Every weapons programme leaves physical assets in industry that can outlast the contract that paid for them: assembly jigs, moulds and patterns, gauges, test benches, special-purpose machines. Rearmament is usually measured in budgets, orders and factory floor space, but whether a line can be restarted, moved to another site or opened to a second supplier also depends on who holds such assets and on what terms. When a government has paid for production tooling, or lent it to a contractor, three questions arise at the moment production stops. The first concerns title: who owns the tooling once the last item has been delivered. The second concerns control: who may decide whether it is used again, for whom and on what terms. The third concerns value: whether the State recovers anything when the contractor uses publicly funded tooling to serve other customers. The answers are not set by a single rule. They depend on standard contract clauses, on the choices made when a particular contract is drafted, and on decisions taken case by case after production ends. France and the United Kingdom have built different contractual answers to the same problem, and comparing them shows which levers a European government actually holds. The central question is therefore practical rather than doctrinal: when the State funds or supplies production tooling held by a defence contractor, who controls its ownership, use and destination at the end of the contract in France and in Britain, which contractual instruments determine the outcome, and what does the public record show about how those instruments are used?