Europe doesn’t have the weapons to send: have you seen the state of European armies? For instance if we talk high level air defence, Europe has sent more Soviet era S-300P systems than their domestically produced SAMP/T systems. Europe has sent one SAMP/T battery for the entire war, over three years! And these S-300s and SAMP/T could only be sent to Ukraine because the US promised to send replacement Patriot batteries to the countries that donated their S-300 and SAMP/T, while simultaneously sending multiple Patriot batteries to Ukraine. It’s the same story with every advanced system.
The 80 or so F-16s Europe are planing to send are:
not domestically produced or supported, they are built in the United States and rely on support (spare parts and maintenance) from the United States itself, hence the recent US $300 million F-16 support package and flights of spare parts and stripped out airframes from the boneyard in the US. They also rely on US weapons/munitions, targeting equipment and intelligence, electronic systems/countermeasures and technicians. Europe cannot provide this support, only the United States can. Europe sending F-16s without US support would amount to sending a bunch of soft locked aircraft that wouldn’t be able to carry out the required missions. I wrote a long post about this when the USA paused intelligence sharing to Ukraine. It’s US technology, not European technology. The US is required as a key player.
The F-16s Europe are sending are cold war era F-16AM block 15 models, roughly equivalent in capability to the Soviet era MiG-29s Ukraine has/had. These are not the latest F-16V block 70 aircraft, or even the 2000s era F-16C block 50 aircraft. These are the oldest F-16s in service. They lack a lot of capabilities that the newest F-16s have, from radars to targeting systems.
It is only possible for Europe to send these F-16s because the United States is prepared to supply F-35s as a replacement for those countries giving up their F-16s. Europe has no domestic equivalent to the F-35, and their latest 4.5 generation aircraft (Gripen, Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon) while cheaper to operate than an F-35, cost more upfront and lack stealth capabilities. In theory this is a win-win situation: European countries trade in their cold war era F-16AMs to Ukraine for the latest and greatest F-35s, and the US makes a ton of money on arms sales. But again, this plan requires the US as a key player to work. It’s not possible without US involvement. Europe cannot supply the replacements that the US can.
As for domestically produced fighter aircraft, France was able to promise a dozen or two Mirage 2000s, but that was it. No one else from Europe has stepped up. This seems to be all that Europe can give independently. Macron said as much.
The storm shadow/SCALP-EG missiles are fired by Soviet era Su-24 aircraft in the Ukrainian inventory using parts from the UK’s Tornado GR4 aircraft. It’s a frankenstein solution.
This is not to say that Europe doesn’t have high tech weapons in general, they do. But the stuff that they do have they need to keep for themselves for their own domestic security, they cannot support another conflict and keep themselves at the appropriate readiness levels. There are also key shortfalls in certain areas (like air defence) where Europe does not have the domestic production capability, and relies on partners like the US and Israel for them. Hence Germany buying an Israeli Arrow 3 air defence battery (midcourse ballistic missile interception) recently.