They are reprogramming a US built drone to the German datalink equivalent with some AI sprinkled on top. Unfortunately far away from a real industry.

That's how it was always done. Nobody invented the whole thing from scratch.

Some other country started by _stealing_ US tech and now they arguably have a higher military tech throughput. Everyone has to start somewhere..

The EU already has the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 10th largest share of global arms exports. Losing the 8th place slot due to Brexit.

Akshually it's the the 2nd (France), 5th (Germany), 6th (Italy), and 9th (Spain) spots. But that's a bad argument, say.. a way of lying with statistics, considering the 1st place has 43% of the market share AND that exporting arms is not very relevant when the topic du jour is military build-up. The muscovites for example export 7.8% of the market share but that's not that relevant considering they're using the lion's share of military industrial output to terrorize Ukrainians.

It is relevant because having an industrial base and know how makes it much easier to scale up. Hopefully that’s what will now happen.

Also, let’s see how the 43% holds up when European and gulf states do their next round of procurement.

Yes, arguably imports are more important than exports... It's about what you have rather than what you have sold to others...