Why 108 billion euros are useless if there is nobody to spend them wisely.
The Situation: Money Is There, Time Is Not
The Munich Security Conference 2026 put it bluntly – under the programmatic motto “Under Destruction”. What sounds dramatic is, on sober reflection, above all one thing: accurate. Under the banner of “NATO 3.0”, the United States is demanding in no uncertain terms that Europe take its conventional defence into its own hands. NATO Secretary General Rutte is floating 5% of GDP as a target. And Germany? Currently investing 2.4%, having amended the Basic Law to ease the debt brake for defence spending, and allocating roughly 108 billion euros for 2026.
Sounds like a fresh start. And it is. But money alone does not build tanks, develop drones or run cyber defence. For that, you need people. And this is precisely where things get tight.
The Real Problem: Who Is Going to Build All This – and Lead It?
Germany’s defence industry is booming – on paper, at least. New joint ventures such as Quantum Frontline Industries (German-Ukrainian), fresh funding rounds at defence-tech start-ups like STARK, an FCAS decision still pending at the time of writing (in June 2026, Germany, France and Spain terminated the programme): order books are bursting, ambitions are grand. Yet nine out of ten DefTech start-ups surveyed currently rate Germany’s defence capability as “low” or “very low”. That is not a contradiction – it is also the consequence of a market that is growing faster than its talent pool.
What is needed are no longer just engineers who understand a Leopard tank. What is needed are leaders who are equally at home with Bundeswehr procurement processes and agile product development. Who can navigate BAAINBw guidelines and still know what an MVP is. Who can spell “VS-NfD” and discuss dual-use business models in the very next meeting. This profile is, to put it mildly, not available in abundance – but it is poachable. And this is precisely where the industry faces a form of cannibalism: established players and dynamic start-ups are poaching one another’s few suitable leaders, often with little more than a better salary offer. What falls by the wayside is the question of why someone should stay – not merely join. Employee retention is not a feel-good topic. It is the strategic flank that hardly anyone is securing amid the frenzy of expansion – and that will be sorely missed in two years’ time.
New Playing Fields: Cyber, AI and the National Security Council
Since November 2025, the National Security Council has been operating under the chairmanship of the Federal Chancellor. It brings together internal, external, economic and digital security – signalling what the industry has long known: security in the 21st century is no longer a purely military matter. The heads of 32 European cyber security authorities met in the context of the Munich Cyber Security Conference, with a focus on automated defence. The European Defence Fund 2026 is driving the consolidation of Europe’s defence industry.
What does this mean for the labour market? The range of required profiles is widening, security vetting remains stringent – and is taking ever longer. Anyone who has waited for an SÜ2 clearance knows the feeling: you could learn a rather complex foreign language in the meantime. And the candidates who bring both – technical depth and security clearance – are becoming rarer still. Any company in the defence sector that has no strategy for recruiting its leaders today can receive as much budget as it likes: it will not be able to spend it wisely.
What Matters Now
Europe is facing the largest defence build-up since the Cold War. Germany wants to build the strongest conventional army in Europe – as Chancellor Merz stated at the MSC. That is ambitious. That is necessary. And it is utterly unrealistic if one believes the right leaders will simply appear of their own accord.
The good news: the market is not empty. It is simply complex, discreet and requires a network that goes beyond LinkedIn searches. That is precisely what specialists are for. And yes – by that, we mean us.
Talk to us. Whether you are looking for senior leaders, positioning your organisation for growth, or planning your own next career step in defence: we know the market, the people and the mechanisms.
connect@focus-defence.de · +49 30 5444 5899
This article was first published as the FOCUS-DEFENCE newsletter in February 2026.