They don't produce any small arms, military land vehicles, have any aerospace industry or anything related to Defense. I would have thought someone there would have tried to make their own gun company at least but it doesn't look like anyone ever tried, why?
Thales, Damen?
they're protected by americans anyways
*Germans.
Oh no
Their main defence is against the sea.
>rich
>landlocked by rich civilized countries
>friendly world superpower few km across the ocean
When you live in a good neighbourhood, you don't need to own a gun.
Belgium is in the same place and they at least have FN though
Belgium already had a strong history with weapons design, unlike the Netherlands, prior to FN's existence. Since the company was formed it has almost always been protected by the government due to being of strategic importance, no small arms manufacturer in the Netherlands has ever enjoyed that kind of protection.
Also, the Netherlands is the biggest small arms exporter per capita, exactly because of FN - all that stuff goes through our ports.
DSM also does ballistics protection, has their own lab.
>nestled into a nice and comfy corner of the EU
>Surrounded by NATO states.
I wonder why they wouldn't bother?
Small countries can hardly support a MIC. There is a reason why a lot of European military conglomerates are multinational.
Koninklijke Ten Cate BV ("Tencate") is a huge armor company, perhaps the biggest manufacturer of body armor outside of China. They also do a lot of aerospace work, IIRC.
TNO is the world's best ballistic test laboratory and does a lot of interesting work.
We used to have some airplane companies in the early to mid 20th century (Spyker, Fokker, Koolhoven) but they mostly turned to other products
Spyker for example now makes cars for coke barons: https://youtu.be/uzwXmPuSFNc
Like all other anons said ITT, the Netherlands is surrounded by friendly countries that rely on us for trade, logistics and agritech. We don't need a massive weapons industry
It would be really difficult to get started too because Norway, Sweden and Finland make everything from night vision to fighters to naval mines and precision guided munitions.
It's also a problem of natural resources, the Netherlands isnt excactly known for its rich ore. And why compete on the arms market when instead you can instead sell the technology to harvest +-30.000 cucumbers twice a day, six days a week, all year round.
We got that market covered and people always gonna need to eat
thank you swamp-people of the netherlands.
>it's basically the raw resource import port of whole europe, do a lot in semifinished product.
>somehow belgium is the one with the fn.
is more likely that is expencive to find qualified workers for industries cuz they already have good jobs
DAMEN is a pretty big player. They have customers all over the world.
They have some pretty cool aerospace startups.
>Small arms
Why bother, when you have FN to the south and a reliable contract with the Canadians?
>Land vehicles
Most of the logistics material is still Dutch (DAF), specialised vehicles like IFV's and tanks are built in Germany. Doesn't make sense for DAF or the Dutch government to maintain the capabilities at the cost involved (high) and the units required (low).
>Aerospace
Thales is in that market IIRC.
>I would have thought someone there would have tried to make their own gun company at least
There used to be a pretty big small-shop industry in the south, due to being close to Liege (Beaumont, Stevens being the main examples). Later on the small arms industry was mostly nationalised at the Artillerie Inrichtingen (Hembrug), meaning the small shops, barely surviving off government contracts, finally died. There are some small gunsmiths doing custom work, and the south still has some small manufacturers.
In terms of small arms, here's most of the current builders/innovators, I could be forgetting a few:
>https://www.woodtostock.com/
Custom stock builder, full CNC. Specialises in benchrest for both airgun and firearms.
>http://www.pte-rifles.nl/Specificatie-s-PTE-220-300/
Custom big bore airguns (don't need a license for those), using W2S stocks.
>https://www.drummencustomguns.com/nl/54-luchtdruk?luchtdruksoort=dz-sinner-giant-toebehoren&order=product.price.desc
Custom raceguns and big bore airguns.
>https://www.wapenmakerij.nl/schutterij
Handmade rifles for schutterijen (Dutch version of Schuetzen)
>https://www.dutchlongarms.com/
Ground-up new design rifle for ELR shooting (which you can't do in NL, but still)
>https://www.solidsolutiondesigns.com/product-category/reloading-supplies/ssd-bullets/
Lathe-turned solid bullets for long range shooting.
So the current thing we make is either super niche (with pricing to match), or easily exportable. No general purpose stuff, because there is no internal market to sustain it.
We used to make our own munition but that closed. Pretty sure it is next to impossible to manufacture arms in the netherlands and you will get fricked by the government. On top of that the government doesnt really give a shit about local military industry. A new dutch company made and designed a SOF vehicle specifically for the dutch army (the Dutch tend to want their vehicles to be swiss-army knife tier equipped for every roll which is impossible) but they chose to go with mercedes-benz instead even though the dutch vehicle was both cheaper to produce and was good enough for US special forces. The government rather get a good deal on some foreign shit than produce anything locally.
>Pretty sure it is next to impossible to manufacture arms in the netherlands and you will get fricked by the government.
Pretty ignorant of you, learn our laws before you make stupid statements like that. See >54788272, but everyone with a license to trade arms (so, every gun shop) can also manufacture them, including full auto and suppressors.
What I meant is your not gonna get contracts from your own government so its next to impossible to build a profitable business on a larger industrial scale.
As other Anons have already pointed out: while the Netherlands doesn't have a strong MIC per se, they do have all kinds of multinationals that provide goods and services that are directly linked to the overall NATO MIC. Just from the top of my head, a lot of very advanced anti-missile and radar equipment is developed there, that many other nations have since adopted.
Also, I doubt any small arms company could survive while competing with both Belgium and Germany right there.
>have any aerospace industry
Fokker went bankrupt and the parts of it sold to the likes of GKN and Thales. There's still an independent part of it that services aircraft like the NH-90
>no real past and present hunting culture bc just too little and populous.
>essentially city state with farmland
>now a goods and services based ''knowledge economy'' instead of industry-geared like Germany.
>What big industries remain are either half-fabricates producing to German Ruhr or moving to low-wage countries. Rotterdam port and dairy companies. Damen builds all hulls in Romania now. Stork and a few dozen companies have work on F-35 (sub)systems for several nations.
>non-competitive with regards to labor costs, pensions and energy costs even compared to neighbor countries
>Material agency will grant >100k toward innovative companies making new gear like composite helmets only to wait it out and buy American. Or fire-moronant clothing the Aussies and US SOF bought from Ten Cate and then send a man over to China with the fabric and asking them if they can make it cheaper.
>with this in mind no wonder many Dutch companies involved in full-scale projects like Boxer and Fennek went breasts up, and at best there's little work at Rheinmetall Nederland for these systems.
>Also we tend to stick with our own and EU tender rules which tends to negatively affect Dutch companies, other countries like France will just ignore EU tender rules whenever it suits them along with subsidizing their already non-competitive industries.
Also there's a single car manufacturing plant at Limburg (BMW, Smart) and even before chip shortages work was often halted bc of strikes even though pay starts at 15euro/hour. Talking about chips, ASML (Philips offshoot, Philips seems to decay compared to Siemens) is critically important as they make the worlds foremost chip making machines and technologies. Lastly, there are defense companies making ''full'' products, you just have to know where to search, but even then and knowing all this if you want to start serial production you'll likely end up abroad.
They have a company called ASML, which develops the very lithographic machines that TSMC and Intel use to produce their most advanced chips.
So, for example, they are in fact a monopoly in EUV lithography, simply because no one else knows how to do it.
Do I need to explain the importance of chips with a <7nm process in today's defense industry?
they have weed and window licking prostitutes and are the first to allow sodomite marriage
but no mountains and no defense industry
>We have hoes, weed and buttsex
>Anon inplies this is bad
Sick opinion bro.
Confirmed for having their highschool sweetheart creamed by Dutch Dairy Dick.
Cucks and pedos
DAMEN is pretty based
Other than that they're just a cancerous little tumour nearly exactly in the middle of friendly NATO leaching off the EU with port taxes.
We're a net contributor to the EU, we literally put in more than we receive by an order of many billions you numbnuts. Also the 2% of GDP defense target will be reached withing 2 years now. So we´ll be among the few nations that actually reach that target, meaning a 40% increase in defense budget.
We rather leach of NATO
It was the gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Happened at exactly the wrong time, no national champion emerged. In other european countries those nationals consolidated and ran forward for decades some are still around. Not Netherlands.