Europe’s Defence Overruns, Measured

Europe’s defence overrun problem is not only a question of programmes becoming more expensive, later or smaller than originally planned. It is also a question of public comparability. Cost growth, unit-cost escalation, quantity reductions, schedule slippage and portfolio affordability gaps are disclosed through different national institutions, under different fiscal conventions and with different levels of parliamentary visibility.

Without a disciplined evidentiary standard, any ranking of European defence overruns risks confusing a programme overrun with a delivery failure, a budget gap with a contract escalation, or an apparent saving with a higher cost per delivered system.

This analysis answers: Why does measuring Europe's defence overruns require a disciplined evidence index rather than raw cost-growth figures? What is the European disclosure problem and how do differing national institutions and fiscal conventions distort comparability? Why does the United Kingdom serve as the European disclosure benchmark for the overrun evidence index? What does the resulting ranking reveal about overruns across France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Sweden?