Best before two months

Armies have always kept things in storage against the day they are needed. The drone arrived with a shelf life closer to a cheese’s than a cannon’s, and Europe’s arsenal had to be rethought as a kitchen.

Neither war nor peace

On 23 September 2026 the defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, set out the sums to a business audience. Russia produces 10 million drones a year, and Ukraine can produce the same. “The EU right now produces around 1.5 million per year.” Making ten million would be a mistake, he said, “since we are not at war (but not at peace either) as Mark Rutte says, and unused drones become obsolete in 2 months time.” Not being ready to make ten million immediately, should Russia attack the Union, would be a mistake as well.

Europe must therefore be ready to make ten million drones it does not intend to make.

Keep warm until needed

Twelve days earlier, at the first board meeting of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance, Kubilius gave Ukraine’s figures: “more than 4 million drones in 2025. An expected 10 million in 2026. The ambition to produce 20 million.” The alliance had “over 400 applicants”, and its board has nine companies from EU member states and nine from Ukraine. What he asked of them was readiness: “We need production lines that stay warm in quiet periods and can be surged within weeks.”

A warm line costs money each day it makes nothing, which is the point of it. A drone does not keep. A factory, it turns out, does.

On 30 June 2026 the Commission began paying €3.9 billion, the first payment of a tranche of about €6 billion “dedicated to drone procurement” under the €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan. A further €1 billion followed in July, together with an agreement to “promote the joint production of drones and counter-drone systems between Ukraine and EU Member States by the end of 2026”.

At the other end of the scale, the European Defence Fund’s April round put €1.07 billion into 57 projects, some of them for mass-producing affordable drone munitions. Those projects open “sub-calls” in which start-ups and small firms “can receive up to €60,000 each”.

The billions went where the drones were. The ideas are bought sixty thousand euros at a time.

Where the magnets are

In the same September speech Kubilius named the part nobody sees: “We will not be able to produce enough drones or counter-drones if we fail to resolve the magnet materials deficit”, the materials “needed to produce small electric engines”. The Union, he said, “cannot afford to remain dependent on supply of those critical materials from China.” Its defence loans already require at least 65 per cent of component costs to come from the EU, Ukraine or eligible EEA and EFTA countries.

A drone can be designed in Europe, paid for in Europe and assembled in Europe, and still be waiting on a magnet.