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The Procurement Gap: Structural Misalignment Between Defence Innovation and Procurement Allocation in Europe
What is the procurement gap between defence innovation and procurement allocation in Europe?
The Procurement Gap: Structural Misalignment Between Defence Innovation and Procurement Allocation in Europe: European defence spending has entered. Defence-fi…
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Original DFM publication · DFM Analysis report · 2026-03-24
European defence spending has entered a phase of sustained expansion, driven by geopolitical pressure, operational requirements, and the need to restore industrial capacity after decades of underinvestment.
At the same time, the locus of technological innovation relevant to contemporary warfare has shifted toward a broader ecosystem that includes startups, scale-ups, and non-traditional suppliers, particularly in domains such as unmanned systems, autonomy, electronic warfare software, and AI-enabled operational functions.
This analysis answers: What is the procurement gap between defence innovation and procurement allocation in Europe? What structural lock-out mechanisms exclude startups, scale-ups and non-traditional suppliers? Where is battlefield-relevant innovation located across unmanned systems, autonomy, electronic warfare software and AI-enabled functions? How does the United States innovation-to-procurement transition compare, and what does the time-to-first-contract metric reveal?
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The Procurement Gap: Structural Misalignment Between Defence Innovation and Procurement Allocation in Europe
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What is The Procurement Gap: Structural Misalignment Between Defence Innovation and Procurement Allocation in Europe?
At the same time, the locus of technological innovation relevant to contemporary warfare has shifted toward a broader ecosystem that includes startups, scale-ups, and non-traditional suppliers…
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