The costly duplication and logistical/technical inefficiency of weapon systems in Europe
October 2, 2024
The costly duplication and logistical/technical inefficiency of weapon systems in Europe
https://i.redd.it/rlfiz1kw9csd1.png
by EUstrongerthanUS
36 comments
You do realize Europe is not one country?
It’s almost like USA is a single country, whereas EU is a collection of independent states…
FWIW, in reality EU has two models of tanks: Leopard 2 and Leclerc. Italy had Ariete, but they are moving to Leopard 2.
I call this feature. While it’s probably true that this is inefficient and reduces our ability to attack someone, it also makes it basically impossible to defeat Europe because there isn’t a central military you can take out.
Also I am not even 100% sure how inefficient this is. Scaling up systems only increases efficiency up to a certain point. Just look how “efficient” the EU apparatus works and ask yourself if this is what you want to build your territorial defense on. What we really need is integration.
The difficulty is sharing proprietary tech to companies that are your direct competitors, even if they’re in allied countries. It will happen slowly though as more companies merge.
Except if you count all the old Soviet T-72s/T-80s etc.
You still getting your panties wet for a federal europe?
It will eventually trickle down too
And then that one model will be stupid expensive and then that corporation will have a monopoly and off you go again
Well, turns out the European Defence Community wasn’t such a bad idea in the late 40s eh? Too bad we had the early 40s too…
I think the problem isnt the duplication, its that the quantity isnt sufficient to justify them.
The EU doesn’t have a common standing army. It doesn’t even have any real clauses or protocols for military cooperation between the nation’s standing armies.
The solution is clearly to force everyone to use American tech because everyone has the same requirements as everyone else.
Does America *really* only have 1 kind of tank?
I mean it looks good on paper but I can hardly believe it.
“Tank” is an incredibly generic term.
M1 Abrams suggests MTB so Main battle Tank. Of which there is really only a couple, definitely bellow 10 in the EU. It is possible that there are more types in Eastern an balcan member states, which were inherited from the USSR, but those are being put out of service, and are definitely not on the production line any more.
Same goes for fighter aircraft? Do we mean gen 3-4-5 fighters? Fighter bombers? Stealth fighters? Are multi-purpose aircraft included here?
As per the Letta report all of these double structures amount to 100 Billion € a year of wasted money that the EU could spend on buying new equipment.
OP compares a fucking continent to ONE country.
Next we will do a comparison of types of mopeds between Asia and city of Birmingham. Stay tuned
It’s not necessarily bad, if one type of equipment has a flaw which the enemy can use, then having a more diverse set of equipment will help mitigate that advantage.
Also, having a more diverse equipment park allows for more specialized equipment as well, making it more difficult for the enemy since they need to be able to counter more threats.
The downside of this is of course that logistics becomes more challenging and can also become vulnerable.
Thankfully, basically all EU states are following NATO standars even if they are not members of NATO. This helps with logistics a lot.
Breaking news: continent with many countries… has many countries. More at 11.
Well the USA is one nation state. The EU is a completely different entity.
i don’t even know what strategic goals a united europe would pursue. support ukraine ok that’s a given and you didn’t need a united army for that. then what? fuck with the UK because they had it coming? take back constantinople maybe?
Are you saying that Europe has more weapons of war than the USA alone?
That’s one way to view it. Another is that we allow competition.
diversity… no?
yep, and french model are generaly better
Well of course a lot could be done in a lot of areas, such as joint acquisition of some equipment to bring down cost. Especially the NATO countries in Europe concerning regularly used items.
However, the larger systems are often decided by the need of the country. It makes no sense for countries around the Baltic Sea for example to have systems made for open sea such as the US and European coastal countries, when the goal is defence of their own boarders. The countries is simply not as big as the United States to make “one system fit all needs”. Or as it makes no sense for countries without mountains to have the same requirements as a country with a lot of mountains. Or a warmer country to have the same requirements as the cold Nordic countries. There is no reason to pay for a system with adaptation which you have no need for.
Same goes with personnel, the US can have complicated systems which requires a lot of resources, while many European countries simply cannot, because of the population/active soldiers.
It is hard if not impossible, to argue that one country should have equipment worse suited for their environment than another, for less potential cost in the future.
It is also hard to start a pontential process of the same equipment when the budgets differs as much as they do between countries.
You’re assuming that European countries really trust each other (Eg France and Britain have nuclear weapons for defense against non-European nations and not primarily for defense against each other)
I don’t buy the 17 different tank types when half of Europe uses Leopard 2 variants, with Leclerc, Arietes, K-2s, Abrams and T-72 variants there too, with some cold war legacy stuff for the rest…
Nah
This shouldn’t be Europe vs. USA – Europe isn’t a united military organisation.
The issue is more that *NATO* (which includes the USA) has this huge diversity of equipment, making interoperability more difficult.
Yes, but think of all the strengths and weaknesses our opponents need to familiarize themselves with.
could be strength
It’s almost as if you were comparing 1 country to 27 countries, if I didn’t know better.
How inaccurate would you like a post to be? “Yes”
Stop pushing idea of “united global army”!
At least half the the ones counted for EU are undoubtedly soviet versions which aren’t even produced anymore. Destroyer/Frigates in particular is one in which arguably it’s the US that has too few of them, forcing them to be generalists. It also doesn’t say anything about how easily any of these can be produced, or their cost-effectiveness. It also ignores inefficiencies in the US process, such as what happened with the Zumwalt. It also ignores the problems caused by the US having only a handful of competitors in the field, which causes problems in and of itself.
That’s not to say the EU shouldn’t strive to act more as one than just as a collective, but this post is disingenuous.
The enemy won’t know what hit them!
and thats why we need a united european military. preferrably of course as a part of a European Federation but that can wait.
36 comments
You do realize Europe is not one country?
It’s almost like USA is a single country, whereas EU is a collection of independent states…
FWIW, in reality EU has two models of tanks: Leopard 2 and Leclerc. Italy had Ariete, but they are moving to Leopard 2.
I call this feature. While it’s probably true that this is inefficient and reduces our ability to attack someone, it also makes it basically impossible to defeat Europe because there isn’t a central military you can take out.
Also I am not even 100% sure how inefficient this is. Scaling up systems only increases efficiency up to a certain point. Just look how “efficient” the EU apparatus works and ask yourself if this is what you want to build your territorial defense on. What we really need is integration.
The difficulty is sharing proprietary tech to companies that are your direct competitors, even if they’re in allied countries. It will happen slowly though as more companies merge.
17 tank types? No way.
Leopard 2, Leclerc, Challenger 2, Abrams, Ariete, K2?
Except if you count all the old Soviet T-72s/T-80s etc.
You still getting your panties wet for a federal europe?
It will eventually trickle down too
And then that one model will be stupid expensive and then that corporation will have a monopoly and off you go again
Well, turns out the European Defence Community wasn’t such a bad idea in the late 40s eh? Too bad we had the early 40s too…
I think the problem isnt the duplication, its that the quantity isnt sufficient to justify them.
The EU doesn’t have a common standing army. It doesn’t even have any real clauses or protocols for military cooperation between the nation’s standing armies.
The solution is clearly to force everyone to use American tech because everyone has the same requirements as everyone else.
Does America *really* only have 1 kind of tank?
I mean it looks good on paper but I can hardly believe it.
“Tank” is an incredibly generic term.
M1 Abrams suggests MTB so Main battle Tank. Of which there is really only a couple, definitely bellow 10 in the EU. It is possible that there are more types in Eastern an balcan member states, which were inherited from the USSR, but those are being put out of service, and are definitely not on the production line any more.
Same goes for fighter aircraft? Do we mean gen 3-4-5 fighters? Fighter bombers? Stealth fighters? Are multi-purpose aircraft included here?
As per the Letta report all of these double structures amount to 100 Billion € a year of wasted money that the EU could spend on buying new equipment.
OP compares a fucking continent to ONE country.
Next we will do a comparison of types of mopeds between Asia and city of Birmingham. Stay tuned
It’s not necessarily bad, if one type of equipment has a flaw which the enemy can use, then having a more diverse set of equipment will help mitigate that advantage.
Also, having a more diverse equipment park allows for more specialized equipment as well, making it more difficult for the enemy since they need to be able to counter more threats.
The downside of this is of course that logistics becomes more challenging and can also become vulnerable.
Thankfully, basically all EU states are following NATO standars even if they are not members of NATO. This helps with logistics a lot.
Breaking news: continent with many countries… has many countries. More at 11.
Well the USA is one nation state. The EU is a completely different entity.
i don’t even know what strategic goals a united europe would pursue. support ukraine ok that’s a given and you didn’t need a united army for that. then what? fuck with the UK because they had it coming? take back constantinople maybe?
Are you saying that Europe has more weapons of war than the USA alone?
That’s one way to view it. Another is that we allow competition.
diversity… no?
yep, and french model are generaly better
Well of course a lot could be done in a lot of areas, such as joint acquisition of some equipment to bring down cost. Especially the NATO countries in Europe concerning regularly used items.
However, the larger systems are often decided by the need of the country. It makes no sense for countries around the Baltic Sea for example to have systems made for open sea such as the US and European coastal countries, when the goal is defence of their own boarders. The countries is simply not as big as the United States to make “one system fit all needs”. Or as it makes no sense for countries without mountains to have the same requirements as a country with a lot of mountains. Or a warmer country to have the same requirements as the cold Nordic countries. There is no reason to pay for a system with adaptation which you have no need for.
Same goes with personnel, the US can have complicated systems which requires a lot of resources, while many European countries simply cannot, because of the population/active soldiers.
It is hard if not impossible, to argue that one country should have equipment worse suited for their environment than another, for less potential cost in the future.
It is also hard to start a pontential process of the same equipment when the budgets differs as much as they do between countries.
You’re assuming that European countries really trust each other (Eg France and Britain have nuclear weapons for defense against non-European nations and not primarily for defense against each other)
I don’t buy the 17 different tank types when half of Europe uses Leopard 2 variants, with Leclerc, Arietes, K-2s, Abrams and T-72 variants there too, with some cold war legacy stuff for the rest…
Nah
This shouldn’t be Europe vs. USA – Europe isn’t a united military organisation.
The issue is more that *NATO* (which includes the USA) has this huge diversity of equipment, making interoperability more difficult.
Yes, but think of all the strengths and weaknesses our opponents need to familiarize themselves with.
could be strength
It’s almost as if you were comparing 1 country to 27 countries, if I didn’t know better.
How inaccurate would you like a post to be? “Yes”
Stop pushing idea of “united global army”!
At least half the the ones counted for EU are undoubtedly soviet versions which aren’t even produced anymore. Destroyer/Frigates in particular is one in which arguably it’s the US that has too few of them, forcing them to be generalists. It also doesn’t say anything about how easily any of these can be produced, or their cost-effectiveness. It also ignores inefficiencies in the US process, such as what happened with the Zumwalt. It also ignores the problems caused by the US having only a handful of competitors in the field, which causes problems in and of itself.
That’s not to say the EU shouldn’t strive to act more as one than just as a collective, but this post is disingenuous.
The enemy won’t know what hit them!
and thats why we need a united european military. preferrably of course as a part of a European Federation but that can wait.