European governments now present their rearmament chiefly through budget totals: how much more they will spend this year than last, how close they are to an alliance target, how large a multiannual envelope has become. Those totals answer a fiscal question. They do not answer the military one, which is how much additional equipment the money will buy, when that equipment will be delivered and accepted, and who bears the cost when prices, specifications, schedules or industrial capacity move in ways the budget did not anticipate. Between a parliamentary vote and a ship, a shell or a propellant line able to produce qualified output, money passes through several distinct stages: budget-level adjustment for inflation, commitment under multiannual authorities, framework agreements and call-offs, contracts with their own price and risk clauses, payment, the supplier’s investment and, finally, production, delivery and acceptance. At each stage part of a nominal increase can be absorbed without producing more equipment. The question is therefore not whether “defence inflation” has consumed a given share of Europe’s spending growth, but where, between the appropriation and the accepted item, purchasing power is preserved or lost, and how far the public record allows each of those points to be observed.