equally well the spending might go overseas, particularly to the US ironically enough. If the sole objective was stimulating the economy (which it isn't), there would be better ways of spending the same money.
Some of certainly will but then that's the nature of modern logistics and production techniques isn't it? Very few, if any, complex product is entirely "home grown" anymore. Even in the US they import all sorts of knick-knacks and do-dads for all sorts of things by military and civilian (this of course being one of the reasons Trumps vaunted tariffs are likely to be a disaster for the US if they go ahead).
Taking the F-35 mentioned above, for instance, whilst the F-35 is not a UK built jet we are still responsible for around 15% of what goes into each F-35 from the ejection seat, life support, bits of the rear fuselage, electronics and all sorts. So every F-35 purchased by anyone makes a not insubstantial contribution to the UK. The Eurofighter Typhoon whilst having, I believe, a higher UK content (including final assembly in the UK) is still chock full of kit from all over the world. It's just the way of the world. Type 26, has (I believe) German diesel generators, it has a Danish navigation radar, and a US vertical launch system for some of its missiles.
Whilst I think it would be unwise to justify increased defence spending
just on economic grounds I don't buy that it wouldn't have a significant positive economic impact on the UK even if reasonable chunks of the money spent also went abroad.
So the question is: Going ahead with increasing our expenditure on defence, should we instead focus on European solutions over whatever the US already has available or is developing?
I think the thing that has been shown by Trump II is that Trump I and the bullying of erstwhile allies was not a one off aberration never to be repeated. But instead potentially a pattern.
I reckon the only logical response that Europe can make is to firstly increase the amount we spend on our defence on which, to be fair, significant progress has been made.
We've gone from just six NATO countries meeting the 2% commitment in 2021 to twenty-three countries in 2024 (out of thirty-two). Lots of work still to be done by those who are
still below 2% and the reality is that many of those that have hit 2% now need to hit 3% (including us!). But then whilst we're all doing more to strengthen our defences in the face of an aggressively revanchist Russia and a disinterested (indeed downright hostile US) the way we spend that money probably does need to focussed on growing European production capabilities and industry.
I don't think it's possible (nor sensible) to decouple European defence procurement entirely from the United States. But it seems clear to me that attempting to do as much as we can to "buy European" has got to be the way to go. In that we are relatively lucky that, whilst it's atrophied to a tremendous degree, there is still just about the the remains (on a continent wide basis) of an industrial capability of building basically anything required.
That being said considering how pathetically slow the ramp-up to support Ukraine has been I'm not holding out all that much hope. I think the EU finally hit it's million artillery shell delivery target for Ukraine in November 2024 having originally supposed to have achieved it in March 2024. We'll ignore that the war had been raging since March 2022 and two full years later it still was a struggle to reach a million shells.
Should Portugal, for instance, opt to enter the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) or the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and skip straight to a European sixth-generation fighter, instead of spending on a ready-made fifth-generation American fighter?
I reckon Portugal probably has time to play with when it comes to replacing it's fighter fleet. Portugal isn't exactly a front-line combatant and the F-16s it has, whilst old, have been modernised and so can still present a potent threat in the hands of a well trained pilot (indeed I'd focus more on how much money Portugal spends on training for its pilots, how much time do they get flying? How much simulator time? Etc etc). So they can probably safely skip straight to whatever comes next after the current generation of aircraft. If Portugal really did feel pressure to get a new fighter in service and wanted to avoid the F-35 (though I think it would be a sensible buy) then Eurofighter's are probably a decent shout.
Though if I was a NATO planner I'd be asking Portugal to focus more on their navy than their air force. How about a couple of extra submarines or frigates? That's probably a more useful contribution to NATOs defence than an extra couple of dozen modern fighters, most of which will probably be needed to protect Portugal (and Spain)!
