The Regional Capture Index
Where Europe’s Defence Build-Out Becomes Local Industrial Power
Europe’s defence build-out is no longer only a question of national budgets, procurement plans or prime-contractor backlogs. It is becoming a territorial allocation process. New ammunition lines, propellant plants, missile facilities, shipyard workloads, aerospace production sites and repair infrastructure are concentrating in specific regions rather than spreading evenly across Europe. The central question is therefore not simply which countries are spending more, or which companies are winning orders, but which regions are converting the new defence cycle into industrial capacity, skilled employment, supplier depth and durable strategic value.
This report develops a Regional Capture Index to identify where that conversion is taking place. It begins by defining regional capture as the measurable transformation of defence demand into local production capacity. It then sets out the measurement architecture, combining NUTS-2 regional data with verified evidence on investment, procurement, employment, supply chains, public enablers and strategic relevance. The report then analyses the leading regional patterns across ammunition, propellants, missiles, aerospace, shipbuilding and eastern-flank industrialisation, before concluding with an assessment of which territories are becoming the local infrastructure of European defence readiness.