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Posted
3 hours ago, Hefeweizen said:

The way Europe gets American attention is refocusing their purchasing of military hardware.  The defense industry in the U.S. collapses if it is down to Israel and the US buying its shit.  I see a real chance that the US slide to irrelevance accelerates this year.  China is the big winner just by staying the course.  Taiwan will fall on their lap.

I guess here's my question: if you're Lockheed Martin or L3Harris, don't you open a European subsidiary and assign all of your intellectual property to it.  Maybe they all have European subsidiaries already. 

But if the real buyer in the next two decades is going to be Europe, then why would American defense contractors put themselves in a position of losing out on that? 

And from the Europeans' standpoint, why would they not take advantage of all that available technology that the American taxpayer already paid to develop if they can entice American defense contractors to set up shop in Europe and employ European workers to build the mech?

I just see a future in which L3Harris is primarily a European company.

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Posted

I can’t see a scenario where they give up the sweet DOD lucre they’ve been milking from the teat.  I think the assignment of IP is quite possible and setting up a related party at arms length (haha) is how I’d try approach it.

Posted
3 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

I guess here's my question: if you're Lockheed Martin or L3Harris, don't you open a European subsidiary and assign all of your intellectual property to it.  Maybe they all have European subsidiaries already. 

But if the real buyer in the next two decades is going to be Europe, then why would American defense contractors put themselves in a position of losing out on that? 

And from the Europeans' standpoint, why would they not take advantage of all that available technology that the American taxpayer already paid to develop if they can entice American defense contractors to set up shop in Europe and employ European workers to build the mech?

I just see a future in which L3Harris is primarily a European company.

The DOD and Commerce Department have a lot of laws limiting the sharing of IP, both for defense and dual use (commercial and defense). 
 
The U.S. spends 916B on defense, per year. The U.K., France and Germany, combined, spend $200B annually. Europe could increase defense spending by 50% (they are discussing increasing 10-20%, phased over three years), and their market is still dwarfed by the U.S.  

Remember- Russia invaded three years ago. That was not enough to make Europe get serious. In those three years, they have spent more on Russian energy than they gave (loaned) to Ukraine. 
 
 The U.K. has about 70K active duty army troops. Do you think they are sending 20K to Ukraine?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-army-troops-ukraine-defence-b2701635.html

Europe is showing signs of seriousness. They have introduced legislation in Brussels that would allow them to break debt limits for defense spending. That’s the first step. The second step is to dump the net zero mandates to allow production of weaponry. 

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Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

I guess here's my question: if you're Lockheed Martin or L3Harris, don't you open a European subsidiary and assign all of your intellectual property to it.  Maybe they all have European subsidiaries already. 

But if the real buyer in the next two decades is going to be Europe, then why would American defense contractors put themselves in a position of losing out on that? 

And from the Europeans' standpoint, why would they not take advantage of all that available technology that the American taxpayer already paid to develop if they can entice American defense contractors to set up shop in Europe and employ European workers to build the mech?

I just see a future in which L3Harris is primarily a European company.

Many if not most already do have subsidiaries. The big ones you’ve heard of certainly.  For example Lockheed builds F-35s in Italy, General Dynamics Land Systems has a European HQ in Spain that produces locally, and the M777 that is our own towed artillery piece is made by BAE with most production in England. 
 

The problem facing Europe is how deeply integrated and dependent their own production is with the United States (take a look at where components for a Gripen come from). Second is complete U.S. tech dominance in exquisite, strategic, and high-end capabilities. We guard it jealously and that kind of knowledge can’t be reproduced easily.  Lockheed can’t just announce they are giving the F-35 radar to its European branch. These are vulnerabilities for us, too, but not near the extreme. 
 

Truly decoupling European and U.S. defense production would be deleting System 32 for Europe and they are going to have to be deliberate and cautious about how and where they choose to do this. 

Edited by 956 Worldwide
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Posted
10 minutes ago, statsman said:

The DOD and Commerce Department have a lot of laws limiting the sharing of IP, both for defense and dual use (commercial and defense). 
 
The U.S. spends 916B on defense, per year. The U.K., France and Germany, combined, spend $200B annually. Europe could increase defense spending by 50% (they are discussing increasing 10-20%, phased over three years), and their market is still dwarfed by the U.S.  

Remember- Russia invaded three years ago. That was not enough to make Europe get serious. In those three years, they have spent more on Russian energy than they gave (loaned) to Ukraine. 
 
 The U.K. has about 70K active duty army troops. Do you think they are sending 20K to Ukraine?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-army-troops-ukraine-defence-b2701635.html

Europe is showing signs of seriousness. They have introduced legislation in Brussels that would allow them to break debt limits for defense spending. That’s the first step. The second step is to dump the net zero mandates to allow production of weaponry. 

Ironically, Europe actually needs Ukraine. Ukraine has nearly 4M active duty and reserve military personnel and possibly the most advanced unmanned (drone) weaponry programs in the world. They also have, uh, lots of recent experience fighting wars.

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Posted

You know who has been really serious about building their military? The PLA. 
 
I am of the opinion that the single most important strategic foreign policy goal of the US should be to deter China. 

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Posted
39 minutes ago, Auto Driller said:

Ironically, Europe actually needs Ukraine. Ukraine has nearly 4M active duty and reserve military personnel and possibly the most advanced unmanned (drone) weaponry programs in the world. They also have, uh, lots of recent experience fighting wars.

That's an excellent and underappreciated point.

I'd also observe that Ukraine has a lot of intelligence capabilities inside Russia that aren't readily reproducible.  

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Posted
30 minutes ago, Auto Driller said:

Ironically, Europe actually needs Ukraine. Ukraine has nearly 4M active duty and reserve military personnel and possibly the most advanced unmanned (drone) weaponry programs in the world. They also have, uh, lots of recent experience fighting wars.

They have experience. Is it the right experience? A strong retreat is not what you want. Don't get me wrong. It is impressive what they have done, but I did not think they would capitulate.

It still took the Russians almost 3 years to get to Berlin from Stalingrad. And that was with the added bonus of full mobilization and western support.

4M are going to be shells of humans when this is over. No one with standing armies could continue after ww1/ww2 except for the US.

It is a mistake to think this is how all wars are going to be.

Concerning expansion.

What the EU is proposing is what we have been asking them to do for a long time. For instance, Strategic Air. They do not use the same aircraft across services. So maintenance is an issue. They do not have enough to sustain medium operations. The Brits has 6K troops in Helmand and were stretched for support.

It comes down to four countries and maybe if Scandinavia works together, they equal a 5th. Poland, German, France and the UK. Italy and Spain participate, but they are not leaders. Luxembourg? Slovenia? Greece?

Concerning the Turks. They are a wild card. Yeah, they hate the Russians, want to be in NATO, but they are not, and never have been, a threat to Russia. Fuck shit up? Yes. Take Moscow? No.

TL:DR. EU should have done this already. Ukraine is not typical. Best EU can do is contain. Now was the chance to neuter the bear and we are fucking it up.

 

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Posted
7 minutes ago, statsman said:

You know who has been really serious about building their military? The PLA. 
 
I am of the opinion that the single most important strategic foreign policy goal of the US should be to deter China. 

Numbers do not equal capacity. Again, they cannot project that force. A lot of their army is designed for internal shit. And it has never been tested.

As we are learning with the Russians. Yeah, looks good on Parade, but what about sustained in the field?

Can their navy project? Can they land 2 divisions in Panama? Not even LA.

 

4 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

That's an excellent and underappreciated point.

I'd also observe that Ukraine has a lot of intelligence capabilities inside Russia that aren't readily reproducible.  

I overlooked the second. But then so do a lot of other groups.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Numbers do not equal capacity. Again, they cannot project that force. A lot of their army is designed for internal shit. And it has never been tested.

As we are learning with the Russians. Yeah, looks good on Parade, but what about sustained in the field?

Can their navy project? Can they land 2 divisions in Panama? Not even LA.

 

I overlooked the second. But then so do a lot of other groups.

These are good points and get at the heart of the issue. Before settling on a common defense policy and posture, Europe first has to decide what “Europe” is and second has to determine what role it wants to play as a geopolitical actor.  Both questions are still very much open. 
 

What is “Europe?”  Is this the EU 27? What about Britain? What about Turkey? Will it simply be NATO minus the U.S.? These are contentious and not at all settled questions. A big reason that everyone just let NATO continue to be the main security architecture is simply because it already existed and agreeing on a new one was too hard.  None of those problems have gone away. 
 

And because “Europe” doesn’t exist, it can hardly settle on a defined strategic concept.  Yes, Europe has shitty strategic airlift capacity but does a Europe that only cares about defending its common eastern flank need the robust capacity we have? The only reason we have it is because for decades we’ve known that any war we fight will be far, far away and across oceans. 
 

But maybe Europe does want force projection? At least Britain and France will want some level of blue water capability, and maybe an at-sea-deterrent that is uninteresting to Poland or Germany.  The Baltics will squeal about anything that takes force away from the eastern flank, and we aren’t even beginning to talk about Balkans or potential Turkish interests. How do you reconcile member states competing priorities. 
 

U.S. defense production and posture is full of irrationalities and tradeoffs introduced by things like congressional politics and intra-service rivalries and state clout.  And we ARE a defined political unit with a common foreign policy.  
 

There are massive frictions to a common European approach to defense at the structural and political level before we even address the technical. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, UpperWestside said:

France being the big balls character in the story is quite the turn. More of them kicking dirt publicly on the orange god king please.

Again, not really. There is no one else to lead the EU. As 956 noted, France has always been the philosophical leader in the EU. Brits for markets, Germans for industry, France for brains and vision.

We just have, on both the right and left, a fucked up concept of who France was, is and will be.

 

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Posted
9 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Again, not really. There is no one else to lead the EU. As 956 noted, France has always been the philosophical leader in the EU. Brits for markets, Germans for industry, France for brains and vision.

We just have, on both the right and left, a fucked up concept of who France was, is and will be.

 

All of that is now history. In times of necessity you find out who actually cares. In this new fun era of the US being governed by nutjob grifters and outright traitors someone has to step up and try. For now at least that someone is France and I'm alright with them putting forth the effort.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

All of that is now history. In times of necessity you find out who actually cares. In this new fun era of the US being governed by nutjob grifters and outright traitors someone has to step up and try. For now at least that someone is France and I'm alright with them putting forth the effort.

Same here. Plus Gauloise were my go to.

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Posted
1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Important to note that the UK’s deterrent is extremely dependent on the United States. 

Yep, and so is the system to bottle up Ruskie subs. EU ain't got many Jonesy's

image.jpeg.d9df46598762dfcf4a80fd518e23c394.jpeg

 

Posted

You guys arguing sound like old geezers with tall crowned WWII veteran block script ball caps drinking cold coffee at McDonald’s at 5am.

IMO the next first world hot conflict involving multiple theatres will be MOSTLY reliant on the new digital warfare. Supply lines of rifle bullets and machine guns and tanks might as well be trench warfare. I’m talking digital warfare— cheap, dispensable autonomous lethal weapons. War machines run on software. Satellite capabilities, interconnectedness and self flying drones, missles, etc. That sort of thing. 

The next war between real powers is going to be the first modern war and I think everyone is going to be surprised what palantir and Anduril have cooked up and enabled an L3 or Raytheon or Honeywell to be capable of.

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

 

 

The expectation of incoming higher arms spending was one of the factors that led to the European aerospace and defense sector stock index to rise a record high of 7.7% on March 3, as reported by Reuters.

The stocks of German, French, British, and Italian defense manufacturers were the ones that experienced the largest jumps. Italy’s Leonardo surged 16%, followed closely by Britain’s BAE Systems and Thales which gained more than 14% while German defense group Rheinmetall advanced 13,7%, according to the Wall Street Journal.

 

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Posted
12 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

image.thumb.png.ee140151f8ed9f2c969fd9f78b999d3a.png

Just want to leave it here that the Global Times is a virulently anti-American / anti-Western arm of the CCP/PLA, not really a source I'd go to even for political cartoons (and this one doesn't really make a hell of a lot of sense anyway). Europe and the rest of the West has no shortage of pointed (and funny) political commentary to choose from. 

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Posted

i'm 52 with a very bad knee, i'd be all in. whatever i can do ...,

Poland will introduce "military training for every adult male" to ensure they can "become full-fledged soldiers in conflict situations", says PM @donaldtusk.

"It must become a tradition that every healthy man should want to train to defend the homeland"

Posted
18 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Yep, and so is the system to bottle up Ruskie subs. EU ain't got many Jonesy's

image.jpeg.d9df46598762dfcf4a80fd518e23c394.jpeg

 

But the flip side is the Russians ain't got many Ramius left either.

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Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, G650 said:

But the flip side is the Russians ain't got many Ramius left either.

 

ive been to Vilnius and asked about seeing Ramius's birthplace 

also, the hotel had the best damn bacon ever

Edited by tx 3 putt
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Posted
19 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Yep, and so is the system to bottle up Ruskie subs. EU ain't got many Jonesy's

image.jpeg.d9df46598762dfcf4a80fd518e23c394.jpeg

my guess is that, by now, in 2025, with 50 years of classified electronic signature (radar/sonar) research, above and below sea level, our effective sonar range, which is 'officially' less than the russian boats, is not really important any more because, and i'm just speculating here, i would be surprised if we did not have an ultra-classified technology that functions as an undetectable non-stationary "dew line" deployed near the ocean floor across the bering straight, key ('northwest passage') chokepoints in the high canadian arctic and norway-svalbard-greenland, and then 'similar' if not the same technology with the ability to run 'forever' on nuclear power, shadowing every russian boat on every patrol anywhere it goes anywhere on the planet

in other words, we probably know where the russian  boats are 7x24x365; china too (they have 6 w/ nukes)

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Posted
19 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Important to note that the UK’s deterrent is extremely dependent on the United States. 

the uk bought 58 trident II missiles in 93; they have 50 left after test firings; yes they do have to go to georgia periodically for maintenance; however we are gettign in to topics that dotard would never dare fuck with; but other than the periodic servicing in the us, and software updates from us, the crown has full autonomy - their boats, their warheads - although the entire command structure is set up to subjugate their nukes to the us/nato

the weirdness here is the idea that the uk would ever need to contemplate force projection without us being involved in a geopolitical scenario that made the threat of independent deterrence necessary

adding this one to the should-read list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Posted
19 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

You guys arguing sound like old geezers with tall crowned WWII veteran block script ball caps drinking cold coffee at McDonald’s at 5am.

IMO the next first world hot conflict involving multiple theatres will be MOSTLY reliant on the new digital warfare. Supply lines of rifle bullets and machine guns and tanks might as well be trench warfare. I’m talking digital warfare— cheap, dispensable autonomous lethal weapons. War machines run on software. Satellite capabilities, interconnectedness and self flying drones, missles, etc. That sort of thing. 

The next war between real powers is going to be the first modern war and I think everyone is going to be surprised what palantir and Anduril have cooked up and enabled an L3 or Raytheon or Honeywell to be capable of.

all of this may be true

none of it does away with the necessity of drinking cold mcdonalds coffee at 5am

Posted
22 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Yep, and so is the system to bottle up Ruskie subs. EU ain't got many Jonesy's

image.jpeg.d9df46598762dfcf4a80fd518e23c394.jpeg

 

On this point, the German Type-212 attack submarine is a very effective weapon to counter the Russian naval threat in the Baltic and North seas.  We scoff because it's a diesel-electric boat.  But the reality is that it's probably quieter and less detectable than the Virginia Class.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Ghost of LL said:

On this point, the German Type-212 attack submarine is a very effective weapon to counter the Russian naval threat in the Baltic and North seas.  We scoff because it's a diesel-electric boat.  But the reality is that it's probably quieter and less detectable than the Virginia Class.

Modern diesel electric boats are quieter than nuclear powered submarines when submerged and running on batteries.  We don’t use them because we need to perform global extended patrols across open ocean. For the German (and Swedish, Norwegian, Italian) mission a diesel electric boat is not just cheaper, it’s better. 

Posted

Trump's Neville Chamberlain moment will be his announcing that the war is over when Putin agrees to end the war in Ukraine and draw lines where the front is currently drawn; Putin then withdraw 1/2 of the Russian troops and redeploys them to the Baltic states. And once in a defensive war, to protect Mother Russis from NATO expansion.



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