It’s time Europe reduced its defense reliance on the US, Czech president says
It’s time Europe reduced its defense reliance on the US, Czech president says
Europe can no longer neglect defense obligations, Czech President Petr Pavel said.
As an American, I think my government has become WAY too inconsistent and unreliable. We might elect Trump again, ffs. America can’t be counted on to meet its NATO obligations anymore. Too many fascists are in positions of power and sympathize with Putin.
As an American, it's 2023 we should never need weapons. Diplomacy should be the only option.
Unfortunately, many of our international contemporaries disagree. And as long as we do, we need something in case diplomacy fails.
Ukraine trusted diplomacy when they gave their nukes to Russia.
This, just send a couple of hexbear users and watch their governments collapsing!
Diplomacy backed by what? "Diplomacy" with no leverage is ink on worthless paper, there needs to be some kind of reason anyone should listen to you.
As a human being i think you have become incosistent and unreliable too. Lean history, see what's happening around you, think with your own brain.
That implies you considered me consistent and reliable in the past. I’m flattered.
It benefits everyone to have distributed defense. Work together, but be able to have a basic level of your own defense is vital.
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.
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.
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.
What? No. The only people saying that shit are Russian or Chinese talking heads, for obvious reasons.
Anyone else is singing the praises of the f-35. Literally it's biggest issue was with the alignment of its guns being fucky. But these things should never be in position to use guns in the first place.
If defence industries mean the military complex then every country in the world should let that sector rotten and disappear.
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.
Well this is certainly one flaming hot take
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.
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.
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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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.
Colonel sanders
I'm supposed no one is actively adding the us into the EU