The relevant question is not whether additive manufacturing is technologically mature, but whether it is being structurally embedded into NATO and EU defence logistics architectures. Recent institutional acts – including the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept, the European Commission’s Readiness 2030 White Paper, the SAFE Regulation and the European Defence Industry Programme – frame distributed manufacturing as a resilience instrument addressing supply-chain vulnerability, munitions shortfalls and mobility bottlenecks. Tactical additive manufacturing emerges within this context not as a peripheral innovation, but as a legally codified component of industrial sovereignty, digital inventory substitution and expeditionary sustainment. By examining regulatory thresholds, funding instruments, design-authority constraints and SME eligibility criteria, this analysis situates tactical AM within the broader NATO–EU transition toward distributed, EU-controlled production and logistics architectures.