How could a shared European combat-system program divide design and production work fairly?
Short answerSoftware work can be distributed, but national political interests make a fully standardized Europe-wide program difficult to sustain.
NotesA shared program still has to allocate valuable design, production, and sales work among national industries. Software tasks can be divided geographically, much as large American defence firms distribute coding work. The deeper obstacle is political: a standardized program assumes participating states will keep acting together when their priorities diverge. Smaller groups of countries may therefore cooperate more plausibly than a single Europe-wide procurement structure.