Despite rapidly rising military budgets, European security officials fear ammunition shortages, fragmented defence industries and weakening political cohesion could leave the continent dangerously exposed in a prolonged confrontation with Moscow.
Europe may be spending more on defence than at any point since the Cold War, but senior security officials are warning that money alone has not yet solved the continent’s most uncomfortable military problem: whether it could actually sustain a long war against Russia.
Defence planners working with NATO have raised concerns that European countries remain poorly prepared for the grinding demands of a prolonged war of attrition — the kind of conflict that Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine it is willing to sustain for years despite enormous economic and human costs.
The problem is not simply whether Europe possesses sophisticated aircraft, submarines, tanks or missiles. It is whether governments could continuously replace ammunition, repair equipment, mobilise personnel and maintain public support after months or years of fighting.
Officials and security experts speaking around the Munich Security Conference have warned that, under current conditions, the answer remains uncertain. Europe has made substantial progress rebuilding its military capacity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but concerns remain that its industrial base, stockpiles and societies are not yet structured for sustained high-intensity warfare.
That distinction between possessing military power and sustaining it is becoming central to Europe’s strategic debate.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has demonstrated that modern industrial warfare consumes staggering quantities of matériel. Artillery shells can be fired by the thousands every day. Air-defence missiles must be continually replenished. Drones are destroyed and replaced on an industrial scale. Armoured vehicles require spare parts and maintenance, while ammunition factories need reliable supplies of explosives, propellants and specialist components.
A military that appears formidable on paper can therefore become progressively weaker if its weapons are consumed faster than industry can replace them.
European officials fear that Russia understands this equation particularly well.
Moscow has reorganised significant portions of its economy around wartime production since invading Ukraine. Although that transformation has imposed substantial economic distortions and long-term costs on Russia, the Kremlin has demonstrated a willingness to prioritise military output and tolerate levels of expenditure and casualties that would create intense political pressure in most European democracies.
Europe, by contrast, is still transitioning from decades in which governments designed armed forces primarily for smaller expeditionary operations rather than prolonged continental warfare.
The result is what might be described as an endurance gap.
European NATO members can field some of the world’s most technologically advanced military systems, but those capabilities are distributed across numerous national armed forces, procurement systems and defence industries. In a long conflict, interoperability, ammunition compatibility, production capacity and logistics can become as decisive as technological superiority.
NATO has acknowledged these weaknesses and is now attempting to correct them.
The alliance says European members and Canada increased defence expenditure by nearly 20 percent in a single year following the commitments made at the 2025 NATO summit. Allies are investing in new ammunition factories, reopening production lines, placing longer-term procurement contracts and expanding manufacturing capacity for missiles, drones, armoured vehicles and air-defence systems.
At the NATO summit in Ankara in July, Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance had shifted from establishing spending targets toward actually delivering military capability. European countries are also experimenting with joint procurement and standardised weapons, including a multinational project designed to create a more interchangeable NATO-standard 155mm artillery round.
Such initiatives address a longstanding European weakness.
Europe has historically operated numerous different types of tanks, artillery systems, aircraft and ammunition, often produced through competing national programmes. The fragmentation may protect domestic defence industries, but in wartime it complicates logistics and prevents the continent from achieving the economies of scale available to larger centralised military-industrial systems.
Ukraine has exposed those inefficiencies in real time.
European states have supplied Kyiv with an extraordinary assortment of weapons, but keeping those systems operating has required complex multinational maintenance networks and ammunition supply chains. The experience has convinced many defence planners that the next generation of European weapons procurement must prioritise common systems and large-scale production.
Yet industrial weakness is only one part of the challenge.
The more difficult question may be political endurance.
A prolonged war would require European governments to sustain high defence expenditure while potentially confronting casualties, inflation, disrupted trade, damaged infrastructure and declining living standards. Democratic governments would need to maintain public consent under conditions considerably harsher than anything most Western European societies have experienced in generations.
Security officials increasingly worry that Russia is already trying to weaken that political resilience before any conventional conflict begins.
This is where the debate over conventional warfare intersects with what European governments describe as Russia’s expanding hybrid campaign.
Over recent years, Moscow has been accused by European intelligence services and governments of conducting or directing cyberattacks, sabotage, disinformation campaigns, influence operations and attempts to interfere with political institutions.
Recent incidents have sharpened those concerns.
Germany has formally attributed an attempted explosives-laden drone attack near Leipzig airport to Russia, while suspected sabotage incidents and unexplained explosions have affected infrastructure and defence-related facilities elsewhere in Europe. European officials argue that such operations are deliberately designed to remain below the threshold that would trigger a conventional NATO military response.
That ambiguity is strategically useful for Moscow.
If an identifiable Russian military unit were to launch a missile at a NATO member, the alliance would face a relatively clear decision over collective defence.
A cyberattack on a railway system, fire at an industrial facility, manipulation campaign on social media or sabotage operation conducted through intermediaries is much harder to classify.
Attribution can take months. Evidence may be incomplete. Governments may disagree over responsibility.
Russia can therefore impose costs while leaving European governments debating whether an attack has even occurred.
Western security analysts increasingly describe this as a contest over thresholds.
Moscow does not necessarily need to defeat NATO militarily if it can instead convince European societies that confronting Russia is too expensive, too dangerous or politically impossible.
The rise of political movements sceptical of NATO, Ukraine aid or sanctions against Moscow therefore carries strategic implications far beyond domestic electoral politics.
Some European far-right and populist parties advocate reopening economic relations with Russia, reducing support for Ukraine or challenging established European security policies. Their motivations and positions differ significantly between countries, and describing all such movements as controlled by Moscow would be inaccurate.
But European officials fear that political fragmentation itself benefits the Kremlin.
A continent divided over sanctions, military spending or Ukraine is inherently less capable of sustaining a long confrontation.
That represents one of the defining characteristics of hybrid warfare: the objective is not necessarily to persuade European citizens to support Russia.
It may be enough to persuade them to distrust each other.
Disinformation campaigns can amplify existing social conflicts over migration, energy prices, government spending or national sovereignty. Cyber operations can undermine confidence in state institutions. Sabotage can generate uncertainty about whether governments can protect critical infrastructure.
Taken together, these pressures can weaken political cohesion without requiring Russia to fire a conventional shot.
Some defence officials increasingly believe Europe has underestimated this dimension of the confrontation.
Governments have frequently discussed Russian military capabilities, but far less political effort has been invested in preparing populations for the possibility of a sustained security crisis.
That communications deficit matters because rearmament inevitably imposes economic trade-offs.
European governments have committed to sharply higher military spending. NATO allies agreed in 2025 to a long-term target under which defence and broader security expenditure could eventually reach 5 percent of GDP. By July 2026, Rutte said total spending covered by those commitments was already approaching 4 percent across the alliance.
Those sums imply enormous investments in weapons, infrastructure, cyber defence, logistics and military readiness.
But every euro allocated to defence must ultimately compete with pensions, healthcare, education, infrastructure and other public priorities.
Without public understanding of why those sacrifices are necessary, defence programmes can become politically vulnerable.
That is precisely where officials fear Russia may possess an advantage.
The Kremlin does not face the same requirement to maintain democratic public consent. It can suppress opposition, control significant parts of the information environment and redirect economic resources toward military objectives with far fewer institutional constraints.
Europe’s democratic systems are ultimately stronger in many respects, but they require political legitimacy.
In a war of attrition, legitimacy becomes another strategic resource.
The concern is particularly acute as questions grow about the future scale of American involvement in European security.
For decades, European NATO members built their defence structures on the assumption that the United States would provide many of the alliance’s most important capabilities, including intelligence, strategic transport, missile defence, long-range strike systems and logistics.
Washington increasingly expects European governments to assume a greater share of that burden.
NATO has described this transition as a “rebalancing” of the alliance, with European countries taking greater responsibility for their own defence.
For Europe, that means rearmament must extend far beyond purchasing additional tanks or fighter aircraft.
The continent requires ammunition reserves capable of sustaining months of high-intensity combat. It needs resilient communications networks, protected energy infrastructure and redundant transport systems.
It needs drone production on an enormous scale.
It also requires air and missile defences capable of protecting cities, ports, military bases and industrial facilities from the kind of mass drone and missile attacks that have become routine in Ukraine.
Above all, Europe needs industrial capacity that can expand rapidly during a crisis.
A factory that produces a few thousand artillery rounds during peacetime cannot suddenly manufacture millions simply because war has started. Skilled workers, machinery, explosives factories and supply chains must exist beforehand.
The same principle applies to military manpower.
Several European countries are reconsidering national service, reserve forces and civil-defence programmes after decades in which mass mobilisation was considered politically obsolete.
The experience of Ukraine has transformed that calculation.
High-technology warfare still requires large numbers of people — soldiers, engineers, technicians, drone operators, logisticians and medical personnel.
The question confronting Europe is therefore much larger than how much money governments spend on defence.
It is whether European societies are prepared to organise themselves around deterrence again.
Russia’s military is not invulnerable. Its war against Ukraine has consumed extraordinary quantities of equipment and personnel, while analysts have identified growing pressures on its economy and military-industrial system.
Nor does Moscow currently possess an obvious ability to defeat the combined military strength of NATO in a conventional war.
But the emerging European concern is different.
A conflict might not be decided by who possesses the stronger military on its first day.
It could be decided by who is still capable of fighting on its thousandth.
That is the logic of attrition, and it is precisely the kind of contest Russia has historically demonstrated a willingness to endure.
Europe’s challenge is to make sure Moscow never concludes that the continent lacks the same determination.
The encouraging signs are already visible. Defence spending is rising rapidly. Ammunition factories are expanding. Countries are coordinating procurement more closely, and NATO has accelerated initiatives aimed at strengthening industrial production.
But the military transformation remains unfinished.
Meanwhile, the confrontation itself has already begun in less visible forms.
Cyberattacks, suspected sabotage, disinformation and covert influence operations are increasingly viewed by European security officials not as isolated incidents but as components of a wider contest between Russia and the West. Germany’s accusation that Moscow was behind the attempted Leipzig drone attack has intensified that debate, while other European governments are exploring stronger responses to what they describe as an escalating Russian hybrid campaign.
Whether Vladimir Putin is actually “winning” that hybrid confrontation is difficult to measure.
Europe remains politically united on many fundamental security questions, NATO is expanding military production, and Ukraine continues to receive substantial European assistance. Russia itself faces severe economic and strategic costs from its war.
But the warning from defence planners deserves attention precisely because hybrid warfare does not require a spectacular victory.
It succeeds through accumulation.
One cyberattack. One act of sabotage. One political dispute. One election influenced by disinformation. One government unwilling to increase defence spending. One disagreement over Ukraine.
Individually, each event may appear manageable.
Collectively, they can erode the cohesion on which deterrence depends.
That is why Europe’s emerging security debate increasingly revolves around resilience rather than simply weaponry.
The continent must be capable not only of defeating an attack, but of absorbing pressure without fracturing economically, politically or socially.
Russia has spent four years demonstrating that it is prepared to sustain an extraordinarily costly war.
European officials are now confronting a more uncomfortable question:
If deterrence fails, can Europe demonstrate that it is prepared to endure one too?
