COMMENTARY: Tens of billions in contracts — Ankara, where defense became industry

COMMENTARY: Tens of billions in contracts — Ankara, where defense became industry

Introduction: When collective security is negotiated in revenue figures

Rutte announces Ankara's industrial windfall

On June 25, 2026, during a conversation at the Atlantic Council, Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, announced that the Ankara summit on July 7 and 8, 2026 would see the announcement of «tens of billions» in new defense contracts. The figure is deliberately imprecise — large enough to impress, vague enough to stay flexible. But it says something fundamental about what NATO has become: an alliance where collective security and industrial dynamics are intimately intertwined.

These contracts do not fall from the sky. They are the result of months of negotiations between governments and defense industries, of accumulated pressure since the Ukrainian invasion of 2022, and of a collective recognition that ammunition and equipment stockpiles are dangerously insufficient for high-intensity conflict in Europe. The Ankara summit is the opportunity to formalize and publicize what is already under negotiation.

The context: $1.2 trillion spent over ten years

Mark Rutte recalled that European allies and Canada collectively spent $1.2 trillion more between 2016 and 2026 — a remarkable figure that illustrates the scale of rearmament already accomplished. And yet it is still not enough. The gaps in ammunition, air defense capabilities, armored vehicles, and cyber defense remain considerable.

The geography of the windfall: who sells what to whom

The major industrial beneficiaries of the Ankara contracts

The «tens of billions» announced by Rutte will be distributed across several sectors and industries. Air defense systems — Patriot, NASAMS, IRIS-T — top the list. Artillery and 155mm ammunition constitute another major segment, with the goal of quadrupling production capacity. Armored vehicles, command and control systems, and cyber defense technologies complete the picture.

Europe's major defense industries — Rheinmetall (Germany), BAE Systems (United Kingdom), Thales and MBDA (France), Leonardo (Italy) — are positioned to capture a large share of these contracts. The Americans — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman — remain indispensable players on the most sophisticated systems.

The European preference: a political and industrial choice

A deeper debate runs through the discussion on these contracts: should they buy American or develop European industrial capabilities? Buying American is often faster and guarantees proven interoperable standards. But it creates a technological and industrial dependency on an ally whose reliability is currently in question.

Developing European capabilities takes longer and costs more in the short term. But it creates a sovereign industrial base that makes Europe less vulnerable to American political whims. The Ankara summit will be a test of the balance between these two logics — and an indicator of the true depth of European commitment to its strategic autonomy.

The European defense industry: a brutal awakening

From defensive deindustrialization to remilitarization

The thirty years following the end of the Cold War were decades of defensive deindustrialization across Europe. Arsenals closed, production lines were reduced or shut down, defense research and development staffs shrank. The «peace dividend» was real — but it weakened an industrial base that is now proving insufficient to meet the needs of the war in Ukraine.

The awakening since 2022 has been brutal but real. Rheinmetall has announced massive expansions of its shell and armored vehicle production capacity. New ammunition factories are opening in Poland, Germany, and Scandinavia. Government orders provide the long-term visibility needed to justify these investments. But rebuilding a robust defense industry takes years — and the needs are immediate.

The bottleneck of propellants and shells

The most concrete example of the industrial gaps inherited from the post-Cold War era is that of 155mm artillery shells. Ukraine consumes ammunition at a pace that NATO stockpiles cannot compensate for. General Stringer referred on June 26, 2026 to the objective of quadrupling production capacity. This implies massive investments in factories, equipment, and training — and time.

This bottleneck illustrates the central challenge of remilitarization: the defense industry cannot shift from peacetime to wartime production in a matter of weeks. It needs firm multi-year orders, a specialized workforce, and capital investment. The contracts announced at Ankara have precisely this role — to provide these commitments and accelerate this scale-up.

The transformation of the NATO-industry relationship

From occasional buyer to strategic partner

The relationship between NATO member governments and their defense industries has fundamentally changed since 2022. Before, governments procured equipment on slow cycles, with complex tenders and multi-year delivery timelines. Today, the relationship is more direct, more urgent, and more cooperative.

NATO-wide pooled procurement mechanisms have been established for critical munitions — enabling economies of scale and long-term commitments that justify industrial investment. The European Union has created common financing instruments for the defense industry. These institutional innovations are transforming the European defensive industrial landscape.

The risks: dependency, corruption, and opacity

The surge in defense spending carries risks that deserve to be named. Corruption risks are real in large public procurement markets under pressure to move fast. The risks of excessive dependency on certain suppliers — particularly American ones for sensitive technologies — can create new vulnerabilities. And the opacity of some defense contracts makes democratic oversight difficult.

These risks do not justify slowing the necessary rearmament. But they justify carrying it out with robust governance mechanisms — independent audits, parliamentary oversight, maximum transparency on the use of public funds. Rearmament conducted in haste is an opportunity for those who wish to exploit it.

The impact on national economies: opportunity and constraint

The countries that benefit from remilitarization

The increase in defense spending is not universally experienced as a burden. For countries that have maintained a competitive defense industry, it is a significant economic opportunity. Poland, which is developing a domestic industry alongside foreign purchases, is seeing jobs and capabilities created on its territory. Germany, with Rheinmetall as its flagship, is in the same dynamic. France, with its integrated military-industrial complex, as well.

Defense contracts create skilled jobs, stimulate technological research, and generate exports. Poland has become in a few years one of the most dynamic arms markets in the world — and it is reaping real economic benefits from that, not just costs.

The countries that struggle to convert effort into national capacity

For countries without a developed defense industry, increasing spending means primarily buying abroad — creating capital outflows with no local industrial returns. The small Baltic states, for example, spend proportionally a great deal but lack the critical mass to develop autonomous defense industries.

For these countries, the priority is acquiring the most critical capabilities — air defense, artillery, ammunition — regardless of national origin. Their security takes precedence over industrial optimization. But this raises questions about the coherence of a model where some NATO members produce and others buy — and where producers have a structural interest in maintaining high defense spending.

The symbolic dimension: Ankara as a signal to the world

What the contracts tell Putin

The «tens of billions» in contracts announced at Ankara are also a message to Vladimir Putin. The message says: the West is not disarming. It is not being discouraged. It is investing in its military capabilities with a determination that contrasts with the Kremlin's hopes of seeing Western support erode under the weight of time and fatigue.

Putin bet on duration. He thought Western democracies, with their short electoral cycles and volatile public opinions, would not support Ukraine long enough. The Ankara contracts, if they materialize, contradict that bet. They signal that the West is building a defense industrial base for a generation, not just a few years.

The message to Xi Jinping and others

Beyond Russia, the Ankara contracts send a message to other actors. To Beijing, which is watching the degree of Western resolve against Russia to calibrate its own behavior toward Taiwan. To Tehran, which monitors the coherence of the Western bloc. To Pyongyang, which has tied its fate to Moscow's and depends on the Ukrainian precedent.

The demonstration that the West can mobilize tens of billions in defense contracts and quadruple its ammunition production is not only a message to Russia. It is a show of strength toward a geopolitical environment that is broadly more hostile than it was ten years ago.

Transparency in spending: a democratic imperative

The structural dimension of the stakes

Beyond the immediate decisions of the Ankara summit, there is a structural dimension to the current challenge that military analysts regularly highlight: Western collective security rests on a combination of political will, actual military capabilities, and strategic coherence. These three elements are simultaneously under strain — which makes this moment more critical than usual.

The decisions made at Ankara in July 2026 will be set against a backdrop where every signal sent to Moscow, to Beijing, and to allies counts twice over. The credibility of the alliance is a public good built over time and destroyed quickly. The responsibility of those gathering at Beştepe is therefore considerable.

The actors who will shape the decisions

The outcome of the Ankara summit will depend on a few key players: Rutte to maintain the coherence of the alliance's agenda, the leaders of the eastern flank to press the urgency of their concerns, and the Trump administration to define how far it pushes its demands without breaking what it claims to want to strengthen. Each has distinct interests — and the negotiation between those interests will define the outcome.

Ukraine is not directly at the table — but it is present in every conversation. Its 40 days of strikes, its enemy refineries in flames, its soldiers holding the front: all of this is the invisible backdrop to every decision that will be made at Ankara.

Ukraine as the primary beneficiary of the Ankara contracts

The external pressure that forces decisions

Beyond the internal dynamics of the alliance, the Ankara summit is taking place in a global geopolitical context that extends beyond the European theater alone. China is watching NATO and calibrating its own behavior toward Taiwan based on what it sees. Iran is negotiating with the United States while maintaining its partnerships with Moscow. North Korea is supplying ammunition to Russia and developing its own military capabilities.

This multi-threat context is precisely what justifies the 5% of GDP objective: NATO is not facing a single localized threat, but an arc of instability stretching from Moscow to Pyongyang via Tehran. The alliance must therefore prepare for a more dangerous world on several fronts simultaneously — which makes budgetary under-preparation all the more serious.

The long-term consequences of Ankara's decisions

Future historians will look back at the Ankara summit as a moment of choice. In one scenario, the alliance decided there to rearm seriously, to support Ukraine through to a just peace, and to build a robust deterrent against the multiple threats that are accumulating. In another, it produced communiqués and deferred the hard decisions for later.

These two scenarios have very different consequences for European security in the decades ahead. The first builds peace through strength. The second invites predators to test the limits. And the choice between them is made at Ankara, in July 2026, by men and women in politics who bear a historic responsibility.

Conclusion: Defense as a collective investment in the future

Spending together to survive separately

The «tens of billions» in contracts at the Ankara summit represent a profound transformation in the way Western democracies think about collective security. Defense is no longer an expense managed at the bare minimum — it is a strategic investment in the survival of a model of society. This paradigm shift, painful in budgetary terms, is necessary.

Let us be clear: these contracts do not guarantee victory in Ukraine, nor lasting peace in Europe. They create the conditions for credible defense and robust deterrence. Peace, in the end, is built with weapons strong enough that no one wants to face them.

The promise the industry must keep

The «tens of billions» announced by Rutte are only promises as long as contracts are not signed, factories not opened, shells not produced. The history of Western defense since 2022 is dotted with delivery promises that fell behind schedule — the tanks, the missiles, the F-16s. The Ankara summit must mark the beginning of execution, not the production of yet another announcement.

Rutte knows this. The allies know it. And Zelensky, whose army needs these munitions on the ground, knows it better than anyone.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

What I know and my limits

The information on the defense contracts announced at Ankara comes from the public statements of Mark Rutte at the Atlantic Council and from US News/Reuters coverage. The specific details of the contracts are not public at the time of writing — I am drawing on official statements, not confidential information. My analysis of the European defense industry is based on publicly available open-source information.

My editorial bias

I am in favor of Western rearmament. I believe current defense spending is both necessary and insufficient. I express this conviction in this article. I distinguish between facts (Rutte's statements, published figures) and personal analysis and opinion.

Sources

Primary sources

NATO/Rutte — Atlantic Council, tens of billions, +20%, $1.2T — June 25, 2026

US News/Reuters — Rutte says billions in new defense contracts — June 25, 2026

Post-Gazette/AP — NATO summit Turkey, quadrupling 155mm shells — June 26, 2026

Secondary sources

European Parliament — Ankara summit briefing — June 26, 2026

The Guardian — NATO leaders fear US disengagement — June 27, 2026

Brookings — A rebalancing NATO gathers in Ankara — June 24, 2026

Gdansk Declaration — 5% GDP, eastern flank — June 25, 2026