Comment by bluGill
2 days ago
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.
I hope this is a lesson Europe does not forget, and they start building immediately.
"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.
Both system have been sent to Ukraine and Ukraine would not mind having more of them, but as I said it is a matter of numbers (2 or 3 SAMP/T systems in Ukraine, out of about 15 totally produced). In the case of SAMP/T, the system is used just by Italy, France and Singapore, and as those countries are not as militarly active as the US, they don't have practical results to show to help with sales, which becomes a self-reinforcing (negative) trend.
Both systems seem to have been successful in Ukraine up to now, and this may help with their sales.
They are both (IRIS and SAMP) in Ukraine, doing an excellent job from what I read. I'm sure Ukraine are asking for them, as they are very expensive and it would be insane to gift the if not wanted.
Many European countries chose Patriot for diplomatic reasons. The US used to favour those who bought their weapons. Not any more it seems, so I guess that mistake will not be repeated in the near term.
What about Rafale and Gripen, have you ever heard about those?
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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.
The rose colored glasses are on the face of many people who look at how putting is spectacularly failing against a country that simply wants to be in europe and not the europe itself and think russia is well armed. "Have a lot of shitty equipment from last century" is not "better armed"
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.
Remember Russia is currently buying arms from countries willing to sell. Can't say you convinced me
> They have problems with nobody willing to tell the full truth to leaders and so leaders can't make the right plans
That for sure. This started at least when no one told putting he is terminally insane back in 2021.
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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.
The unfortunate side-effect is also that as US does not honor guarantees given in the Budapest memorandum, no country is going to give up nuclear weapons trusting contracts, and that European nation states (and possibly Canada, Mexico) will draw the conclusions on how to best get functional security guarantees ie. have own nuclear stockpile. This has been the status quo USA has bought by being a security provider, and by betraying it the downside is to returning to the nuclear armageddon scare of the cold war — if a European country nukes Russian territory, the retaliation might well bite back to the US soil. If Europe got too cozy with conventional warfare capabilities, the US got too cozy with the idea that they’re providing security out of the goodness of their hearts instead of it being a geopolitical bargain where they receive certain advantages as well.
if a friend turns on you like that, that friend is finished as a arms trader
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Cant say I disagree with any of this, EU members each messed up good here, for decades completely ignoring all voices from eastern part warning about exactly-fucking-this and how you cant trust russians even with nose between their eyes. The solution may be easy - leave green deal since nobody else cares about it anymore, and EU is hardly 5% of global population but it has potential to wreak havoc on millions of jobs here. Not sure it would be enough to cover all extra spending but it would certainly help.
But that would require significant political change in all major players in EU, Leyden so far is pushing for it like there is no tomorrow and otherwise all is well and good. She seems untouchable. Germany prefers buying electricity from foreign coal rather than keep nuclear running for few more years. Also Germans will probably let half of Europe burn before they would make Wehrmacht the force to again reckon with.
Each country had 3 years to massively ramp up budgets and build factories, start recruiting. Poland and baltics did the moves since they had plenty of russian atrocities happen not so long ago, but the rest? We dont deal with strictly rational society here.