The growth of aerospace and defence manufacturing is creating new opportunities across the machining sector. Defence spending across Europe reached an estimated €381 billion in 2025, an increase of 11% compared to 2024. As orders increase, many SMEs are facing a familiar question: how can we increase capacity quickly enough to meet demand? Here, Hakan Aydoğdu, CEO of CNC automation specialist Tezmaksan, explains why machine utilisation is becoming an increasingly important measure of manufacturing performance. Evidence of this demand can be seen beyond traditional defence contractors. Earlier this year, Volkswagen revealed that it had developed two prototype military vehicles in just four months. Renault has reportedly explored drone-related defence applications and more recently announced a military vehicle partnership.
Neither company is traditionally associated with defence manufacturing. Yet both are assessing opportunities within the sector, highlighting how demand is spreading across a much broader industrial base.
While entering defence supply chains often involves lengthy qualification processes and strict compliance requirements, increased demand is creating opportunities throughout the wider manufacturing ecosystem. Many subcontractors may encounter defence-related work indirectly through aerospace primes, tier 1 suppliers and specialist engineering firms seeking additional machining capacity.
For subcontract machine shops, precision engineering firms and component manufacturers, that creates opportunities that didn’t exist a few years ago.
Increased demand does not equal increased capacityFor production managers, the issue is rarely a shortage of work. More often, it’s finding enough productive machining hours to meet customer expectations. The defence and aerospace sectors expect reliable lead times, consistent quality and the ability to respond quickly when requirements change.
Delivering on those expectations can be difficult when skilled CNC operators remain in short supply.
A machine can be available for an entire shift, but that doesn’t mean it spends the entire shift cutting metal. Operators load raw material, unload finished parts, carry out inspections and prepare the next job. Each task is necessary, but every interruption reduces available machining time.
Viewed individually, these delays may seem insignificant. Across multiple machines and shifts, however, they quickly add up. Recent research from Fortune Business Insights highlights growing demand for CNC technologies that improve efficiency, provide greater production visibility and support automation across manufacturing operations. The result is capacity that exists on paper but can be difficult to access in practice.
For many manufacturers, the first step is automated machine tending. Rather than waiting for an operator to load and unload every component, a robotic system can transfer parts between machining cycles, keeping production moving with minimal interruption. Even small reductions in non-cutting time can create additional machining hours across the week.
Automation allows skilled operators to focus on tasks where their expertise delivers the greatest value. Programming, setup verification, quality control and process optimisation all require experience and technical knowledge. Loading and unloading components does not.
As a result, many manufacturers are looking at ways to enable one operator to oversee multiple machines. In an environment where recruitment remains challenging, this flexibility can have a significant impact on output.
Ease of implementation is equally important. Most subcontract manufacturers are not looking for complex automation projects that require specialist robotics knowledge or months of training. They need systems that fit into existing production environments and can be operated by current shop-floor teams.
This is one reason why modular automation systems are gaining attention. CubeBOX CNC automation systems, for example, combine collaborative robotics with CNC machine tending in a format that can be integrated without extensive changes to machine layouts or production processes. For many machine shops, that lowers the barrier to automation and allows productivity gains to be realised much more quickly.
Some manufacturers are already extending this approach further. Automated machine tending can support unattended production during breaks, between shifts and overnight. Instead of sitting idle, machines continue producing parts, increasing spindle utilisation and helping manufacturers respond to growing demand without proportionally increasing labour requirements.
As defence and aerospace demand continues to grow, the manufacturers best positioned to benefit may not be those with the largest workshops or the greatest number of machine tools. More often, they will be the businesses that make the most effective use of every available spindle hour.
For production managers, the challenge is no longer simply adding capacity. It’s finding smarter ways to create it. CNC automation is proving to be one of the most practical ways to achieve exactly that.
Learn more about how modular CNC automation can support defence and aerospace, on Tezmaksan Robot Technologies' website.