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Comment by InDubioProRubio

1 day ago

EU is armed to the teeth. All you had TODO is to pretend its corruption, throw a few parties in a rented Mückelsee villa and the disappearence of a billion in peace time is invisible for the russian sigint.

That Berlin Airport was not that expensive. Have fun slamming into a wall of robots..

Compared to the US or Russia Europe is not well armed. In some areas they are, but in critical areas the EU is way behind: air defense is going to be critical for any potential war in the near future and the EU has nothing of their own.

  • "Nothing of their own" is a bit exaggerated.

    They have IRIS-T and SAMP/T, the latter being somewhat comparable to the Patriot. Beside American made aircrafts there are also locally produced ones. I would be more worried by the lack of a proper equivalent of AWACS.

    In general though issue is not quality (at least compared to Russia) but quantity. Also if I was an European country I would be worried about the usability of any advanced weapon bought from our American friends: I wouldn't be surprised if, in case of confrontation between Europe and Russia, the guy in the Oval Office decided to block sales of spare parts in order to force war mongering Europeans to come to an agreement with peace-seeking Putin, or if his plutocratic friend decided to completely axe the project because "it sucks and drones are better"

    • This is the first I've heard of them, and Ukraine isn't demanding them. Either that means they are somehow worse than nothing, or the EU cannot supply them even though they exist on paper (based on planned increases I'm guessing the later). Remember military equipment that you don't have when needed is no better than fiction.

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  • Are you saying Russia is better armed than Europe? You noticed that it could not win a war it started even without Europe joining?

    • Interesting, I always had an impression that Europe is weak. Maybe this is an effect of us reading different media?

      As I know, many European countries do not even have mandatory military training for their citizens. Military production is also very low, despite having much more money than Russia, Europe is not capable of producing a comparable amount of weapon and equipment (see how they failed to deliver a promised amount of artillery shells). While Russia could save and restore Soviet-built military factories. Also, European weapon is more expensive to produce. Also, psychologically europeans are corrupted by their rich comfortable lifestyle and are not likely to move from their comfortable homes into the trenches. Also, migrants in Europe might choose not to protect their new home land in this event. Also, historically, if you look at WW2, most small European countries were occupied in weeks or even days without much resistance.

      Don't want to offend anyone but rather to remove a rose-colored glasses.

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    • Absolutely. Russia is better armed. They have a massive store of Soviet equipment they have been using up, along with their own production (they were long a world class supplier for equipment - there are a lot of Russian equipped armys around the world)

      Russians problems are about bad leadership. They have a lot of badly trained troops (their well trained troops do very well, but they are a small minority and running out). They have logistics issues. They have problems with leaders using well trained troops for things they are not trained for. They have problems with nobody willing to tell the full truth to leaders and so leaders can't make the right plans. They have problems with leaders there because they are political good not because they are great military commanders.

      Do not fool yourself though. Russia is a very well armed country. They have problems, but lack of arms is not their issue in Ukraine.

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    • Not OP, but the facts are that while Russia is rapidly exhausting its military hardware (which can be independently verified), Europe has relied perhaps too heavily on the US defense industry for military hardware and capabilities. This works fine when there is a good relationship with the US, but does not work when regime change occurs and the US takes an adversarial posture with its supposed allies. If your friend no longer offers to equip you for defense and war, you should be prepared to build your own. Otherwise, you've already lost.

      Russia isn't going to win, it's going to slow burn to failure (again, military hardware exhaustion, parts of their economy on the brink of failure, working age demographics crisis leading to ~21% central bank rates to attempt to quell inflation to no avail), but Europe improving its military capabilities would derisk against potential tail risk aggression and losses as Russia stumbles to a failure mode. Putin will die eventually, although it is unknown who and what replaces him; Europe must manage that risk.

      Europe is learning the hard way that you can't use economics to tame an aggressor (Nord Stream) nor can you rely on benevolent allies to be benevolent in perpetuity. This is objectively good, as it will force Europe to re-industrialize to an extent, and I argue manufacturing base and supply chains are of national security interest (gestures broadly at everything). Not your manufacturing base and supply chain? Not your freedom.

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