Europe is beginning to rethink how it builds military power.

For decades, defence development across the continent has been fragmented. Each country maintained its own procurement cycles, its own industrial champions and its own strategic priorities. The result has often been duplication, inefficiency and slow capability development.

A new study for the European Parliament suggests that model must change.

The report, titled European Defence Projects of Common Interest: From Concept to Practice, argues that Europe should move toward large-scale collaborative defence programs, similar to the Airbus model used in civil aviation.

Instead of 27 separate defence ecosystems, the study proposes the creation of European Defence Projects of Common Interest (EDPCIs).

These would be flagship multinational programmes designed to develop critical capabilities at scale.

Among the proposed initiatives, one stands out for its urgency: the European Drone Defence Initiative.

A Drone-Centric Battlefield

Lessons from the war in Ukraine have transformed how military planners view drones.

Unmanned aerial systems are no longer auxiliary assets used for reconnaissance alone. They are rapidly becoming core battlefield infrastructure, used for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, strike operations and air defence.

The European Parliament study argues that Europe already possesses many of the technological components required to build a continent-wide drone ecosystem.

These include:

• radar and sensor systems
• electronic warfare technologies
• drone platforms
• command-and-control software
• autonomous mission systems

The challenge is not the absence of technology.

It is the absence of integration and scale.

From Pieces to a System

The proposed Drone Defence Initiative aims to build a distributed counter-drone architecture across Europe.

Rather than a single physical system, the concept envisions a layered network combining detection, surveillance and interception capabilities across multiple countries.

Such a system would stretch thousands of kilometres—from the Baltic region to the Black Sea—and would need to integrate a wide variety of technologies.

These would include:

• ground-based radar networks
• airborne drone surveillance platforms
• electronic warfare systems
• counter-drone interceptors
• shared command-and-control systems

The scale of such an initiative would be unprecedented for European defence cooperation.

It would also require enormous investment.

The Role of Industrial Flagships

To make such projects viable, the report suggests anchoring them around large industrial programs.

One candidate often mentioned in this context is the Airbus Eurodrone, a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV currently under development by Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The Eurodrone program demonstrates how multinational defence collaboration can work when supported by coordinated funding and political commitment.

If Europe wants to build a continent-wide drone defence network, platforms like Eurodrone could become key nodes in that architecture.

They could provide long-range surveillance and intelligence capabilities that feed data into the broader system.

The Hard Part: Cooperation

Despite the ambition, the study warns that the biggest obstacles are not technological.

They are political and organizational.

Europe has a long history of struggling to coordinate defence programs across national borders. Diverging procurement priorities, industrial interests and funding commitments have often slowed progress.

Even technically feasible projects can stall when governments fail to align their timelines or budgets.

Another challenge lies in cost effectiveness.

Countering large numbers of cheap drones with expensive interceptors could quickly become unsustainable, meaning new approaches—such as electronic warfare or directed energy systems—must also be developed.

A Strategic Moment for Europe

Despite these challenges, the study argues that the geopolitical environment leaves Europe little choice.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, combined with growing uncertainty in transatlantic security guarantees, has intensified calls for European strategic autonomy.

If implemented successfully, the proposed flagship defence projects could transform the continent’s defence industry.

They would not simply produce new weapons systems.

They would build a fully integrated European defence technological and industrial base capable of operating at scale.

And if the vision becomes reality, platforms like Airbus Eurodrone may become symbols of a new era in European defence cooperation.

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