One major, but often neglected, implication of defence reform and particularly defence austerity in Europe is the amount of surplus weapons being made available on the international arms market.
Considerable attention was paid to the issue of disposing of surplus arms and military equipment in North America and Europe after the end of the Cold War, as both NATO and former Warsaw Pact states were faced with huge stockpiles of conventional arms to which they added as they downsized their armed forces. While attention on surplus small arms and light weapons (SALW) and ammunition has continued to attract the focus of governments and scholars, little attention has been dedicated to the issue of surplus major conventional weapons. However, as this paper seeks to show, states continue to transfer significant quantities of surplus major conventional weapons today. Therefore, the 'cascade of arms' continues, with large numbers of surplus combat aircraft and armoured vehicles in particular passing to second and third owners. After providing an overview of the current international supply of surplus weapons, this paper will focus on European countries, where one of the consequences of military downsizing and budget restrictions is the export of armament deemed to be surplus for the needs of the country’s defence.
This paper will highlight the cases of Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany and France, as well as the "eQuip initiative", and will rely on SIPRI data as well as feedback from defence companies specialized in second-hand military equipment.
