Europe shouldn’t let it’s home-grown defence industries languish in the name of strategic cohesion. Europe has no domestic competition to the F-35, no cohesive military procurement strategy that rewards European businesses, and no mechanism to avoid the shitshow of being entirely dependent on US defence contractors for maintenance of key defence infrastructure.
It also doesn’t have access to nearly as many raw materials as the United States does.
I wish we’d all just calm down with the military spending, but I also understand when dealing with the USA it’s probably safer to not rely on then(us) to keep their(our) word
Trump’s presidency certainly showed that the US is one election away from balking. I’m pretty sure that’s Putin’s plan in Ukraine now.
I hope they have no competition to the F-35 because everyone’s been saying it’s a piece of shit for the last fifteen years.
I think the situation is more nuanced than that.
Of course, the F-35 program was an incredibly expensive mess (litterally the most expensive weapon program of all time), because of conflicting specs, data leaks, political infighting, cost overruns which are the stuff of legend, etc… At some moments, there were certainly reasons to think the whole program would collapse on itself like wet tissue paper.
But there are operational F35 now. 900+ as of 2023, which is 4 time more than the rest of Gen 5 fighters combined. And performance-wise, it is good, especially on the stealth & avionics parts. On the other side, the J-20 is largely unproven (probably a decent design, but not as good), and the Su-57 is a bunch of glorified prototypes.
Now sure, cost is high, maintenance is time-consuming, availability somewhat below target, but it’s not particularly surprising for high-performance equipment. It may fall short of the ambition of the program on the cost part, but by itself it’s a dangerous and fully operational fighter.
I guess it was worth it in the end.
/s
Anyone that says that has no idea what they’re talking about lol, the F-35 is completely unmatched in terms of multirole aircraft (along with the F-22 for a more fighter-focused role) and likely will only be surpassed with gen 6 aircraft.
The SU-57 and practically any “modern” Russian aircraft are complete jokes that will fall apart with 2 seconds of airtime, and the J-20 and a majority of Chinese aircraft are cheap imitations of western (mainly American) technology which although much more capable than Russian aircraft, still fall behind a lot due to the corruption/authoritarianism in the Chinese military & government absolutely crumpling any hope of having actually competitive engineering & building.
European aircraft aren’t even worth considering as competition either (although are far superior to the previous 2 nations’ mentioned, in most cases). Eurofighters are just another one of the projects European nations had that was plagued by issues from the fact that it was multiple parties with differing requirements/interests/goals trying to develop something. Gripens are less effective budget alternatives to American gen 4 fighters. Etc. Etc.
The combined capabilities in technology, resources/wealth, and pool of experienced/intelligent engineers that the US has at its disposal makes it extremely hard to even dream of touching their capabilities when it comes to aircraft. Even with ground vehicles, the only real competition is Germany… but German armed forces are kind of in a state of disrepair right now, they’ve really neglected their military. It’s really only the defense companies like Rheinmetall and KNDS which can be pointed to as successful currently.
Europe has a long way to go to compete with American military aircraft. Right now the US just has so much more experience and knowledge when it comes to fighter jets & more modern technologies present in said jets. It’d require a lot more investment in aerospace engineering and technology as a whole really, not just when it comes to aerospace. And Europe is currently even more desperate for tech workers than the US atm afaik.
SAAB can’t go toe to toe with American jets, that’s true, and not what they were designed for. They’ll shoot an SU out of the sky before the SU knows they exist. They’re also still the only people to ever get a lock on a SR-71. As an American, I think they make some impressive jets. I even like their cars, but that’s a can of heartbreak.
We didn’t even roll it out for testing at VX squadrons until like 2018, and it’s biggest claim to infamy is just being on the R&D line for like 25 years.
25 years that’s for chumps. FCAS is probably going to take at least 2040 to be ready. Airbus got the contract in 2017, that’s 23 years to 2040, and no of course it won’t be on schedule.
Regarding the relative tech levels, though, Europe as a whole is simply not at the same schedule as the US. The F35 is replacing F16, F18, Harriers, from the 70s-80s, (which of course got upgrades), while the first Typhoon entered service in 2006.
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If defence industries mean the military complex then every country in the world should let that sector rotten and disappear.
Hey this is the guy who said that all Russian citizens living abroad should be surveiled and cited Japanese internment camps as precedent.
“I can be sorry for these people, but at the same time when we look back, when the Second World War started, all the Japanese population living in the United States were under a strict monitoring regime as well,” said the Czech president. “That’s simply a cost of war.”
He’s probably not doing this in the interests of peace, he’s probably doing it because he wants to launch a race war against the Mongolian horde and the US won’t play ball.
The US loves killing brown people especially on behalf of other white people.
Are you even American? /s
What a deranged conclusion
Yeah that Czech dude is pretty fucked up in the head.
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lmao there’s always a rogue president who says this while the rest of the EU falls in line with Washington
He’s not advocating Europe separate from the US, but become a military superpower in its own right by having as large a military as the US. I am sure both Petr Pavel and Joe Biden agree on enforcing the “rules-based international order”.
To think that the EU suddenly wants to ditch the US because they see them as a burden/dangerous is wishful thinking. In fact the only countries willing to do that might be France, because the local bourgeois don’t like to be limited by the US on pursuing their imperialist interests in Africa.
Idk anything about this fella, but that snow white hair and beard look fuckin fresh
Yet on the other hand, he says EU should hurry up at expanding and integrate Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and others. He’s pro-NATO, he just thinks the EU should have more of the muscle. Either that or he’s just entirely full of shit.
Yet on the other hand, he says EU should hurry up at expanding and integrate Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and others.
I don’t understand how expanding EU is contradicting the headline. Care to explain?
EU/NATO are vassals and part of the same empire as America/UK. Basically, they’re all the same side. My point is that if you’re against NATO imperialism, this guy isn’t who you’re looking for. He just wants to be a bit less junior of a partner in the empire.
Jokes on him and the EU though, they’re even more junior than ever before and getting further vassalized and de-industrialized and dependent on the USA.
Lots of euro leaders have said the same over the years. The question as always is, what will you do about it?
Well PESCO did get created. Denmark dropped their opt out from CSDP. Stuff like this moves slowly, specially upon there not being single hegemonic leader saying “We do this” and everyone else answering “Yes boss”. EU is herding catch and it makes everything move slowly.
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He’s also called for more blanket surveillance of Russian passport holders in the West.
https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-president-ukraine-support-nato-summit/32460184.html
Becareful praising a strongman when he speaks against your enemies brashfully. Today he is your friend, tommorow you might find yourself amongst his list of enemies.
Authoritarians are only ever on your side temporarily.
10x yes! Not only that, their reliance on US cloud and their interferences in UA/RU war for the US interests.
Russia invading Ukraine is bad for the entirety of Europe and the western world, it’s not just “US interests”.
For US interests… ya, Russia taking whatever country it wants in eastern Europe is only on the US interest. Has nothing to do with anyone else. NATO is all Nazis or something amirite?
Alright, Czech guy, are you gonna put your constituents’ money where your mouth is and help build up Europe’s defense force? Or are you not gonna change a thing because you know the US will continue to act as the world police?
I think you know which one you’ll choose.
I’m supposed no one is actively adding the us into the EU
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Europeans starting to realize that NATO is a protection racket is pretty funny.
A protection racket usually involves paying a potential attacker not to attack.
Plus NATO has bombed / attacked europe many times, it dismantled Yugoslavia, the last surviving socialist bloc in europe after the USSR.
But which countries have been attacked for refusing to pay into NATO?
Yugoslavia. Also a lot of eastern europe was coerced into joining the EU and NATO, and adopting bourgeois parliamentary democracy (IE capitalist dictatorship), and it wrecked a lot of their social welfare programs. They were forced to do so under threat of economic and military attack, because they can see what happens to countries that don’t accept the western model.
Yugoslavia was engaging in some high crimes of their own. The whole thing was a clusterfuck on the NATO side of things, but Yugoslavia was hardly blameless.
Well this is certainly one flaming hot take
Take your bets now everyone, we’ve got:
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“stupidly tries to deepen ties with the cyberpunk oligarchy of China”,
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“stupidly try to deepen ties with the impotent Mafia state in Russia”,
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“stupidly try to deepen ties with petro-dictatorships/monarchies in MENA”,
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“immediately double back because they realized that reducing reliance on the US means having to actually uphold their NATO spending requirements at a minimum to replace the US subsidizing their national defenses”,
and least likely of all,
- “actually do anything even remotely productive towards genuinely achieving strategic autonomy as a democratic superpower in the world independent of the US’ trajectory.”
How can China be an oligarchy if the CCP holds all the power? Billionaires ain’t got shit in China, even fucking Jack Ma was forced to step in line.
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Tell me you don’t know the definition of oligarchy without telling me you don’t know the definition of oligarchy.
By all means, enlighten us on the proper academic definition of “cyberpunk oligarchy”
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So a definition that China doesn’t meet.
I’m also curious where you got this academic definition from, because it seems to have a lot of very vague parts.
Ironical
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Europe should have left NATO 30 years ago, when the first cold war ended, and forged its own path, instead of continuing to get its marching orders from the USA. Now Europe is getting lead into a second cold war by them.
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reduce socialism
Socialism is not “when the government does stuff”
To push back on this a little, the US did intentionally create an international division of labor after WW2, where europe and the countries it just defeated (Germany, Japan, Italy) would let the US handle the war industry / being the world’s cop / capitalist enforcers, so they could focus on consumer products, and serve as anti-communist bulwarks with high standards of living.
European countries do save value by letting the US handle most of their defense, that they can then allocate to social services.
Of course the majority of value, and their social welfare programs, still come from unequal exchange / a tax on imports on goods produced by super-exploited global south proles.
Defense money is not lost, it pays people within your country. And you can even decide whether it goes to big corps or small companies.
