Farnborough Air Show Highlights US-Europe Defense Tensions and UK Sales

By JACK DETSCH

OI THERE MATES, AND WELCOME TO GLOBAL SECURITY. After another big day of travel — and a few golf cart rides — we’re coming to you from the Farnborough Air Show just outside of London. Stop by and say hi. We’re digging into the new questions from Europe about America’s role in the continent’s rearmament, the U.K.’s banner year for aircraft sales, and how U.S. industry is pushing back on E.U. defense rules.

Europe’s biggest airshow of the year is set to open this week under the specter of two wars, with the Pentagon facing doubts it can hit a trillion-dollar budget topline and if it will play nice with NATO nations increasingly confident about going it alone.

The show that spans more than five million square feet — enough to fit 78 football pitches or 1,350 Concordes stacked wing to wing — has been running since the end of World War II and will launch tens of billions of dollars worth of deals. But with the U.S. delaying arms sales and hanging onto more weapons, the feeling is in the air that American credibility — especially their ability to clarify what they want from Europe and to meet demand — is on the line here at Farnborough.

“There's no question that the primary subtext to this air show, last year's air show, I'm sure next year's air show, is going to be the geopolitical issues and the transatlantic issue in particular, and a lot of anxiety about what that means on both sides,” said a U.S. industry official. “Europe is far from a monolith. You have European countries that would absolutely like to push full on the gas to build an organic defense industrial base. You have others that are very clear they want to continue to buy American kit.”

“We still argue that we make the best stuff in the world, and everybody wants it,” added the official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But the Europeans are worried if they can get it.”

Scar tissue: Even as top European officials acknowledge they will need America’s help rearming, some are chafing at the Trump administration’s suggestions that the continent shouldn’t try to replace the U.S. defense industry’s role — even as the Pentagon is signaling that it is removing some U.S. forces from Europe.

“The U.S. is moving the goalpost while demanding Europe take ‘primary responsibility’ for its own defense while opposing the industrial-policy tools to do it,” said Oscar Jonsson, a specialist from the Swedish Defence University. “Most European states figured that buying American won’t reverse the trend of U.S. withdrawal, and it will only prolong an overdependence on the U.S. It’s not unlikely that there will be a compromise with some more buying American, but it’s only a slight delay to the structural shift.”

And just as American defense contractors aren’t getting clear signals from the Pentagon, the Europeans say they’re not getting much clarity on what the Americans want, either.

"At times it’s almost schizophrenic,” said a European official. “One U.S. government department informs the allies that they won’t receive even the equipment they may have ordered and paid for anytime soon, while the other department is pushing allies to buy more U.S. equipment."

Reassurance mission: The Trump administration and Congress are keen to keep up the momentum that saw U.S. arms exports surge by 27 percent over the past five years. And a big contingent is here to plead the case.

Congress is showing up in force, with an 11-member House and Senate delegation led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). Even U.S. state governors, including Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger are here, hoping to drum up business for their munitions plants and shipyards — along with seven other governors and lieutenant governors.

And the U.S. will be sending some military hardware here, even though a lot of the Defense Department’s assets are tied up in the Middle East. The Pentagon will send Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters, a Super Hercules transport aircraft and an F-35, a far cry from the rows of fighter jets typically lining the runway rows here that have been sent off to the Middle East.

But they’ll have a tough task in convincing Europe that the Trump administration is serious about a $1 trillion defense topline that faces strong headwinds in Congress — the clearest signal the U.S. can send to industry to get moving.

“Nobody knows how much money there is and what the final budget's going to end up being,” the U.S. industry official said. “Our market is constrained by what the United States government buys and what it allows us to sell to other countries. That does create an industry with some constraints on it.”

The U.K. has smashed recent records for aircraft deliveries in the run-up to Farnborough, according to a new study.

Banner year: The ADS Group, a British trade association, found that U.K. manufacturers delivered 673 aircraft in the first six months of 2026 — their highest total in eight years — with orders jumping by 15 percent. The group said it’s expecting Farnborough to be a place where more orders are rung up.

“With deliveries at their strongest level since 2018, the sector is entering the Airshow from a position of real strength and we look forward to seeing further commercial activity over the week ahead,” said Aimie Stone, ADS’ chief economist.

The bad news: But growing orders also means growing backlogs, and industry groups are worried that the U.K.’s new limits on tariff-free steel imports and other policy issues could hamper deliveries.

ADS estimated that the U.K.’s global order backlog had reached 16,925 aircraft by the end of June, a record-breaking tally.

American industry groups and defense contractors attending Farnborough are urging Europe not to limit their ability to be involved in the continent’s rearmament.

Feedback request: The Aerospace Industries Association, a U.S. trade association representing aircraft makers, said in a feedback request on European Union defense procurement rules sent earlier this year that limiting American first “would undermine existing investments that have delivered economic benefits across the EU [defense tech industrial base] and, as a result, may jeopardize Europe’s ability to meet its defense objectives by 2030.”

The group is encouraging the E.U. to instead allow companies to participate in the bloc’s defense procurement with criteria “grounded in capability, security, and performance standards rather than nationality” while limiting any preferential treatment within the bloc.

Getting specific: AIA has been specifically worried about the E.U. potentially putting in place restrictions on working with global companies that include companies governance from outside the bloc and preference for European intellectual property ownership. The concern is that those moves could mistakenly limit access to U.S. technologies at the heart of NATO.

“Procurement rules that unintentionally restrict access to U.S. technologies could undermine NATO cohesion,” the group wrote, calling on the bloc to “explicitly recognize interoperability as a legitimate procurement consideration.”

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Al.) has become one of the leading champions for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sanctions bill on Russia. Speaking to Fox News from London ahead of Farnborough, she said the legislation had been narrowly tailored to cut off Putin’s support.

“This is what we needed to actually end Putin's aggression,” she said. “This is what we needed to hold him accountable. What we have done is narrowly targeted this to the bad actors that are funding this war.”