Most of them have had double digits growth in their stock price over the last few days[0]:
"Britain’s BAE Systems rose by 15% on Monday, Germany’s Rheinmetall gained 14%, France’s Thales increased 16% and Italy’s Leonardo was also up 16%. In London the surge in defence related shares helped to push the FTSE 100 to a new record high"
I think you misunderstand why exactly the USSR's weapon production hurt them. There were a number of circumstances that were specific to the Soviets that made their decisions uniquely self-destructive:
1. They already had an enormous weapon stockpile from the 60s and 70s that was becoming rapidly outdated, and was manufactured with few basically no limit on the unit count being made, resulting in tens-of-thousands of surplus weapons being funded by the state and the economy bending to support an oversized MIC.
2. Soviet Russia had a struggling economy in the 60s and 70s, and an almost nonfunctional one in the 80s. The idea of developing new digital weapons was basically trashed, and the "next generation" Soviet weaponry became the surplus analog stuff they stockpiled. Research and prototyping ground to a halt as Russia lost self-sufficiency on the technology that mattered.
3. The Soviet-Afghanistan war weakened the USSR's traditional force composition to the point that it was doubtful they could fight a traditional war, even with a relatively untrained adversary. Thousands of Soviet soldiers died to prove that Russia's doctrine wasn't going to win a pitched battle against a well-funded enemy.
Europe already avoided over-arming themselves like the USSR, they have a modernized economy, and they aren't fighting proxy wars against forces they can't beat. As an American citizen I'm more concerned with our own country resting on it's laurels, struggling to modernize it's supply chain and threatening to fight wars in the Levant with no clear goal.
European defense stocks didnt skyrocket out of nowhere.
>Soviet Russia had a struggling economy in the 60s and 70s,
Europe is struggling now.
>The Soviet-Afghanistan war weakened the USSR's traditional force composition
Feeding weapons to Ukraine has severely depleted European stockpiles.
>Europe already avoided over-arming themselves like the USSR
Theyre literally preparing to do just that.
>they have a modernized economy
Im not sure Id feel comfortable rejecting an argument based upon the notion that the country that put the first man in space was a country of backward savages.
>and they aren't fighting proxy wars against forces they can't beat.
I'm not sure how this plays out as Putin setting a trap? This is probably going to be a bit expensive for European taxpayers, myself included, but we'll get by.
Russia on the other hand may have issues similar to the 80s/90s if we get serious with sanctions on shipping oil.
