We spend enough on defense. What Europe needs is integration. More spending will just result in more of the same.
Red_Beard6969 on
You do realize Europe is not one country?
Bicentennial_Douche on
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.
Facktat on
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.
High-Tom-Titty on
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.
Werkstadt on
You still getting your panties wet for a federal europe?
translucentdoll on
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
themikker on
The fewer platforms you use, the fewer companies you have that compete with one another. If you end up with just one provider, they are free to jack up their own prices as much as they want, because all the competitors have gone under. Setting up a new platform to compete is many billions in R&D, and that will have difficulties with competing with an established player. And if your main provider – Let’s take a random company like “Boing” for no discernable reason whatsoever – decides to go bonkers and ruin their own company because some CEO has no idea what they’re doing, then you effectively have no credible defense industry any longer, period, for at least 5-10 years.
Defense economics is more complicated than just “efficiency”. The European defense sector is arguably healthier than the American one, the US just have more money to throw around to compensate for its shortcommings.
Global_Exercise_7286 on
Remember what happened during the corona times when our supply chains started crumbling? Imagine if they started crumbling and all our eggs were in the same basket.
The_Last_Cast on
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…
Chiliconkarma on
Yesterday we were told about how Blackrock wanted EU banks to unite.
The desire to unite and simplify all things come with the potential for external forces to dominate and influence the production and use it against EU.
Having only 1 type of weapon also allows for planning against it. Disallows for things like the israeli focus on extra layers of defense on their tanks.
myassislazy on
EU Army is possible,
Needs good cooperation but it needs a new system
A new EU Army headquarters, main headquarters will be central, and other headquarters in south, west, east, and new army bases or they’re gonna have to renovate all the old bases.
They need to make a universal communication which system, and to make a standard policy for each weapons.
Each weapon manufacturers gonna have to cooperate and make each products to standard use of munitions, aka universal munitions.
So regardless the different rifles or tanks etc each needs to use the same ammunition.
mrCloggy on
There is a difference in the approach of military hardware, the EU looks if the existing stuff is still useful/serviceable, and only buys replacement/expansion if and when needed, while the US insists on having the latest and shiniest for everyone and throws away all the existing hardware, regardless of usefulness [example](https://apnews.com/united-states-government-united-states-congress-4416606e329b4c8baa755aad333d73db).
For fighter jets, ‘local’ economies play a role, obviously, but some countries also like the ability to use a short stretch of highway as runway and do road-side maintenance and rearming.
Dektivac on
First of all, Europe has to move away from a single country veto policy. Once this is done, we can start.
Sarcastic-Potato on
I know, looking at the election results, most people don’t agree with me but by unifying the 27 different military systems, bureaucratic systems, healthcare systems…and so on the EU could probably become the number one economic superpower in the world overtaking the US and China with ease
Administrator90 on
Combined EU got half of the US military budget, but only 10-20% of their military power
Illustrious-Low-7038 on
I think the problem isnt the duplication, its that the quantity isnt sufficient to justify them.
_Sumiii on
HAHAHA where did they get some of these numbers
Historical-Kale-2765 on
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.
asciiCAT_hexKITTY on
The solution is clearly to force everyone to use American tech because everyone has the same requirements as everyone else.
pawnografik on
Does America *really* only have 1 kind of tank?
I mean it looks good on paper but I can hardly believe it.
Historical-Kale-2765 on
“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?
Stabile_Feldmaus on
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.
2polew on
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
jrsowa on
I see propaganda for federalization of Europe is coming. Remember that this will be efficient only for biggest countries like France and Germany.
Diversification has its own advantages and it’s not always bad thing.
Blesshope on
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.
barker505 on
It’s a tricky one. The potential economies of scale are obvious, but no country wants to give up its armaments industry as it’s strategically essential.
So how do you get around it? Perhaps European -wide conglomerates which are obliged to have factories, engineers and workers in every major EU arms manufacturer. That way every country retains production and the skills to produce, but we get joint procurement from these companies and reduce costs(maybe).
Bacon___Wizard on
Breaking news: continent with many countries… has many countries. More at 11.
TheFortnutter on
I think Europe in general is more specialized and diverse. They haven’t learned from their mistakes in the previous 2 world wars of having semi standard equipment (Mr mustache man def had problems of his own bc of this)
Clueless_Nooblet on
Well the USA is one nation state. The EU is a completely different entity.
relapsing_not on
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?
thc_Champion1322 on
Are you saying that Europe has more weapons of war than the USA alone?
TheDungen on
That’s one way to view it. Another is that we allow competition.
36 Comments
https://institutdelors.eu/en/publications/european-defence-part-2-industries/
We spend enough on defense. What Europe needs is integration. More spending will just result in more of the same.
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
The fewer platforms you use, the fewer companies you have that compete with one another. If you end up with just one provider, they are free to jack up their own prices as much as they want, because all the competitors have gone under. Setting up a new platform to compete is many billions in R&D, and that will have difficulties with competing with an established player. And if your main provider – Let’s take a random company like “Boing” for no discernable reason whatsoever – decides to go bonkers and ruin their own company because some CEO has no idea what they’re doing, then you effectively have no credible defense industry any longer, period, for at least 5-10 years.
Defense economics is more complicated than just “efficiency”. The European defense sector is arguably healthier than the American one, the US just have more money to throw around to compensate for its shortcommings.
Remember what happened during the corona times when our supply chains started crumbling? Imagine if they started crumbling and all our eggs were in the same basket.
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…
Yesterday we were told about how Blackrock wanted EU banks to unite.
The desire to unite and simplify all things come with the potential for external forces to dominate and influence the production and use it against EU.
Having only 1 type of weapon also allows for planning against it. Disallows for things like the israeli focus on extra layers of defense on their tanks.
EU Army is possible,
Needs good cooperation but it needs a new system
A new EU Army headquarters, main headquarters will be central, and other headquarters in south, west, east, and new army bases or they’re gonna have to renovate all the old bases.
They need to make a universal communication which system, and to make a standard policy for each weapons.
Each weapon manufacturers gonna have to cooperate and make each products to standard use of munitions, aka universal munitions.
So regardless the different rifles or tanks etc each needs to use the same ammunition.
There is a difference in the approach of military hardware, the EU looks if the existing stuff is still useful/serviceable, and only buys replacement/expansion if and when needed, while the US insists on having the latest and shiniest for everyone and throws away all the existing hardware, regardless of usefulness [example](https://apnews.com/united-states-government-united-states-congress-4416606e329b4c8baa755aad333d73db).
For fighter jets, ‘local’ economies play a role, obviously, but some countries also like the ability to use a short stretch of highway as runway and do road-side maintenance and rearming.
First of all, Europe has to move away from a single country veto policy. Once this is done, we can start.
I know, looking at the election results, most people don’t agree with me but by unifying the 27 different military systems, bureaucratic systems, healthcare systems…and so on the EU could probably become the number one economic superpower in the world overtaking the US and China with ease
Combined EU got half of the US military budget, but only 10-20% of their military power
I think the problem isnt the duplication, its that the quantity isnt sufficient to justify them.
HAHAHA where did they get some of these numbers
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
I see propaganda for federalization of Europe is coming. Remember that this will be efficient only for biggest countries like France and Germany.
Diversification has its own advantages and it’s not always bad thing.
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.
It’s a tricky one. The potential economies of scale are obvious, but no country wants to give up its armaments industry as it’s strategically essential.
So how do you get around it? Perhaps European -wide conglomerates which are obliged to have factories, engineers and workers in every major EU arms manufacturer. That way every country retains production and the skills to produce, but we get joint procurement from these companies and reduce costs(maybe).
Breaking news: continent with many countries… has many countries. More at 11.
I think Europe in general is more specialized and diverse. They haven’t learned from their mistakes in the previous 2 world wars of having semi standard equipment (Mr mustache man def had problems of his own bc of this)
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