The NATO Engine And The Defence Industrialisation Gap

NATO’s innovation system is increasingly capable of identifying promising dual-use technologies, financing their development and testing them against operational requirements. The more persistent difficulty arises after technical validation, when companies must convert prototypes into repeatable, certified and secure production. Many non-traditional defence suppliers lack their own manufacturing assets, qualified production processes and access to specialised facilities.

The NATO Engine pilot seeks to address this gap by connecting technology companies with civilian and dual-use factories offering additive manufacturing, engineering support and flexible production capacity. Its viability will depend not simply on the availability of factories, but on whether those facilities can meet defence requirements for quality assurance, technical-data protection, export control, cybersecurity, configuration management, airworthiness and contractual responsibility. The report first reconstructs the strategic and institutional architecture of the NATO Engine, including NSPA’s role and its relationship with NATO Front Door, DIANA, the NATO Innovation Fund and national innovation systems.

It then examines the programme’s legal, procurement, regulatory and commercial mechanics, before assessing the European manufacturing companies, engineering groups, additive-manufacturing centres and test facilities with demonstrable defence relevance. The final part evaluates the conditions under which manufacturing-as-a-service could support certified production, low-rate industrialisation and supply-chain resilience, and determines whether the NATO Engine can become a durable bridge to serial defence manufacturing or is more likely to remain a mechanism for prototyping, specialised production and surge capacity. The NATO Engine, launched in pilot form through the July 2026 Innovation Scale-Up Package, is the Alliance’s first explicit attempt to treat civilian production capacity as an industrialisation layer for non-traditional defence suppliers.