The Romanian Front: Naval Modernisation and Ground-Based Air Defence as Europe’s Next Multi-Billion Defence Market
Romania is emerging as a decisive test case for how Europe’s eastern flank is being re-armed after 2022, not through episodic purchases but through a sustained transformation of force structure. Its geography on the Black Sea, its exposure to missile and drone spillover from the war in Ukraine, and its role as a host nation for allied assets converge into a clear strategic imperative: maritime control and layered air defence are now prerequisites of national security and alliance credibility. Unlike procurement cycles driven by prestige platforms, Romania’s current modernisation is shaped by operational necessity and by the constraints of NATO interoperability, European industrial policy, and domestic fiscal governance. The Black Sea’s constrained naval access regime amplifies the importance of capable littoral fleets, while the proliferation of low-cost drones and cruise missiles raises the baseline requirement for point and area defence. In this context, naval modernisation and ground-based air and missile defence are not separate projects but mutually reinforcing pillars of deterrence, resilience, and freedom of manoeuvre. The result is a market dynamic that is increasingly structural: programmes are conceived as multi-year pipelines, sustained by budget trajectories, offset frameworks, and long-term sustainment demands. For defence primes, integrators, suppliers, and capital actors, Romania’s posture is shifting from peripheral demand to a durable centre of gravity for contracts, partnerships, and industrial localisation.
This report reconstructs that market in a procurement- and budget-driven way, translating strategic drivers into identifiable programmes, authorities, timelines, and contract pathways. It first clarifies the defence budget trajectory, the legal and institutional procurement architecture, and the practical role of government-to-government channels versus competitive acquisition, including the industrial participation regime that shapes bid strategies. It then examines naval modernisation as an executable pipeline, covering surface combatants, patrol and mine countermeasures, coastal strike, undersea capability, maritime ISR, and the integration requirements implied by NATO maritime structures in the Black Sea. The analysis then moves to ground-based air and missile defence, mapping the logic of layered coverage, sensor and radar integration, command-and-control architecture, and the interoperability conditions that govern system selection and operational employment. A dedicated section translates these pipelines into industrial implications, identifying where primes are structurally advantaged, where Tier-2 and Tier-3 suppliers are likely to find sustained work, and which local participation mechanisms can be expected to shape workshare. Finally, the report frames contract scale and phasing to clarify why Romania represents a multi-billion-euro market over the 2025–2035 horizon, and it closes with a disciplined comparison to Poland and a set of observable signals that would confirm acceleration or delay in execution.