On 6 October 2026 the European Defence Agency warned that testing capacity risks becoming a bottleneck to getting new equipment into service. Building new centres, it argued, is not a viable short-term solution; it pointed instead to its Defence Test and Evaluation Base network, which brings together more than 400 test and evaluation capabilities. Its Director for Industry, Synergies and Enablers, Antonio Armada, urged Member States to open their specialised facilities to one another and to work towards accepting each other’s test results. The call is a policy appeal: it creates no right of access, no tariff and no obligation of recognition. The warning exposes a constraint that public ownership tends to hide. A range or laboratory can exist, be technically capable and have absorbed substantial public investment without being accessible on terms that a smaller supplier can schedule, finance and build into a development programme. The question is therefore under what conditions an industrial customer can turn public test infrastructure into a defined service, secure a reliable place in the queue, understand its contingent liabilities, obtain usable evidence and carry the resulting cost and working-capital exposure.