Comment by jonplackett
9 days ago
Does this just continue the ‘western way’ of spending a crap load of money on each military item, instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply?
Ukraine and Iran are both showing it quickly becomes a war of attrition and fancy weapons get very expensive very fast, or run out very fast.
I agree that European militaries need to be able to generate a lot of mass.
But we would be remiss to pick up on some threads from both Ukraine and Iran.
In Ukraine, the VKS is still able to generate substantial damage (both in tactical support of ground forces, as well as part of the civilian bombing campaign) with glide bombs (carrying 500kg+ class bombs, launched by tactical jets from over Russian controlled airspace).
These tactics are effective, and are able to do things that Shaheds aren't quite capable of doing - for example ensuring destruction of certain targets with a single hit. I imagine Ukraine would love to be able to be able to take glide bombs off the table, but it can't.
It can't because it lacks the air force to conduct an offensive counter-air campaign, and it lacks the long range strike capability to permanently disable relevant airfields, or destroy enough airframes on the ground.
European militaries would like to be able to avoid this situation, and therefore certain relatively exquisite capabilities are needed.
In Iran, while Iran has demonstrated its ability to severely tax the much more exquisite forces of the US+Israel and the Gulf States, the reality is that they have NOT been able to meaningfully degrade the US or Israel's ability to bomb Iranian ground targets at will.
European militaries would also like to be able to prevent the VKS from just... bombing central to eastern Europe at will.
European war aims - which would be to able to defeat Russian forces so soundly and quickly that Russia will forever be deterred, requires exquisite capabilities, that are able to strike the Russian war machine from the front line, all the way back several hundred kilometers in high precision, and high density (in time and in weight of payload), in a way that can actually cause collapse (when combined with ground counter attacks). It cannot rely on a Ukrainian style war or Ukrainian style tactics purely because... well, Russia is infact actually fighting that war right now, and hasn't given up yet.
A Europe that has to fight at all, is a Europe that has already lost. A Europe that has to fight for more than a few weeks or months, is a Europe that has deeply lost.
Using a beaten down Russia in the current year is probably a bad way to plan for your future military. It should be considered against a real target like China where all of those fancy jets won't get close to China proper (w/ long range AA missiles and SAMs) so everything will be at standoff range including SEAD campaigns. Which is where mass drones and cheap cruise missiles/decoys will be much more effective.
Using high end jets as delivery platforms for high end missiles is not scalable in a conflict anymore. Likewise most estimates say even the US will run out of Tomahawks within the first 1-2 months of a conflict with China. They are gambling those missiles open up a big enough window to do anything else while their own Navy is under siege in the process.
> instead of getting good at making A LOT of something really cheaply?
also you'd want to maximize dual usage (civil/military) of components so that your production capacity can be easily switched back and forth more on demand.
(Otherwise you just end up a stockpile of obsolete drones/weapons)
Instead of this we have anti dual-use policies, especially in semiconductor. Any chip a fab produces need hefty paper work to prove it cannot be used for military. This is due to the military-industrial complex lobby. They don't want cheap competition.
No it does not. Drone warfare is a hot topic in Europe, there’s a lot going on right now.
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2025/ger...
Also, Helsing is apparently a decacorn now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)
Sure seems so. They should just clone the latest Russian improved Geran and call it a day, but oc they won’t.
The thing in the article, a modified Vlakyrie is very different to a Geran suicide drone. It's more an uncrewed mini F-35 https://www.twz.com/air/xq-58-valkyrie-heading-to-european-m...
Yeah, more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_S-70_Okhotnik-B
The Ukrainians are still getting a lot of use out of F16s and the US from their aircraft carriers. These things are not fully redundant yet.
It's just a project to extract the maximum amount from the "Sondervermögen", while the conservatives are still having a say.
Doesn't make sense. Esp. since the "Bundeswehr" already lacks personal and the resistance against conscription is huge.
Delaying things has become a typical German thing. They always "check" what to do, debate endlessly without results. (Like with their cartel office: no other European country has seen gasoline prices rise as fast and they're still "checking" if there's an illegal cartel agreement -- and their only solution is to lower taxes on gas, which already didn't work back when Russia attacked the Ukraine) They are still able to improve during disasters, like when they raised the LPG terminals within two years. They have to have their -- as they phrase it -- "Arsch auf Grundeis" (ass on ground ice) first, before anything is moving forward.
It's a crude mixture of conservatism, corruption/euphemism: "lobbying", laziness and old fashioned know-it alls blocking real, obvious innovation.