Which military capabilities needs Europe to expand most urgently to deter another Russian aggression?

[Bereta_Eder]

[Uncle Sparky]

Does Bulgaria still make those novelty umbrellas? A few dozen in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Washington, DC in the right hands should do the job.

[Bereta_Eder]

no idea about the bulgarian umbrellas but concerning the video about the EU army when it says that leadership should rest on the european council, I'd add with certain decisions being able to be takenn through enhanced majority so one little russophile pr!ck (call me orban) can't block the whole thing. In order for the enhanced majority to be accepted on army matters there must be a guarantee for example a further strengthening of automatic defense of each and every member strate so we can move armies around if we have to. That way the europan council can avoid paralysis by one bad apple and operate on the basis of concensus and democratically (since i consider this video actually tallks about the first step to an eventual fully integreated european army)

[Geronimo]

I'm not seeing the scenario where someone (Putin?) who is willing to launch nukes and trigger MAD would stop because someone tells him "I see what you're doing".

Also, what 'taking the warheads out of storage'? Any attempt at counter-force first strikes would be done using SLBM from closer to the targets to reduce flight time as much as possible.

There are many options. you threaten early after detection. You use conventional forces to cripple the deployment of forces for the attack before it is launched. pessimistically you start evacuations of some kind. without the intel a bunch of horrible flashes of light in a bunch of places leaves you with nothing to respond with. The UK SLBM response is dependent on a US delivery system (which they have control over I admit) and that leaves the French response which might not be decisive if Russia intentionally omits France from their targets as in the old USSR playbooks. (ie France might not nuke the adversary on behalf of their buddies against a far more heavily armed adversary that is hitting the buddies but not them.)

This is of course only relevant if enough warheads or conventional strike forces are available to make an adversary's crippling first strike require more than a small fraction of the warheads that are normally deployed by that adversary. If SLBMs can achieve a crippling first strike against you need more of everything that would be targeted in a counter force attack

[Dauphin]

I know. and I think Putin will calculate that UK's nuke delivery system is dependent on US support and that France will only use its nukes in response to attacks on France. More will be needed for certain. More intelligence is needed to make Putin less confident about his ability to take his nukes out of storage and deploy them for a decapitating and totally disarming first counter force strike in secret as well as less confidence about his ability to stage a conventional assault into part of Europe in secret.

With nukes unless they are used for city busting counter value strikes good timely intelligence is key and intelligence assets that your adversary can recognize but not easily deny are best.

Nuclear war or a nuclear offensive that see Russia taking over Europe is not going to be in the US's interest. If US intelligence suspects a nuclear strike is about to be unleashed I'm pretty sure the US would take whatever action was necessary to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict. Be that informing UK, France or whomever can react, or telling Russia itself to stand down.

Only if the US sees gain from a nuclear war in Europe would they even think about sitting on their intel. And if that's the case, the US is in a deep deep hole of darkness.

[BeBMan]

Ahh, the good old nuke scare. Putin loves to make threats, esp. that he's not bluffing, but beyond there's nothing.

That's not to say that nukes are irrelevant, and Europe may need to up its nuke business in some way, esp. if the US is out for good, but Russia start using them would mean they isolate themselves, and lose countries which they do depend on economically.

Which might be one reason why Vlad's threats did not materialize, the other being that Russia loves to talk up nukes because their conventional forces are ....uhhh...underperforming.

[Provost Harrison]

the era of the monsters

Oh that's good, it needed an update and this is perfect

[Provost Harrison]

Baby steps. First we increase integration and cooperation and sharing. Then we strategically expand the concept. Hopefully my own country isn't going to be a bunch of arseholes again but to be honest, I think of all the countries in the EU plus UK, I suspect the country with the lowest support for being out of the EU may actually be the UK. We've lived it. It was sh*t ;-)

[Provost Harrison]

As I say paiktis, the main problem I have with an EU army is a FOMO for my country. And although I wouldn't serve (too old now anyway), I already do my part for European defence.

[giblets]

The ability to not buy Russian oil and gas

[BeBMan]

So money gets mobilised in Europe for defence, possibly several 100 bn of Eurobucks. Which is a helluva lot, unless it's spent not wisely or gets lost in political or bureaucratic back and forth.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/mar/06/eu-leaders-summit-defence-ukraine-russia-macron-zelenskyy-europe-news-live

However, meanwhile Russia has given up already

https://tass.com/politics/1923649

[Provost Harrison]

All of the things, lots of them and all straight away :-)

On a more serious note though, drone technology should be the first thing...requires little manpower and is cheap given the effectivevness. And we have plenty we can cooperate with Ukraine on in this respect - they know a thing or two in the field about drone warfare.

But otherwise all have merit. Missles, missiles, missiles - and the more hypersonic the better :-D

[Provost Harrison]

So money gets mobilised in Europe for defence, possibly several 100 bn of Eurobucks. Which is a helluva lot, unless it's spent not wisely or gets lost in political or bureaucratic back and forth.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/mar/06/eu-leaders-summit-defence-ukraine-russia-macron-zelenskyy-europe-news-live

However, meanwhile Russia has given up already

https://tass.com/politics/1923649

There's no arms race with Russia, Russia has a GDP of 2 trillion whereas just the EU (excluding other close allies such as the UK and Canada) are 20 trillion. And Russia at the moment are trying and hard. But they're smashed their military into the Ukrainian wall which will be hard to recover (I mean they are using donkeys once more for transport at the warfront which is indicative). We just need to reinforce that Ukrainian wall as much as is possible and make their defence as effective and risk-free as possible. There's a lot of propaganda going around that they "lost" and "it's a matter of time". It's just US-Russian propaganda. They are fielding almost a million soldiers with another million+ in reserve. What they need is all the meaningful assistance they can supply because, at the moment, I have my doubts whether Russia could field such a military in terms of manpower. With the backing of Europe, Russia can be repelled.

[Provost Harrison]

Forgot to add, we need to get smarter at cyber warfare. We've been sleepwalking when it comes to this. The US and Russia have successfully manipulated a lot of our more vulnerable minds and even now is in a position where it is posing an existential threat. We need to turn off the taps. Ultimata to US social media firms for accountability in their sources otherwise stringent penalties. And if the penalties aren't paid, like in the example set by Brazil, then off go the taps. Identification of propaganda sources and neutralisation too. This is the war we are currently fighting, including with the US. We need to expose and destroy the traitors within our midst, we know they are there, we know they are compromised. We get lectured about "freedom" by the US but I just need to refer us all back to WWII and acts such as defence of the realm act and how we dealt with traitors then. Where there is freedom there is also responsibility and we need to be aware of the paradox of tolerance. Because these people are arguing in bad faith trying to create philosophical knots around those without the critical thinking skills. The tenet we need to uphold is "we are tolerant, but not tolerant of those who threaten tolerance".

[Berzerker]

sadly probably WMDs and not just any WMDs, specifically nukes with advanced delivery platforms and the independent orbital intelligence gathering to deliver them where it matters.

Nah, just a bunch of Number 5s and operation gotchya last

nobody light a match