Dutch Defense innovation budget to be 2 billion euros less than expected

The Dutch government plans to spend far less on military innovation than the coalition agreement indicated, the Defense Ministry reports. The new budget will be approximately 950 million euros - roughly 2 billion euros lower than the 10 percent of the full defense budget previously mentioned by the coalition.

The February coalition deal among the D66, VVD and CDA parties stated that 10 percent of the defense budget would eventually go to innovation. The goal was to build a stronger domestic defense industry and reduce reliance on foreign imports. The total defense budget stands at 28.9 billion euros, so 10 percent would amount to 2.89 billion euros.

With the money, the Cabinet wanted, among other things, to set up a “defense innovation authority.” The agency, following the example of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is supposed to help pay for the development of revolutionary military tech.

The Defense White Paper, the Dutch government’s official document outlining defense spending, states that the 10 percent applies only to the defense investment budget, not the full defense budget. That works out to about 950 million euros for innovation, the ministry confirmed to Trouw.

The Ministry of Defense told Trouw that it does not think the Dutch DARPA would become a toothless tiger as a result. “Not only is the size of the budget decisive for that, but especially the targeted choices that are made.”

Something similar happened when the previous Cabinet wrote that it no longer wanted to extract Groningen gas. Three of the four coalition parties later said they only meant gas from the Groningen field, not all gas from Groningen.

TNO, an important research partner of the ministry, said it did not know that the budget would be a lot lower than expected and asked it for a clarification. Until then, the organization does not want to comment on whether it is concerned about the situation.

“The difference had caught my attention,” Hans Huigen, director of the NIDV, the trade association of Dutch defense companies, told Trouw. He added, however, that "there is currently a great immediate need within the Dutch armed forces for people and equipment. Then 10 percent for innovation is a very large bite of your total budget.”