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European Union common defense thread


Alzoc

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2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Fair comment.....I still stand by my statement in the broader picture, there are quite a lot of rather disgruntled homeless people just to the south of the lines I depicted, I suspect that some of them might have 'designs'.

Visegrad group is certainly working on that part, being a huge thorn in the EU's back. 

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On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 2:20 PM, Xoon said:

 

MXtENRa.png

 

Thanks for telling us Iceland is, in fact, an island. :D 

 

On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 2:20 PM, Xoon said:

 

Probably the US or China. 

 

Oh yeah, the EU does like to make fun of their friends across the pond... with Donald in office, I'm sure they could get a hard-on blaming the US on random events the US had no involvement in... 

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As things currently stand I'm starting to wonder if the EU is going to be around long enough for this to become an issue.....We're out already, Italy could go at just one more wrong call from Germany, Spain is fracturing, Greece has been looted.....Basically the EU is fucked!

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On 6/2/2018 at 1:35 AM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

As things currently stand I'm starting to wonder if the EU is going to be around long enough for this to become an issue.....We're out already, Italy could go at just one more wrong call from Germany, Spain is fracturing, Greece has been looted.....Basically the EU is fucked!

 

According to this guy, that wrong call already came. 

 

Thoughts @Alzoc?

 

Also, does anyone have a link to the new directive he is talking about in this video? 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Xoon said:

According to this guy, that wrong call already came. 

 

Thoughts @Alzoc?

 

Well I won't presume on the whole Italian mess but my guess is that it will end up the same way than with Greece.

They'll soon discover that money don't grow on tree and that if you basically tell your creditor to fuck off they won't be too keen on lending you money again.

And ultimately Italy need that money.

 

I agree that Ghünter Oettinger should have kept his mouth shut because what he said was free propaganda for the new Italian government, but the essence of his message was more or less right.

They will gesticulate a bit, discover that they can't both have the cake and eat it and will spend the rest of their term doing nothing.

 

Can only hope that they won't damage the Italian economy and institutions too much in the meantime.

 

Where they are right however is that the rest of the EU basically left Italy alone on the frontline dealing with the migrant crisis, which can only favor extreme votes from the citizens.

IMO worst that can happen is immobilism (which in itself is dangerous considering we are in a time of crisis).

 

Silver-lining is that we may expect some degree of competence and pragmatism from their new defense minister, as she has some experience of military matters.

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  • 5 weeks later...
14 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

Probably the best place for this, the letter from Mattis to Williamson. Seems to be quite a bit different than what the Sun reported. 

 

 

Spoiler

8DiUGbb.jpgbyFT8fi.jpg

 

 

 

So it seem, I wasn't expecting good journalism from a tabloid like the Sun anyway.

 

Thanks for the original document

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Spain is interested in the SCAF:

 

http://www.opex360.com/2018/07/05/lespagne-interessee-futur-avion-de-combat-franco-allemand/

 

They need to replace their F/A-18 Hornet and will do the interim with some more Eurofighter before the various components of the SCAF enter service.

However Paris and Berlin don't want to add another partner so soon as it could mess up the operational requirements and the industrial organization (i.e they are trying to avoid a fiasco à la Eurofighter).

 

So they are proposing a status of observer to Madrid which is examining the proposition.

The risk is that Madrid, which may buy F-35B to replace their Harrier for their naval aviation, might be dissatisfied with that status and walk away to buy some more F-35

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Yep, that's reality^^

 

Combining all EU country (so without the UK), their total spending only amount to about 27% of the US spendings (and even if I added the UK that would only go up to 35%).

One more reason to strive to standardize the equipments, we don't spend much already compared to our combined economical weight and what we spend is way less efficient than on the US side because of economy of scales.

 

Some says that the US also waste some money due to the strength of the defense industry there leading to inefficient contracts passed through lobbying but even taking that in account it won't reduce the gap that much.

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20 minutes ago, Alzoc said:

Some says that the US also waste some money due to the strength of the defense industry there leading to inefficient contracts passed through lobbying but even taking that in account it won't reduce the gap that much.

 

And the EU countries clearly waste money that way too.  But it's not so easy to quantify corruption.

 

But if we look at actual combat readiness of units in Europe, I think that the picture becomes even more extreme.  US units are probably not, on average, very ready for combat.  But their European counterparts are much worse.

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Just now, Collimatrix said:

 

And the EU countries clearly waste money that way too.  But it's not so easy to quantify corruption.

  

But if we look at actual combat readiness of units in Europe, I think that the picture becomes even more extreme.  US units are probably not, on average, very ready for combat.  But their European counterparts are much worse.

 

True to both.

 

The variety of the situations between European armies are huge.

You have army like the UKs or France which have a rather broad spectrum of capability and overall good operational readiness but which lack resilience because of their relatively small size, compared to the US army.

You have army like Germany's which are somewhat larger but with supbar operational readiness and vehicle availability.

The Italians have a good navy but their other arms aren't on the same level.

You have small country (typically in eastern Europe) which are doing quite well for their size but are quantitatively dwarfs.

Etc

 

So if at least we could improve the mobility of those army on the continent (by making it easier administratively and by pooling our transport assets), increase the overall availability of vehicles by having standardized equipments, train together more regularly and measure of the like, even if the spending don't increase dramatically (they should, but it's not sure that we will get there immediately) those kind of initiative ought to make our armies more capable as a whole.

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7 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

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If you look at money actually spent at proper military stuff that graph becomes even worse, at least for the Netherlands. Stuff like retirements etc are also defence expenditures, but it's essentially wasted money. There's also other silly stuff like our MoD paying for the helicopter ambulance for a few of our islands.

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1 hour ago, Bronezhilet said:

If you look at money actually spent at proper military stuff that graph becomes even worse, at least for the Netherlands. Stuff like retirements etc are also defence expenditures, but it's essentially wasted money. There's also other silly stuff like our MoD paying for the helicopter ambulance for a few of our islands.

 

The pensions thing counts for everyone, it's a standard NATO accounting method

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For every German who's not allergic to everything connected to defense or god beware weapons the situation is kind of frustrating.
There are many things that our current Minister of Defense "Panzer-Ursel" could have done better - the relation between her and the
troops could be called shattered. But she did one thing that was unquestionable one of the biggest favour the Bundewehr received since 1991:
She made the poor state of all amred services branches public instead of keeping it out of the public view like her predecessors did.
The German public developed such a thing like an awareness to the problem and was open to spend money to solve the problem.
And Panzer-Ursel got more money. Less than wanted and less than needed in the long term but with the perspective of little increases every year.
Then President Trump started with his loud demands for the 2% which culminated in the days before the Nato summit. An guess what we could

read in the press last week ? Trump want's it so we shouldn't do it.
That's the point where you realize that a Beer is not enough to calm you down. But Donald rescued the day! His "joke" about 4% instead of 2%
was just great! Because come on - what would amuse the Poles and the French more than Germanys Wehr-expenditures being only trumped by
the US and China? And even our new alt-right movement would have a reason to think/dream big again!

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