This goes both ways. While the US is certainly open to having scientific payloads launched by non-US launch providers (e.g, JWT) it’s strictly not launching mil

This goes both ways. While the US is certainly open to having scientific payloads launched by non-US launch providers (e.g, JWT) it’s strictly not launching military payloads from non-US spaceport or from non-US vehicles. Given this stance, why should other NATO partners fold their own programs? The situation would entirely different if SpaceX was 20% German owned and the US would allow Ariane to compete for military payloads. As an aside, both ESA and the German Armed Forces habe used SpaceX in the past and ESA, EUMETSAT, and the UK Armed Forces have planned launches with SpaceX. There is far from a dogmatic perspective in Europe to only use Ariane for launches.