As an Italian I hope you wake up guys, because guess who has the biggest arms industry in Europe
I can’t say for whole EU, but countries which Russia aimed is guns, may wat to arm itself fast. Waiting for tank or other equipment to 2040 is not an option. Additionally, some equipment has no other alternatives e.g. F-35, which has no replacement on the world.
So idea of European companies arming Europe make sense, but on the other hand it loses with time of delivery.
As EU Commissioner Breton pointed out, Europe has a better (and bigger) military-industrial base than China and the US. It just has been dormant. Awaken the giant? That is a political decision.
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I mean, it’s not like we are buying it from Temu. But it is always good to at least have the capability to quickly produce whatever you need just in case.
What did they expect? They let their industrial base drop massively after the Cold War.
If you want to build it up again, you need to place massive orders to upgrade and replace militaries. Send all the old stuff to Ukraine.
1000+ Leopards
1000+ CV90’s
Millions of artillery shells, hundreds of millions in ammo.
Industries need commitments to get loans to expand long term.
Did we really need a report to say something everyone who’s spent more than two minutes thinking about our relationship to the US vis-à-vis NATO spending realised eons ago?
European slapdash defence spending is bad for interoperability, is bad for R&D and local manufacturing, makes us dangerously dependant on a politically unreliable ally with clearly conflicting foreign policy goals and probably costs us more in the long run too.
There is a reason the notion of ‘Atlanticism’ exists, regardless of on which side of that argument you come down.
Yeah, after decades of ignoring our security concerns now we’re gonna buy German tanks and wait 15 years for delivery
Meaning that the US practically keeps the European military industrial complex alive, while European purchases into the American MIC are a drop in the bucket.
Let’s not pretend like this is a one way street where Europe is just throwing money at the US while getting nothing in return.
EU nations spend a collective $295 billion a year. If the UK hadn’t left, that would be $364 billion. That’s an absolute insane amount and with more joint procurement it would go very far indeed.
Yes, let’s keep being great trade partners EU. Keep sending that Ozempic over!
Oh, really? Never would have guessed….
Get to fixing that right away, then. It cannot be fixed in a year or two, you know. I would rather not have the defense of my country wait for the US to greenlight its strike plans.
….. The “We should have more weapon”-posts tend to ignore this and the consequences of feeding money into the previously trumplead military complex.
The EU shouldn’t be buying any defense equipment, it’s not a military alliance. Why not talk about the European members of NATO buying too much equipment from the US? EU members who aren’t in NATO shouldn’t need to go shopping, while non-EU NATO states like Norway probably will.
The US buys a lot of defense equipment from Europe and licenses a lot more. A good chunk of our machine guns are bought or licensed from FN in Belgium. A lot of our navy cannons come from BAE in the UK.
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[deleted]
As an Italian I hope you wake up guys, because guess who has the biggest arms industry in Europe
I can’t say for whole EU, but countries which Russia aimed is guns, may wat to arm itself fast. Waiting for tank or other equipment to 2040 is not an option. Additionally, some equipment has no other alternatives e.g. F-35, which has no replacement on the world.
So idea of European companies arming Europe make sense, but on the other hand it loses with time of delivery.
As EU Commissioner Breton pointed out, Europe has a better (and bigger) military-industrial base than China and the US. It just has been dormant. Awaken the giant? That is a political decision.
[deleted]
I mean, it’s not like we are buying it from Temu. But it is always good to at least have the capability to quickly produce whatever you need just in case.
What did they expect? They let their industrial base drop massively after the Cold War.
If you want to build it up again, you need to place massive orders to upgrade and replace militaries. Send all the old stuff to Ukraine.
1000+ Leopards
1000+ CV90’s
Millions of artillery shells, hundreds of millions in ammo.
Industries need commitments to get loans to expand long term.
Did we really need a report to say something everyone who’s spent more than two minutes thinking about our relationship to the US vis-à-vis NATO spending realised eons ago?
European slapdash defence spending is bad for interoperability, is bad for R&D and local manufacturing, makes us dangerously dependant on a politically unreliable ally with clearly conflicting foreign policy goals and probably costs us more in the long run too.
There is a reason the notion of ‘Atlanticism’ exists, regardless of on which side of that argument you come down.
Yeah, after decades of ignoring our security concerns now we’re gonna buy German tanks and wait 15 years for delivery
What this article fails to point out is, when you look at European MIC, [BAE got 50% of it’s 2023 revenue from the US, while only 10% actually came from Europe. ](https://investors.baesystems.com/%7E/media/Files/B/BAE-Systems-Investor/investors/annual-reports/2023-annual-report.pdf)
[Also, the US DOD is Leonardos biggest customer. Accounting for 85% of their yearly sales.](https://investors.leonardodrs.com/corporate-profile#:~:text=The%20US%20DoD%20is%20our,business%20as%20an%20end%2Duser)
[Meanwhile a US company like lockhead martin gets 80% of it’s revenue from the US government. Only 20% comes from international buyers.](https://www.tenderalpha.com/blog/post/fundamental-analysis/lockheed-martin-sales-soar-as-backlog-records-rare-decline)
Meaning that the US practically keeps the European military industrial complex alive, while European purchases into the American MIC are a drop in the bucket.
Let’s not pretend like this is a one way street where Europe is just throwing money at the US while getting nothing in return.
EU nations spend a collective $295 billion a year. If the UK hadn’t left, that would be $364 billion. That’s an absolute insane amount and with more joint procurement it would go very far indeed.
Yes, let’s keep being great trade partners EU. Keep sending that Ozempic over!
Oh, really? Never would have guessed….
Get to fixing that right away, then. It cannot be fixed in a year or two, you know. I would rather not have the defense of my country wait for the US to greenlight its strike plans.
….. The “We should have more weapon”-posts tend to ignore this and the consequences of feeding money into the previously trumplead military complex.
The EU shouldn’t be buying any defense equipment, it’s not a military alliance. Why not talk about the European members of NATO buying too much equipment from the US? EU members who aren’t in NATO shouldn’t need to go shopping, while non-EU NATO states like Norway probably will.
The US buys a lot of defense equipment from Europe and licenses a lot more. A good chunk of our machine guns are bought or licensed from FN in Belgium. A lot of our navy cannons come from BAE in the UK.