Side Effects

This development...

The head of the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA) French procurement office, Laurent Collet-Billon, flew July 2 to the United States to meet his American counterpart, Ashton Carter, and executives of General Atomics to gather information about the Predator B drone, a DGA official said.

and this development...

Britain and France will consider sharing Europe's new A400M military transport aircraft as part of closer military ties, but have ruled out common use of aircraft carriers, the countries' defence ministers said.

...both represent a larger trend worth keeping an eye on. One of the side effects of any cooperative strategy is the constriction of industrial capacity. This isn't a new trend, but more than ever we are seeing this trend play out across Europe in observable ways.

It is noteworthy that Russian military decisions are intended to develop industrial capacity, where in Europe - military decisions are trending towards the consolidation of industrial capacity.

I am not saying this is a bad thing, but I do think it is worth noting that we do not have any strong allies attempting to expand defense industrial capacity - while virtually every competitor or neutral nation (Brazil, India) is expanding capacity. Cooperative defense strategies are good things, but we should not ignore the trends observed by the side effects that manifest from the success of cooperative strategies.