Honeywell Aerospace is preparing to announce a new ITAR-free product for the international defense sector at the Farnborough Airshow in Britain later this month, as European defense spending pushes demand for weapons parts designed to dodge U.S. export controls. The company’s pitch is blunt enough. Build the kit so Washington can’t block it. Sell it into a continent already pouring money into military procurement. Call it local strategy and move on.
Europe’s War Economy Wants Cleaner Supply Chains
The Arizona-based supplier said rising European defense spending is increasing demand for parts that avoid U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, because European countries are increasingly concerned Washington could block the re-export of sensitive U.S. components embedded in foreign weapons. That’s the real architecture here: not security, but supply-chain management for armed states trying to keep their options open. The Brussels apparatus, national capitals, and corporate boardrooms all meet at the same point — how to keep the weapons flowing without too much paperwork from the wrong empire.
Jim Currier, Honeywell Aerospace’s CEO, said in an interview in late June that the company has tasked a combined 1,000 engineers in Poland and the Czech Republic to design ITAR-free technologies. He said, “Part of it is looking, acting, feeling and speaking like a European company.” Currier also said, “Their main mantra, and drive and edict is to design non-ITAR technology for ... local strategy.” The language is polished, but the meaning is plain. The company is reorganising engineering labour across Europe to serve a defense market that wants fewer U.S. strings attached and more room for continental militarisation.
Honeywell Aerospace said its defense business accounts for about 40% of company revenue and includes navigation systems and actuators for missiles. Last year, international sales accounted for about 30% of the company’s defense business, up from around 18% in 2020. The numbers show where the money is going. Not to housing, not to clinics, not to anything that reduces the need for borders and armies. To missiles, navigation systems, and the industrial machinery that keeps them moving.
The Export-Control Shuffle
Currier said the company was using its global presence to scale ITAR-free navigational technology from its 2024 acquisition of Italy’s Civitanavi. He said, “That has been the playbook. We are developing non-ITAR technologies for use in the EU and overseas for our partners in the Asia-Pacific region, like Japan and Korea.” The playbook is familiar: buy up firms, spread production across jurisdictions, and turn legal fragmentation into profit. The state system creates the borders; capital learns how to route around them when they get inconvenient.
The company said it is also developing non-ITAR technologies for Asia-Pacific partners like Japan and South Korea. The move comes as U.S. companies such as dronemakers have been expanding in Europe, while the U.S. this week floated a new missile maintenance facility on the continent and two defense contractors discussed building ATACMS ballistic missiles for the first time in Germany. That’s not a side story. It’s the continent being wired deeper into NATO’s war machine, one contract and one facility at a time.
Some European defense companies and North American suppliers are also expected to discuss demand for parts not governed by U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations at the world’s largest air show later this month. The market is doing what markets do. It finds a way to profit from militarisation, then wraps itself in the language of resilience and autonomy.
Fortress Europe, With Better Branding
While European demand for ITAR-free components and parts has existed for years, geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and its NATO allies are underpinning greater calls for the technology. The Canadian government said it was made aware during last year’s Paris Air Show of greater demand from European defense firms for North American suppliers free from U.S. ITAR restrictions, and that demand has led Canada to attempt further integration into European supply chains. So the border regime isn’t just for migrants. It’s also for weapons, components, and the corporate logistics that keep the whole machine humming.
Michael Iacovelli, CEO of Toronto-area aerospace and defense components supplier Ben Machine Products, said more than half of its work is now required by clients to be ITAR-free. He said none of its work needed to be ITAR-free in 2018. Eight years later, the demand has flipped. The military market has grown more paranoid, more fragmented, and more profitable. The people who pay for it never get asked.
At Farnborough, the usual speeches about innovation and partnership will probably arrive dressed in the usual clean corporate language. But the facts are already sitting there. European defense spending is rising. Engineers in Poland and the Czech Republic are being put to work on ITAR-free technologies. Missile systems and navigation parts are becoming a bigger share of revenue. And the continent’s rulers, from Brussels to national ministries, keep feeding the same apparatus that turns public money into private weapons contracts and calls it strategy.