NATO’s decision in The Hague to spend 5% of GDP on defense and security by 2035 looks bold on paper, but money will deter only if it underwrites dominance, not faint advantage.
The 12-day Iran-Israel clash that began on June 13 shows what real dominance looks like. Tehran poured three decades and tens of billions into a missile force designed to saturate Israel, yet about 90% of the 550 ballistic missiles and more than 1,000 drones it fired were shot down; within three nights, Israeli aircraft and loitering munitions had wrecked more than half the launchers that remained.
No Israeli fighter aircraft were lost despite hundreds of sorties over what was supposed to be highly contested airspace with cutting-edge Russian-provided anti-aircraft missiles, and more than 50 Iranian commanders and key nuclear scientists were killed with shocking precision in the opening wave.
Israel did not succeed by being slightly better. It was an order of magnitude better along every decisive axis — innovating with conviction, scaling production, seeing first, intercepting reliably, striking fast, and deciding as one. Europe’s rearmament will deter only if it replicates that 10-fold edge.
The first advantage was vision. Iran’s missiles cross the Levant in minutes, but Israel’s “quilt” of Green Pine, TPY-2, aerostats, fighters, and Gulf feeds created a fused air picture in seconds, leaving multiple windows to engage every projectile. Sky Shield, the European air-defense project, remains half-baked; without the same panoramic sensors, Europe will still be blind when the first Iskanders launch.
Vision mattered because it fed a truly layered defense. Arrow-3 swatted the high-arc intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) outside the atmosphere, Arrow-2 and THAAD caught mid-course shots, David’s Sling and PAC-3 closed the gate in the terminal phase, Iron Dome handled rockets, and electronic warfare dazzled the swarms. Five overlapping rings left few gaps; a one-layer system would have leaked 10 times as many warheads. European planners should resist the lure of single “silver bullet” interceptors and finish every layer of the onion before adding fresh brigades or frigates.
Interceptors bought survival time, but air superiority ended the fight. Stealth F-35I strikes and cheap loitering drones, many cueing off pre-planted Mossad sensors, destroyed roughly 200 Iranian launchers in 72 hours, slashing the volume of fire that followed. A European shield needs predators as well as armor: tanker-supported F-35s or equivalent, long-range cruise missiles, and a common kill-chain able to task them in minutes.
Dominance also depended on magazines — and the factories that refill them. Israel fired four-figure numbers of precision weapons in under two weeks because stocks were full and assembly lines were hot; Ukraine’s front shows the cost of relying on stockpiles alone, with gunners still burning about 5,000 155 mm shells a day while EU plants are only slowly moving toward its two-million-round yearly production ambition. Europe’s new money must lock in decade-long contracts for casings, propellants and seeker chips, and protect those next-generation plants behind point defenses and cyber walls. If the factory stops, the front soon follows.
Speed of innovation compounded into capability dominance. Iron Dome birthed the Arrow and David’s sling programs, making exoatmospheric missile interception a reality. Behind the innovation sits a three-decade partnership between Israeli and US industry and government.
Every layer of the Israeli shield is a joint product: Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome were all co-designed by the Directorate of Defense, Research, & Development (DDR&D) and the US Missile Defense Agency, funded with bipartisan missile-defense grants, and are now co-produced on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Arrow 3 batteries that will soon defend Germany were test-fired at Kodiak, Alaska; their radar code was debugged in Tel Aviv and Huntsville. At the lower tier, Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptors have been reprogrammed in real time based on data from Ukraine’s successful interceptions against Kinzhal and Iskander missiles, driving a 30% production surge at US and European plants. If Europe wants the same resilience, its 5% pledge must bankroll cross-border and cross-Atlantic industrial teaming — German seekers married to Italian airframes, US software baked into French interceptors, and AI-enabled command and control environments able to stitch it all together.
Even the best hardware would have stumbled without civil resilience. Iran managed to shut Israel’s Leviathan gas platform for less than a week; shelters, repair brigades, and fuel stores were pre-planned and budgeted, allowing the economy to keep breathing under fire. The extra 1.5% of GDP that NATO earmarks for infrastructure must flow into hardened substations, dual-track railheads, and surge hospital beds, not unrelated pet projects. A society that works in a bombardment lets its army fight without looking over its shoulder.
Finally, Israel and the United States practiced decision speed and unity. Target lists and strike windows were agreed in days; Tehran faced a single deterrent voice. Europe still issues a choir of contradictory press releases whenever an ammunition pledge slips. Pre-delegated rules of engagement, shared battle-damage cells, and rehearsed strategic communications cost little, yet they are worth more than any single weapons program.
A decade from now, Europe will spend a trillion extra euros on defense. The question is not whether it can match Russia tank for tank, but whether it can be 10 times better where it counts: seeing first, killing inbound rounds, hunting the launchers, refilling the magazines, adapting faster, riding out the blow, and speaking with one voice.
If the new money follows that logic, today’s near-peer will become tomorrow’s never-peer — and deterrence will rest on a foundation Moscow cannot hope to crack.
Noam Perski is Executive Vice President at Palantir Technologies. He spent more than 10 years building Palantir’s International Public Sector business to encompass engagements across national security, law enforcement and defense in 20 countries. He now drives Palantir’s work at the leading edge of AI-powered operations in key growth markets including the Middle East.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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