Welchers though many of the Euros may be, I'd rather foot the bill for not letting Russia roll over them than let Russia roll over them.

For what seems like the thousanth time.. the EU has the second highest defence spending in the world. We also have two nuclear armed coutries.

Not for long and not anywhere that matters. Euros ran out of ****ing bombs THREE DAYS into Libya. They'd last half a ****ing hour against Russia. The RN can barely scrape the cash to put ships to sea these days. It's a mess.

You say that like its exactly the same as being one country with one chain of command, intelligence agency, logistics agency, etc, and not a few dozen.


Yeah, and between them they might be able to get two missiles through the Moscow ABM network.

Oh shut the **** up with your idiotic FOX news quoting bull****. You sound like a ****ing moron.

That's a fair point, but neither are they countries that never operate together.

How is the Moscow ABM network going to stop a Trident attack?

European countries are not nearly as able to interoperate as you seem to think they are. For example, the Swedes use different JP for their Gripens than the countries that use American planes do, and the countries that fly French or Eurofighter planes use different JP as well. So, we're right back to the "multiple supply chains" bit. Crap, France can't even use the same 5.56 everyone else uses for their rifles.


And some of the big players are pretty notorious about not giving two ****s about maintenance and having mostly inoperable equipment. The Germans had better serviceability rates on Sardinia in 1943, supplied by barges and bombed by the allies.

Hell, during my 2004-05 deployment the Marlborough had deployed with a non-functioning surface search radar. That's absurd. You can't treat the EU as one giant military when, at the individual level, no one is spending the cash to keep what they have operational.

Rage already mentioned the warstocks issue. I don't know what the hell the Europeans are spending their money on, but if they really are spending a appropriate amount of cash why'd they suddenly hit a wall on a operation that had a low optempo, that the US had kicked the door in for? He wasn't doing a mindless FOX News quote, it's pretty well known.

(By the way, the linked article mentioned the difficulty the Europeans were in having in also scrounging up even another 10 aircraft for the mission, which makes one think that Germany isn't unique in numbers of aircraft that are actually operational).

Same way as always; they'll shoot them down. Unlike the Americans, they never decided it was politically unacceptable to use nukes to shoot down incomings.

I'm not for a second arguing that the euro countries couldnt do a lot more to get their **** together, but there's a couple of things there, firstly the EU is not a country. Yes it might help a lot is we all used the same kit (or at least kit that used the same supply materials) but that doesn't mean countries aren't capable of effectively arming and maintaining their own when necessary. Yes it's more inefficient, but bear in mind any significant conflict that involved the EU countries en mass would be a defensive conflict anyway.

That stuff about Libya is just stupid though. Panetta and the like used it as a great tool for arguing for increased euro defence spending, and the US papers loved it because it allowed them to wave the 'America **** Yeah!' flag, but the truth wasnt the story being told. Interventions like Libya involve those countries being willing to spend money and commit resources for a non-essential goal. How many bombs were being dropped in Libya or how many planes being commited didn't mean that was the entirety of the stocks available to each country, and the idea that it was is nonsensical.

The simple truth is that Russia couldn't launch an effective invasion of Europe regardless of whether the US was involved or not. They have an large army bloated by poorly trained conscripts and will the bulk of their hardware out of date. Any sign of Russia seriously improving it's capabilities will lead to a corresponding rise in spending by Europe. What we won't do however is spend ridiculous sums like the US does on a military that is completely unnecessary for any relevant threats and which is usually just making it's own hardware obsolete by perpetual advances and upgrades.

You're the one that acted as if it was in your first post killer, not me.

Actually, the point is that at the, at the individual level, the European countries are largely not maintaining their equipment.

Actually, it told a lot. It should have been very, very easy given the conditions they were operating in. That they ran into a wall for a very "small" war makes one wonder what kind of war did they Europeans think they were going to fight? They have enough to fight a war against someone like Russia but not a disintegrating Libya whose air defense network has already been bombed flat by the US?

Do you see how stupid that argument is? They didn't have the bombs for the war they wanted to fight, and it was a small war. What evidence is there that they are sitting on a stockpile somewhere that's big enough to right someone like Russia?



It's incredibly dicey. Russia, a country with a GDP the size of Italy's, has managed to continue revive it's strategic bomber force, continue production of capital-intensive assets like warships and aircraft, and managed to pull off reasonably-impressive operations given their limitations. Is the EU Ukraine or Georgia? No, of course not, but most of the European countries are not acting like they take defense seriously. When you turn into a hollowed-out force, other countries are not going to be too impressed with whatever you rattle back at them. You're talking big while you can't maintain your equipment, or are actively getting rid of it.

As opposed to the poorly trained volunteers the European countries come up with.


Ironic claim, as most of the Western Europeans are mostly coasting on Cold War "fat" material-wise, and they face block obsolescence. Hell, the vast majority of their most impressive airplane(when it's flying) uses dinosaur avionics. The Russian air force has more AESA-equipped fighters than NATOs European members.


Bull****. Sorry, but that's complete bull****.

Even if Russia hadn't been spending the past 15 years rebuilding it's power projection ability(mostly through heavy bombers) and refurbing a lot of it's equipment, the European nations have been uniformly cutting spending even as they've been engaged in shooting wars in Afghanistan, and some in Iraq. They won't even increase spending when faced with protracted combat. Why the hell would I believe, why would anyone believe that you'll "increase spending as you need it" in that case?


Actually, as established, you guys won't even spend enough money to keep your existing equipment operational. If you aren't committed to your own defense, why the hell should the US be?

Many of us would like you to not be. I'd be extremely happy with a scenario that involved you returning to an isolationist stance. Europe is more than capable of tsaking care of it's own defense.

Well, no it isn't. That's the point I'm trying to make. You're expecting us to do the fighting and dying for you while not providing anything for the common defense.

it's nice to see a beneficiary of the biggest US government welfare programme showing some solidarity by demanding that similar largesse be directed towards his comrades in europe.

Well, Europe is still self hating and feeling guilty for both the 2 WWs and the colonial period. You can blame whoever you want for this guilt feeling, the fact is it is there. White European = bad, anyone else = good.
Europeans are thus not very fond of armies (world war) and even less of overseas operations (colonialism).
The problem is that when you want to maintain an army, without some overseas operations here and there, in less than 25 years you end up with a generation of soldiers that have never been under fire. And after now 70 years of peace, we have a population that do not understand why we are still spending money on an army.
On top of that, you add the fact that most crisis and conflict are fought on the money ground. Take the example of Gaddafi. How much troops do you think we'd need to take him off? We closed his bank account and in no time he was gone. From a western perspective, a lot more efficient than some military operations.
Gold is often more efficient than steel.

Now, to say we provide nothing is not true.
It is true we provide close to nothing in terms of front line ground troops, and we freak out as soon as we have 3 dead soldiers, but we do help in terms of logistic.
By some historical irony it looks like we do now what the US did at the beginning of WW2: not providing ground troops, but providing supplies.

So yes, we are supporting you from a distance, and I indeed believe our troops are not ready for fire. Just as you weren't in 41.
But I also believe that given the right circumstances (that means revolution in the civilian mind), we could catch up in less than a year, as you did in 42.