Opinion

The Netherlands handed its air defence spine to Washington

Anduril's software now connects the whole counter-drone chain, while the ministry cut its own innovation budget. Urgency can be the reason once. It cannot become the standing excuse.

Europe's army cannot run on Washington's software. That is the line that separates a defence policy from a subscription, and the Netherlands has just picked the subscription. Follow the Money, a Dutch investigative news site, reported in November 2026 that the Dutch defence ministry secretly signed contracts with the American drone maker Anduril, including a March deal that never reached parliament. At the same time, the ministry set aside about 950 million euros to stimulate military innovation, well under the 2.89 billion it had long announced. This is not sovereignty with an American accent. It is dependence with a Dutch passport.

Remember that March deal? What it bought was software and sensor technology to detect, track, identify and neutralize unmanned aircraft, contracted with Anduril. The value stayed under the 50 million euro reporting threshold, which is how it never reached parliament. Then on 13 July came the follow-on: command-and-control systems including products from Anduril's Voyager family, awarded through a negotiated procedure without any call for competition, with urgency as the stated reason. The result, confirmed by the ministry itself, is that Anduril's Lattice platform now forms the connecting software for the whole chain from detection to neutralization. That is not buying a gadget in a crisis. This is the spine of your air defence, handed to one American company, quietly, twice.

Now look at what the same ministry did to the answer. Defence minister Yesilgöz and state secretary Boswijk wrote to parliament that the war in Ukraine has made the need for sovereign technological innovation painfully clear, and that rapid developments in drones and anti-drone software make it a matter of life or death, not a nice to have. We agree with their words. Their budget is where the agreement ends. The new Nationaal Instituut voor Defensie Technologie, the National Institute for Defence Technology, launched on 5 November and opened at small scale as a temporary forerunner under TNO, the Dutch applied research organisation, with its official opening not before 2028. The ministry even admits the open-architecture route exists through the American CCA programme, which it says could later help it work with European partners. It knows how to build the exit. The road is what that same cut took away.

An intelligent defender of the ministry says there was operational necessity: unexplained drones over Volkel, failed interceptions, and Anduril's system available fastest. The ministry's own spokesperson says several providers were considered, but a system had to be used and evaluated quickly. It reached its initial operational phase within about a month. That is a real answer, and it buys the March contract. It does not buy the rest: the second award without competition, and the choice of Lattice. A genuinely urgent buy should come with a funded European exit attached. And we have already seen what the ministry did to that budget.

Publish the Anduril contracts in full: the ministry can do that this month. Write into Dutch procurement rules that the connecting software layer of defence systems is open-architecture and European-controlled. Charge the NIDT with fielding a European counter-drone alternative by a fixed date, once the 2.89 billion is back. The ministry already knows the road. It must choose that road. Keep the emergency buys already signed. Tie any further American platform money to the funded European exit. Urgency can be the reason once. It cannot become the standing excuse. Every such choice shrinks the market a European defence industry needs to grow.