The U.S. on Thursday promised to speed up weapons shipments to Europe, a move that some countries in Europe and elsewhere have pressed for years as critical for their own defense rebuilds.
Arriving for a day of meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “the United States is committed to expediting the process of ensuring that our allies get what they need when they need it,” through future Foreign Military Sales — a U.S. program to facilitate arms purchases by foreign governments.
While short on details, the suggestion of a faster purchase and shipment process could have huge implications for NATO, and for defense production generally. Any increase would take some time to get rolling however, as many factories in the U.S. are at maximum capacity and would likely have to hire new workers and expand existing production.
Allies around the world have complained for years about the slow process of buying American weapons, from initial talks through the contract process and shipment, which takes years and is mired in red tape.
That slow-moving system has led several allies — most notably Poland, which is by far the biggest defense spender in the alliance as a percentage of GDP — to start buying South Korean tanks, planes and long-range artillery, because it is delivered quickly.
Since taking office last fall, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has pushed Washington to cut red tape for arms deals and make the Foreign Military Sales process easier and faster.
While French officials have complained that making U.S. weapons sales easier would be detrimental to the European arms industry, German lawmakers have welcomed Rutte’s push.
“There is a lot of potential in Rutte’s demand. It could reduce political disputes within NATO and convince Trump [with] an economic argument,” Jürgen Hardt, a German MP and foreign policy spokesperson for the CDU/CSU, told POLITICO last month.
On Thursday, Rutte, standing next to Hegseth as he arrived at NATO, said that “it’s only fair, it’s only sensible,” to discuss increasing defense industrial production, “because we simply do not produce enough. This is including the U.S. … we need to really get more output from our huge defense industrial base to keep up with Russia, the Chinese and others.”
Hegseth’s new pledge came a day after he shocked the alliance by rejecting Ukraine’s ambitions to regain all of the territory Russia has captured since its initial invasion in 2014, calling it an “illusory goal.” He also said Europeans should “take ownership of conventional security” in Europe, as the U.S. focuses more on deterring China in the Indo-Pacific region
The United States, already the world’s largest arms producer, signed $117 billion worth of defense deals in 2024, according to State Department data. That number nearly doubled sales from the previous year, marking the highest-ever annual total of foreign military sales.
The European Commission is currently looking at ways to boost the bloc’s own weapons makers to reduce European capitals’ dependency on foreign suppliers, including from the U.S.
Hegseth reiterated the new U.S. goal of allies spending “up to 5 percent” of their GDP on defense, a massive increase from NATO’s current 2 percent goal, and which 24 of 32 member nations meet.
That new spending marker would “ensure we’re able to meet the threats of the future, whether that’s Russia on the continent, or an ascendent China, who has their own ambitions as well,” Hegseth said. “We need the ability to create the systems and the munitions necessary to sustain a fight.”
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