Europe has a credible technical and industrial base for mobile optical communications, but a military communication capability is not created by the existence of a laser terminal, a successful link demonstration or an EU-funded prototype. The relevant threshold is considerably higher. A deployable system has to acquire and maintain a narrow optical link while platforms move, tolerate the environmental envelope in which it is expected to operate, exchange traffic with existing networks, satisfy platform safety and qualification requirements, be manufactured repeatedly, and remain repairable and replaceable under European control. That distinction matters because the European public record now contains evidence at almost every stage below operational adoption: funded development, specialist photonics firms, flight and maritime demonstrations, atmospheric-compensation technology, new manufacturing facilities and substantial public-backed finance. It contains much less evidence of the later chain from qualification through procurement, accepted deliveries and sustained military service. Mobile optical communications should therefore be assessed not as a single emerging technology but as an industrial and institutional conversion problem: whether Europe can turn dispersed photonics, optomechanics, software and test capabilities into a communications service that armed forces can actually own, integrate and sustain.