Three U.S. professors of political science – Michael A. Allen (Boise State University), Carla Martinez Machain (University at Buffalo), and Michael E. Flynn (Kansas State University) – make this conclusion in their article posted on The Conversation expert website.

In an article entitled Detecting a ‘dirty bomb’: How Europeans can combat radiological threats, Jacek Siewiera, former head of the National Security Bureau of Poland, warns that the Iran war and the recent reports of drones carrying radioactive materials in central London send yet another serious signal. Europe is catastrophically unprepared for the new hybrid threats that may hit its cities at any moment.

The Iranian war has shown this in five ways at least: NATO faces all sorts of problems.

The UK is being bullied into dependency on an erratic United States. The rest of Europe is next in line.

Europe Has Catastrophically Overestimated Its Air and Missile Defense Capability

In a policy brief published by Investor’s Business Daily and dealing with the current trends in the European defense industry, the author Paolo Confino notes the sad but telling irony of the European countries rushing to raise their defense spending (Germany, to USD 127 billion in 2026, with France adding EUR 39 billion till 2030 and the UK heading for three percent of GDP), but much of the funds going to foreign contractors – Israeli (Elbit Systems), South Korean (Hanwha and Hyundai Rotem) and U.S. companies – rather than European manufacturers.

In April 2026, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ and The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies published an extensive joint analytical paper entitled Catching Up: Europe’s Path to Strategic Autonomy in the Defence Industry. It mostly deals with the European defense industry as the basis for achieving strategic autonomy in the defense area.

Why Are There No Significant Advantages, and What Has Ukraine to Do with This?

In a joint report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Swedish Defense Research Agency, experts argue expressly that, despite all loud declarations about ‘civil defense 2.0’ and ‘total preparedness’, Europe is still a typical patchwork with chronic vulnerabilities and weak coordination.

An article entitled “The Royal Navy: On Course for National Embarrassment”, about the decline of the British Royal Marine and the causes thereof, was posted on the website of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) on 12 March.

On March 13, 2026, Juraj Majcin, a defence policy expert with the European Policy Centre, published an article How Much Protection Can French Nukes Really Offer? scrutinising Macron’s initiative to set up a common European nuclear umbrella.

Not trust but a belief in words – this is what the French nuclear initiative for Europe aims to elicit. Nick Witney, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), makes this conclusion in his article Under my parapluie: Macron’s nuclear guarantee for Europe published on 17 March, 2026.

Military budgets that increase on paper only, with the missiles running out in reality, are now the true face of the European defense capability. This is what Aleksander Olech, a Polish defense analyst and journalist, writes about in his article entitled France Lacking Missiles in Europe, published on 23 March 2026.