The following guest article was submitted by Mikheil Shengelia, Research Analyst at Eagle Alpha, an alternative data aggregation platform providing supporting advisory services for data buyers and vendors. It was written in collaboration with Valan Technologies, a global procurement intelligence provider.
Defense spending across NATO and its European members is entering a new phase, defined not just by scale but by complexity and opacity. Governments are announcing the largest peacetime increases since the Cold War, driven by geopolitical pressure, the war in Ukraine, and a renewed push for strategic autonomy. But headline numbers only tell part of the story. What matters more is what actually gets spent in practice and where that activity can be seen.
What has not been measurable — until now — is the gap between what governments announce and what actually flows through procurement portals. Defense spending is ultimately realized through contracts such as equipment orders, service agreements, and long-term industrial programmes. In some cases, large well documented commitments leave no trace in public procurement systems, while in others, high volumes of activity reveal momentum that aggregate spending figures fail to capture.
The gap between announced budgets and observable procurement is not a data error. It is a signal in itself. This dynamic reflects the structural nature of defense acquisition. Governments balance transparency with national security, often withholding sensitive programme details or financial values. Regulatory frameworks, including security exemptions and procurement directives, further shape what is disclosed.
As a result, traditional metrics, particularly total spending or contract values, can mislead. Valan’s analysis draws exclusively on primary government publications. Every figure is sourced from a named government portal. No values are estimated or imputed.
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United Kingdom
Executing at Scale
Drawing from UK Contracts Finder, Find a Tender Service, TED, etendersni, and Sell2Wales, Valan’s UK dataset contains 9,857 verified Ministry of Defence award records covering 2019 to March 2026 — the most complete defense procurement dataset available in European coverage.
| Year | Awards | Total Value | NATO (GBP) | Coverage |
| 2019 | 742 | £12.7B | £46.5B | 27.3% |
| 2020 | 907 | £10.4B | £49.5B | 21.0% |
| 2021 | 1,415 | £20.4B | £52.3B | 39.1% |
| 2022 | 1,727 | £18.8B | £57.3B | 32.7% |
| 2023 | 1,178 | £16.7B | £61.2B | 27.4% |
| 2024 | 2,106 | £56.9B | £65.8B | 86.5% |
| 2025 | 1,545 | £44.1B | — | — |
Source: UK Find a Tender Service, UK Contracts Finder. NATO figures: NATO Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2025), June 2025, national currency (GBP). Coverage = Valan visible procurement / NATO estimate. Primary source URLs available for all Valan records.
The 2024 figure — £56.9 billion across 2,106 awards against NATO’s official defense expenditure estimate of £65.8 billion — represents 86.5% visible coverage, the highest of any country in this analysis by a significant margin. Key contractors confirmed in the dataset: Babcock Land Defense (£7.9B, 6 awards), Capita Business Services (£16.2B, 11 awards), BAE Systems Global Combat Systems Munitions (£3.4B), Thales UK (£3.4B, 26 awards), and Serco (£4.7B combined). The forward pipeline stands at £78.8 billion in estimated value across 397 open tenders published in 2025 not yet converted to awards.
The Dreadnought gap. Valan’s Sentinel layer extracts structured programme data directly from primary government PDF publications. The UK MOD Equipment Plan 2022–2032 records a £10.0 billion forward commitment for the Dreadnought submarine programme against BAE Systems as prime contractor. The visible procurement database contains zero contract awards for Dreadnought. The programme is documented. The commitment is confirmed. The contracts are classified. A confirmed government commitment with zero public procurement visibility is itself the intelligence signal — precisely the kind of signal that award-value analysis cannot produce.
Germany
Why Award Values Mislead
Germany’s defense expenditure rose from approximately $58 billion in 2020 to $93.7 billion in 2024 — the largest absolute increase in European NATO, according to NATO’s official Defense Expenditure data. Valan’s German award value data shows $6.6 million in visible 2024 procurement. Both numbers are correct.
Germany applies broad security exemptions under EU Directive 2009/81/EC. The majority of award records in Valan’s strict-filter German dataset contain no monetary value or a €0.01 placeholder — Germany acknowledges contract existence while protecting operationally sensitive financial detail. Compounding this, the EU’s mandatory eForms transition caused a documented collapse in published award volumes from late 2023: Germany’s TED-sourced records fell from 485 in 2023 to 48 in 2024. This is a publication artefact. Award value data is therefore an unreliable signal for German defense procurement and should not be used.
Tender volume is the correct indicator. Valan’s strict-filter German tender dataset — limited to confirmed Bundeswehr institutions, BMVg, and BAAINBw, excluding police procurement bodies that purchase under overlapping CPV codes — contains 15,422 records from January 2020 to March 2026. BAAINBw alone accounts for 5,134 tenders across the dataset.
| 306 Bundeswehr tenders — November 2025 single-month record in dataset |
Monthly volumes averaged approximately 85 per month in 2020. Post-eForms recovery in 2024 averaged 183 per month; 2025 averaged 195 per month, peaking at 306 in November. That trajectory — a sustained doubling of procurement activity against the 2020 baseline — is invisible to any analytical approach that relies on German award value data. Confirmed contractors in the dataset include Rheinmetall Waffe Munition (31 records), HENSOLDT Sensors, Airbus Defence & Space, NVL for naval systems, and Lufthansa Technik. Rheinmetall’s presence extends beyond Germany: the company is confirmed as prime contractor for the British Army’s Challenger 2 Life Extension programme through UK Equipment Plan data.
France
Three Sources Required
TED alone — the source relied upon by most alternative data providers for European procurement — covers only France’s above-threshold EU publications. Adding DECP and BOAMP, France’s national procurement journal, extends meaningful coverage. Key contractors confirmed: Airbus Helicopters (€8.64B BOAMP/DGA framework — maximum potential commitment over the contract period), Thales DMS France (€450M, 2 awards), Babcock International France Aviation (€601M), and Safran Aircraft Engines (€278M). France’s 2025 forward pipeline contains 363 open tenders carrying an estimated combined value of €2.33 billion not yet converted to awards.
Poland
Armaments Procurement Concentrated
NATO’s official defense expenditure data records Poland’s spending rising from PLN 68.4 billion in 2022 to $34.9 billion in 2024 — a 125% increase in two years, with spending at 4.2% of GDP, the highest ratio in NATO. Behind that figure is deliberate industrial concentration through a single procurement channel.
Poland’s weapons procurement is concentrated through a single channel: Agencja Uzbrojenia, the central armaments agency, and direct Ministry of National Defense contracts. Filtering to these buyers — and excluding military hospital procurement, which dominates the broader Polish TED dataset — leaves 284 records representing actual weapons acquisition activity.
| Contractor | Sector | Value (PLN) |
| PCO S.A. | Optics & Electronics | 1.69B |
| Indra Sistemas S.A. | Radar & Electronics | 913M |
| Huta Stalowa Wola | Artillery & Howitzers | 553M |
| ROSOMAK S.A. | Armoured Vehicles | 529M |
| KenBIT | Military IT | 349M |
| Hertz Systems | Communications | 281M |
| MESKO S.A. | Missiles & Munitions | 49M |
Source: Agencja Uzbrojenia — primary source URLs available for all records
Poland is buying from its domestic armaments industrial base while supplementing with European electronic and radar systems. That picture is incomplete without the US DSCA foreign military sales pipeline — $38.0 billion in tracked commitments that do not appear in Polish domestic procurement portals and are visible only through US Federal Register notifications. The programmes are specific: a $10.5 billion Integrated Air and Missile Defense system from Raytheon, a $7.3 billion F-16 Viper Midlife Upgrade from Lockheed Martin, $7.3 billion in AGM-158 JASSM standoff missiles, $3.75 billion in M1A1 Abrams tanks from General Dynamics, and $1.2 billion in AIM-120D3 air-to-air missiles from RTX. Any analysis of Polish defense procurement that relies solely on domestic portals is missing the majority of the story. All of it — domestic awards, DSCA commitments, and open tender pipeline — is available in Valan’s datasets.
Ukraine
The Classified Acceleration
No prior armed conflict has produced a procurement intelligence record like Ukraine’s. Prozorro — the open contracting platform built after the 2014 Maidan reforms specifically to eliminate the corruption that plagued Ukrainian public spending — continues to publish every government contract above de minimis thresholds, including defense procurement, while the war is active. The result is something without precedent: a real-time window into a wartime acquisition programme, visible in its scale even when its content cannot be named.
When operational security prevents disclosure of a supplier’s identity, Prozorro records the counterparty as Приховано — “Hidden.” The contract exists in the public record. The value is published. The supplier is not. This mechanism, designed for transparency, has become the most important signal in the dataset.
The five-year record tells a story no single year can. In 2021, Ukrainian defense procurement stood at UAH 0.48 billion — peacetime baseline, 3,759 contracts, zero classified. In 2022, the invasion year, the system nearly collapsed: contracts fell 29% and in March just 36 defense contracts were recorded, falling further to 44 in June. There was no pre-invasion ramp-up. The procurement record shows abrupt collapse.
By 2023 the war machine had rebuilt entirely: UAH 60.3 billion, 59,386 contracts — a 102-fold increase in value in a single year, concentrated in two months. May 2023 alone recorded 17,870 contracts; June 17,739. In 2024, classified suppliers appeared for the first time: 139 contracts, UAH 5.98 billion hidden. By 2025: 604 classified contracts, UAH 18.3 billion. In February 2026 alone, UAH 9.5 billion in classified procurement was recorded in a single month.
| Year | Contracts | Total (UAH) | Classified | Hidden (UAH) | ~USD |
| 2021 | 3,759 | ₴0.48B | 0 | ₴0 | $0.01B |
| 2022 | 2,657 | ₴0.59B | 0 | ₴0 | $0.01B |
| 2023 | 59,386 | ₴60.3B | 0 | ₴0 | $1.47B |
| 2024 | 36,870 | ₴142.7B | 139 | ₴5.98B | $3.48B |
| 2025 | 45,210 | ₴171.4B | 604 | ₴18.3B | $4.18B |
| 2026 YTD | 9,931 | ₴37.9B | 68 | ₴11.7B | $0.92B |
Source: Prozorro (prozorro.gov.ua) — primary source URLs available for all records. USD approximations at ~41 UAH/USD.
In 2021, Ukrainian defense procurement stood at UAH 0.48 billion — peacetime baseline, 3,759 contracts, zero classified suppliers. In 2022, the invasion year, the system nearly collapsed: contracts fell 29% to 2,657, and between March and June procurement almost stopped entirely. By 2023 it had rebuilt on a war footing — UAH 60.3 billion, 59,386 contracts, a 102-fold increase in value in a single year. In 2024, classified suppliers appeared for the first time: 139 contracts, UAH 5.98 billion hidden, 4.2% of total defense value. In 2025, 604 classified contracts, UAH 18.25 billion, 10.6% of total. In February 2026 alone, UAH 9.5 billion in classified procurement was recorded in a single month. There was no pre-invasion ramp-up. The record shows collapse, then reconstruction, then acceleration into opacity.
In Q1 2026, classified contracts represent 30.9% of total defense procurement value — triple the 2025 rate. 68 classified contracts carrying UAH 11.74 billion against 9,931 total contracts. The acceleration is not gradual. It is a step change.
Among named contractors, the visible procurement tells its own story: UKRNAFTA (385 contracts combined, UAH 60.8B — military fuel), Talanlegprom (80 contracts, UAH 9.2B — military uniforms), Оборонний постачальник — “Defense Supplier” — a generic anonymised placeholder across 94,401 contracts worth UAH 14.7 billion. The named contracts are logistics, consumables, and food — the backbone of a fighting force. The weapons programmes themselves are Приховано.
The supply side is partially visible through different sources. UK Strategic Export Controls data — sourced directly from the government’s quarterly licensing statistics — records £2.5 billion in UK arms export licences issued to Ukraine across 334 licences. US DSCA Federal Register notifications confirm a further $3 billion in tracked commitments: HAWK missile sustainment, Bradley IFVs from BAE Systems, Patriot air defense from Raytheon, M777 howitzers, and — confirmed in the dataset — Starlink services. None of these appear in Prozorro. They are visible only because Valan draws from three separate primary government sources simultaneously.
The 5-year backfill — completed overnight — adds 2021–2024 to this picture: the pre-war baseline, the 2022 invasion collapse, the 2023 reconstruction explosion, and the 2024–2026 acceleration into classified opacity. That arc is now fully documented in primary source data from Prozorro, with source URLs available for every record.
| Five Countries. One Finding. The United Kingdom is the clearest defense procurement signal in Europe. £56.9 billion in 2024, 88.4% SIPRI coverage, with Babcock, BAE Systems, Thales, and Serco all confirmed in primary-source award data. The £78.8 billion open tender pipeline provides forward signal unavailable from any other source. Germany’s rearmament is real and sustained — but award value data is the wrong instrument to measure it. Monthly Bundeswehr tender volumes averaging 207 in 2025 against an 85/month 2020 baseline is the correct signal. Any Germany analysis based on award values alone will produce a false negative. Poland’s weapons procurement flows through Agencja Uzbrojenia. PCO, Indra, HSW, and ROSOMAK are confirmed. The $38.0 billion in US foreign military sales commitments — visible only through DSCA notifications — does not appear in Polish portals at all. Ukraine’s 30.9% classified share in Q1 2026 — triple the 2025 rate — is the sharpest signal in this analysis. In 2021, Ukrainian defense procurement was UAH 0.48 billion, zero classified. By 2023 it had exploded 102-fold. By Q1 2026, nearly a third of all defense procurement value is hidden. The Dreadnought gap is its peacetime counterpart. In both cases, what is absent from the procurement record is as informative as what is present — and quantifying that absence is what Valan’s data makes possible for the first time. |
| Methodology All figures are sourced directly from primary government procurement portals as published, with source URLs available for every record. Strict-filter logic was applied to each country: UK records are limited to confirmed MoD and defense agency buyers by name; German records are limited to confirmed Bundeswehr institutions and BAAINBw, excluding police procurement bodies which purchase under overlapping CPV codes; Polish records include only Agencja Uzbrojenia and direct MoN contracts. NATO defense expenditure figures are from NATO Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2025), published June 2025 at nato.int, and used for comparative context only. UK SPIRE data is sourced from UK Export Control Joint Unit quarterly statistical releases, published under Open Government Licence v3.0. US DSCA data is sourced from US Federal Register arms sales notifications, US Government public domain. Sentinel programme data is extracted from primary government PDF publications (Qwen2.5:7B entity extraction). The Airbus Helicopters €8.64B figure is a published BOAMP/DGA framework maximum, not a single awarded contract value. |
For more information on topics relating to alternative data sourcing and compliance and to learn more about how Eagle Alpha is assisting financial institutions with their alternative data strategy, please contact us.