Op-ed: For interoperability lessons, look up

The regulatory environment that created Airbus should be replicated on land

With defence spending set to rise dramatically across the European Union, questions of interoperability must still be addressed. Beyond limited NATO-wide standards such as ammunition calibres, Europe’s mish-mash of land systems can’t operate effectively alongside each other, limiting their military effectiveness.

For policymakers grappling with how to solve this problem, the air domain offers some lessons. EU-wide standards for civil aviation have created incentives for civil-military cooperation and, by extension, created a standardised operating environment for military contractors. Replicating this dynamic on land could create the conditions for a more efficient industry.

The EU’s land forces are a patchwork. Last year’s Draghi report famously noted that there are 12 types of main battle tank, and the situation is similar for infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers and more. Different maintenance regimes, logistics chains and training cause a deep structural incompatibility between these systems; on the battlefield, this leads to slower mobility, higher costs and limited ability to swap armaments.

This fragmentation is the natural outcome of national procurement habits, dispersed industries and the absence of common rules. There is no EU-wide legislative mandate for compatible systems, and indeed military procurement has some carve-outs from broader regulation. For example, Article 356 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union gives Member States the right to exclude defence procurement from EU competition laws on grounds of national security. This allows governments to give preference to national suppliers without violating EU law, incentivising the creation of national silos.

In this environment, even well-intentioned joint projects are left to struggle, as they are forced to exist in a world where duplication is the norm, with no joint legislation to guide Member States towards compatibility.

Look to the skies

The air domain shows what happens when the EU does things differently. Although military aviation remains a national competence, it is carried out in a dense EU-level regulatory environment created for civil aviation. For example, the Single European Sky (SES 2+) and the Digital European Sky impose shared procedures, standards and (digital) infrastructure that both civil and military actors must interface with.

This brings about harmonization by design: Communication, navigation and surveillance systems must meet the same level of performance across borders. Moreover, it makes civil-military coordination a regular feature of the air domain, bringing military aviation into the same rulebook without touching national sovereignty. Interoperability was not the result of air forces suddenly deciding to buy the same aircraft and equipment; rather, it followed a requirement to operate under the same sets of rules as civilian providers. It was the rules that created the interoperability, not the platforms.

The most visible success story is Airbus, a company that straddles both national borders and the civil-military divide, and competes successfully at the global level. In a recent research paper for Finabel, I used Airbus as a case study for how regulatory incentives for interoperability can shape the industry.

Airbus’ business model is centred on cross-border production, harmonised engineering standards, and development of dual-use applications for both military and civilian use. From early aircraft programs to the creation of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), Airbus has developed a strong dual-use identity, making harmonised rules essential for its way of doing business. Simply put, Airbus should be seen as an effect of air-domain interoperability, not its cause.

Repeating the trick

For the same reason, policymakers should not throw public money at efforts to create a ‘land Airbus’, but rather provide the regulatory conditions for the market to create one. To do this, they should follow three principles.

First, the EU should set out common land-domain rules following the pattern of the Single European Sky. Instead of prescribing national force structures, these would simply standardise dual-use enablers (like military corridors, operational interfaces, or logistics procedures) so that civilian and military systems are compatible right from the start.

Second, everything must be joined up across both the civil-military divide and national borders. In the same way as aviation interoperability got a boost from common digital services and performance-based standards, land forces also require a shared platform that would, among other things, allow the exchange of data between different countries. This by no means requires Member States to have exactly the same tanks; it just means having systems that can work together.

Third, incentives should encourage industrial consolidation instead of duplication. A land domain armament at the EU level, inspired by Airbus’ cooperative production model, could concentrate development, training and maintenance efforts on shared designs.

The EU’s land forces will not become interoperable simply by spending more money and buying more equipment, when the underlying system rewards national silos and duplication. The lack of common rules, shared infrastructure or industrial coordination present a governance problem that money alone won’t solve. Fortunately the air domain provides a blueprint for a solution.

Aurora D’Auria is a researcher at Finabel, the European Land Force Commanders Organisation.