Broken window stimulus: Nuevo European artillery doctrine

Nothing unites like a common adversary.

With the election of President Trump, the European diplomatic industrial complex must have realised that the post-World War military doctrines would be challenged. Still, every heap of gun powder requires a spark to induce action. The recent series of dramas in diplomatic missions from the EU (& UK) to the United States might have proven to be that spark which would force fortress Europa to rethink its defensive posture and reorient the doctrines to the reality in which Europe would need to be capable enough to be a porcupine in case there is a major military aggression.

The objective of this article is to ponder upon the direction of development of European military doctrines and to understand why all dots are connecting towards a convergence on raising debt to increase the order book value of well-known defence names while improving the currently stagnating capacity utilization for manufacturing. In general, the world allows a strong directional trend only when incentive structures of multiple stakeholders are aligned in a single direction, and the decade-long defence buildout that we are about to see in Europe is the occasion in which almost all important participants of the world stage have something to gain from.

Let's start by examining why the two major players of the great plains of Europe have something to gain from the major defense buildout in Europe. Then, we will zoom in on the specific direction of development.

• United States of America: As the cost of sovereign debt service in the US remains steady, it would want to grow insular with each passing year. If the commitment to the NATO defence infrastructure in Europe can be reduced, it would allow the US to shift strategic focus towards containing China. From the first term of President Trump, the objective has always been to focus on China as the primary adversary and reduction of commitment in Europe allows the US to do so.
• European Union & UK: Production infrastructure utilization in France, Germany and the Netherlands has been relatively low going from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, driven by consumer demand as one of the leading variables. Utilization of the idle production capacity fueled by the introduction of debt-driven liquidity would be stimulatory to the economy, thereby aiding the political career of the leaders who enjoy thin edges to the thrones. This can be the opportunity that Europe has been looking for to justify reindustrialisation backed by a conservative political momentum.

Now that the context is set, let's have a very quick glance at the current division of military assets in Europe in 2025:

Tooth to Tail Ratio: The ratio of attack capable assets to support & logistics assets

From the current portfolio assets at disposal, it is pretty clear that tooth to tail ratio is heavily skewed towards the tail because the European military doctrines in the cold war era were created to ensure that the entire military can act as a support and logistics system for a US spearhead into Russia. The doctrinal snapshot of the cold war era still remains frozen in the European military mindset. The current European military assets are concentrated around trucks, small vehicles, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, which were expected to aid in fast deployment in Eastern Europe for localized conflicts to ensure Russian covert operation-driven coups could be contained around the end phase of the Cold War period.

Considering the reality of the modern day threats to Europe, it is not expected that Russia would end up mounting a traditional combined arms invasion since Russia does not have the demographics for another large scale military campaign and it has completely lost the plot on combined arms tactics. Europe does not necessarily need to prepare tank doctrines for a large-scale tank battle or a large-scale personnel deployment for which we simply don't have the demographics for. In my humble speculation, what Europe would converge towards is being a procupine with dynamic deterrence that can inflict disproportionate pain to any conventional aggression.

Procupine strategies are primarily based on large-scale precision artillery and dronery. If we take a quick look at the current defense portfolio of Europe, we are stuck without a directionality in the doctrine and the entire system has been designed to work in conjuction with US doing the heavy lifting. Considering the current cost of capital and demographics of the industrialized and high per capita Europ,e the only direction of practical development is towards high precision artillery systems. They can definitely check the following boxes:

• Low personnel requirement: Artillery operations can project a relatively high offensive capability per deployed personnel. Considering the high per capita income population, this is the only position which would be a relatively low friction recruitment.
• Offensive capability per Euro raised: Artillery buildouts cost a lot less than building out an offense capable air force, for which Europe can't raise enough debt at increasing cost of capital to manage it. This is the lowest cost option to add some effective tooth to the tail.
• Using European sensor edge: European defense technology does have some significant alpha and it is generally around transducers which are used in range finding and target acquisition. I would probably write another article to demonstrate the European sensor edge. In conjunction, US would also be happy to provide satellite intelligence for target acquisition as long as there are no boots on the ground.

For people who think that the UK and French nuclear deterrence would not allow for limited conflicts, please understand that all evidence points otherwise. Russia wants to acquire the last few points of mounting a land campaign against it till it's military capable demography lasts. Given the time Europe has to mount deterrence while stimulating it's economy is relatively low. Considering the current set of circumstances, the current buildout of European defense would probably work towards increasing its long distance payload delivery capacity in orders of magnitude higher than we have seen post the Second World War.

This article was just to home upon a trend, in the next article hopefully I would be able to zoom into how the artillery doctrine would probably look like on the map. Time to sharpen our pencils and build for the decade in front of us.