The global defense market can no longer be explained by “performance competition” alone. On the battlefield, consumption is fast, threats have become multi-layered, and countries are demanding not only weapons but also control over production and maintenance. Within this flow, the criteria that divide the market are becoming clearer and simpler. How quickly can you supply. How long can you sustain operations. How deeply can you localize.

The longer a war lasts, the more weapons are treated not as a “decisive single blow,” but as “sustainable consumables.” So market attention shifts away from only symbolic platforms like fighter jets and tanks, toward items that are deployed every day and consumed every day on the battlefield. Artillery shells and rockets, guided munitions and drones, spare parts and maintenance equipment, communications gear and software updates become the backbone of combat power. At that point, the procurement question changes. It is no longer “Is there a stronger weapon,” but “Can you bring the quantities we need right now, by the promised date.” Performance becomes the entry ticket, while delivery schedules and repeat supply determine victory or defeat.

This change redefines what makes a defense contractor competitive. A company strong in R&D does not automatically win the market; the orders flow to those that can prove manufacturing capacity. Capacity is not merely the size of a factory. It is comprehensive stamina that bundles suppliers and materials, sourcing of electronic components, quality control, skilled labor, inspection, and certification. Especially for items like ammunition and missiles, where parts and materials are difficult to substitute and safety and reliability are absolute, expanding production lines itself becomes strategy. The moment war demands speed of production, defense becomes both a technology industry and a manufacturing industry.

This is also how Europe’s demand surge is explained. Europe must fill capability gaps quickly and, at the same time, build stockpiles for a long war. So repeat procurement for replenishment and follow-on quantities increases, rather than one-time acquisitions. Each time, the market attaches additional orders to suppliers that have already demonstrated “fast delivery.” In the end, delivery schedules become a variable as important as price. Delivery schedules become trust. Trust pulls the next contract.

What Europe is doing is not simply increasing budgets to buy more. More precisely, Europe is trying to regain, while buying weapons, the ability to “make weapons.” That is industrial sovereignty. Industrial sovereignty means being able to sustain yourself even if external supply is cut off when war breaks out, and it is also a declaration that even among allies, Europe will not fully outsource control over core components and software. As a result, European procurement is moving in a direction that demands not only price and performance, but also local production, technology transfer, local sourcing of parts, the construction of maintenance hubs, and training systems.

This demand changes the market structure. In the past, the contract ended once the finished product was delivered. Now it becomes a long-term project that includes operations after introduction. If production and maintenance run locally, follow-on quantities, upgraded variants, parts supply, and sustainment contracts naturally follow. In other words, barriers to entry rise, but once you take root, it becomes a market where you can remain for a long time. That is why Europe is no longer in a “sales competition,” but in a “partner competition.”

From the supplier’s perspective, two capabilities are required at once. One is delivery speed and manufacturing throughput. The other is execution power for localization. Localization does not end as a line in a contract. Time is needed to install factory equipment, meet quality-control standards, pass certification procedures, build supply networks, and train personnel. If delivery schedules wobble during this process, trust breaks. Political criticism grows. The very rationale of industrial sovereignty is shaken. In the end, success or failure in Europe depends on “how realistically you can make localization promises real.”

Korea’s defense industry has recently expanded its presence because it can propose not a way to sell “one weapon,” but packages that make rapid fielding possible. When it sells tanks, it does not sell only tanks; it bundles support vehicles and parts, training and maintenance, and even follow-on quantity plans. When it sells self-propelled artillery, it includes ammunition supply, maintenance training, and operational know-how. When it sells aircraft, it combines pilot training, maintenance infrastructure, and training systems. Because what customer countries want is not a display weapon, but “combat power that runs the moment you buy it,” these bundles become persuasive.

Korea’s strengths add to this. Korea has manufacturing experience that has enabled mass production within short periods, and market expectations of delivery competitiveness have formed. It can create persuasion on cost-effective performance, and it can propose flexible approaches in negotiations over technology transfer and localization. This also aligns with Europe’s industrial sovereignty demands. Rather than a model that imports finished products, a partner that designs local production and a maintenance ecosystem together is more attractive. The moment Korea earns the evaluation that it is “fast,” that speed becomes not merely a schedule, but strategic value.

However, the package strategy is both the reason for success and the source of risk. The essence of a package is “fulfilling promises.” If delivery promises wobble, trust collapses. If localization promises are delayed, political criticism grows. If maintenance and spare-parts supply are interrupted, dissatisfaction in the importing country accumulates. In other words, a package is not a simple contract; it is an operations project. An operations project is difficult for a single company to complete alone. Suppliers and parts networks, finance and insurance, training institutions, and intergovernmental cooperation must move like one body. For Korea’s defense industry to grow to the next level, it must mature from “an industry that wins orders well” into “an industry that runs operations well.”

Drones have become the default, not the exception, on the battlefield. As drones increase, the battlefield’s sightlines change, strike methods change, and the logic of air defense changes. In the past, reconnaissance assets were limited and information gaps often emerged, but drones reduce those gaps. At the same time, cheap drones find targets, sometimes strike directly, and sometimes act as decoys that consume the enemy’s air-defense network. In such a battlefield, the survival of expensive platforms becomes a bigger issue. Therefore, counter-drone is not a choice, but a necessity.

Counter-drone is difficult because the technology is complex. Detection requires multiple methods such as radar, optical equipment, and RF detection, and responses combine means such as jamming and spoofing, intercept munitions and cannons, and lasers. What is even harder is command and control. Operational issues—such as which target to handle first, how to reduce false identification, how to distinguish friendly drones from enemy drones, and how to adjust jamming so it does not disrupt friendly communications—determine the performance of the whole system. Ultimately, counter-drone is not a piece of equipment but a defensive network, and the outcome of a defensive network depends on integration capability.

Because this field changes so quickly, procurement methods also change. Multi-year development plans cannot keep up with the field; rapid adoption and iterative upgrades are needed. Therefore, the counter-drone market derives more value from software and integration than from hardware. Detection algorithms, target identification, resilience in electronic-warfare environments, update speed, and the integration capability to tie multiple pieces of equipment into a single defensive network are the core. For Korea’s defense industry to seize opportunity in this trend, it must go beyond competing on drone performance itself and approach as a “project-type supplier” that designs and integrates a counter-drone defensive network tailored to the local environment.

As drones increase, electronic warfare moves from the background to the center of the battlefield. If communications are cut, drones lose their eyes and hands. If positioning information is disrupted, they lose their way. Electronic warfare is an offense that prevents the enemy from using its equipment, and it is also a defense that enables friendly forces to keep operating amid disruption. In this environment, combat power cannot be explained by hardware performance alone. Systems must be connected, must recover under jamming, and must evolve through updates.

So defense competition shifts from weapon performance to operating systems. Even with the same platform, combat power grows if data links are stable, and the kill chain shortens if command and control is fast. If software updates are agile, forces can respond quickly to new threats, and if resilience in electronic-warfare environments is strong, losses can be reduced. At this point, the core of the contract expands beyond performance specifications into clauses about the scope and authority of software updates, cybersecurity responsibilities, control rights over the storage and use of data, and supply-chain security. That is why defense becomes more deeply entangled with communications, satellites, semiconductors, and AI.

This change also transforms the revenue model. Long-term operating revenue—upgrades and sustainment, software feature additions, training and simulation—becomes more important than initial sales revenue. In other words, defense becomes a platform rather than a product, and a platform becomes an ecosystem. Those who have ecosystems gain long-term advantage. For Korea’s defense industry to take a larger share of the long-term market, it must strengthen competitiveness in software, electronic warfare, and integrated architectures in addition to its manufacturing-centered hardware competitiveness. The transition from “an industry that builds well” to “an industry that runs well” is decided here.

The defense market has always been political. But now that political nature is being strengthened more openly. Buyer countries, while purchasing weapons, decide whom they will align with, which supply chain they will be integrated into, and how far they will share control rights over technology. As sanctions, export controls, and technology-protection rules tighten, transactions become more complex, and success is increasingly determined by political fit rather than performance or price. This trend accelerates the bloc-ification of the market. Supply chains are reorganized by alliance blocs, procurement standards are strengthened, and the sharing of certain technologies is restricted.

As bloc-ification deepens, the market takes on two faces. One is opportunity. If you become a trusted supplier within a bloc, long-term procurement follows. The other is risk. Political change can shake contracts and supply, and technology transfer and localization are influenced by domestic and international public opinion and regulations. Especially if standardization and rapid procurement become major themes in Europe, who controls standards may determine corporate fate. Standards are not just documents; they are locks that secure ecosystems. Once certain architectures, data links, and command-and-control methods become standards, companies aligned with those standards continue to expand supply.

For Korea’s defense industry to grow continuously in Europe, it needs a strategy that understands the language of politics and standards and, through local partnerships, positions itself as a supplier inside the bloc. This is not simply export expansion. It must build a structure of trust that includes local production and maintenance hubs, training systems, supply-chain security, and software update systems. It is the path to becoming a partner that is acceptable both politically and industrially, beyond delivery schedules, price, and performance.

The next two years are likely to be the period in which it becomes clear whether the global defense market solidifies into a structure of rearmament beyond the tensions of war. The first point to watch is how fully the competition for manufacturing capacity becomes institutionalized. Expanding production lines is slower than many think. Facilities, labor, and supply chains must be scaled at the same time, quality must be maintained, and raw materials and parts supply must keep pace. Therefore, capacity competition is not a short event but an endurance match. Suppliers must prove not merely that they can make more, but that they can make more stably.

The second point to watch is the reality test of localization. As Europe’s industrial sovereignty demands strengthen, local production and technology transfer become baseline conditions. The problem is that the process of moving localization from contract text to factory floors is always difficult. For plans to become reality, process design and quality control, certification systems, supply-chain construction, workforce training, and production schedule management are required. All these elements must connect for delivery schedules to hold. The future contest for Korea’s defense industry depends on how smoothly it crosses this transition section. If it crosses it well, Korea’s position shifts from an external supplier to a local industrial partner, and it is more likely to expand into follow-on quantities, upgraded variants, and long-term sustainment contracts. If it stumbles during the transition, delivery competitiveness weakens, political criticism grows, and the window of the market can narrow.

The third point to watch is dominance in operating systems. Once drone and electronic-warfare environments become the standard, integrated architectures become more competitive than standalone hardware. What matters is not which equipment you use, but how you connect it, how you update it, and how you recover under disruption. At that point, victory is decided by software update capability, resilience to electronic warfare, command-and-control integration, and contract structures around data sovereignty. It is no exaggeration to say that defense is becoming like the IT industry. It becomes a platform rather than a product, and a platform becomes an ecosystem. Those who have ecosystems gain long-term advantage.

In conclusion, today’s global defense trends are clear. In a world where rearmament is daily reality, defense is no longer an industry that sells finished products; it is becoming an industry that provides production and operations together. And the questions that divide the market have become simple. Can you deliver immediately. Can you sustain mass production. Can you meet a partner’s industrial sovereignty demands through localization and technology transfer. Can you provide operating systems in a battlefield where drones, electronic warfare, and software updates are the default. For Korea’s defense industry to move into a larger market, it must go beyond its current strengths of delivery schedules and package proposals and rise to the stage of building stable production transitions and operating ecosystems. Who completes that transition first will stand at the center of the market reshuffle over the next two years.

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NATO. US troops test counter-drone technologies in Germany to boost NATO’s air defences. (Dec 1, 2025).

Reuters. Poland signs contract to buy more South Korean battle tanks. (Aug 1, 2025).

Reuters. South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace to produce missiles in Poland. (Apr 15, 2025).

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience. (May 2, 2025).

Reuters. Ukraine working with SpaceX to stop Russia from using Starlink to guide drones, Kyiv says. (Jan 29, 2026).