this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hopefully to spend it all in Europe!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

And most of the profits taxed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Not sure, if we can completely replace US weapons, including jets and so on, already.

I guess, that much will be spend at European companies, but I'm pretty sure a bulk will go the the USA military industry
and maybe also other countries - I'm not really up-to-date with current military capabilities and production facilities in Europe or worldwide

Maybe someone more knowledgeable could chime in

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

We can. The US only pushed us to buy F35 to carry their atomic warheads.
Eurofighter, Rafale and Gripen are excellent fighter jets.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Are the Eurofighter really good?
At least in the first years I've only read about problems and the ones in Austria couldn't fly for most of the time
But that's quite some years ago, so I can't remember what the problems actually were - and have no idea, if those got finally resolved

Is there any comparison to relative modern MiGs (or whatever the correct counterpart would be)?

Edit: also I've read that the American jets have some kind of lock, where we need some unlock code from the USA. Is that correct?
Because that is quite some high level of trust into a foreign power to let ourselves defend our countries

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not sure if they are any good now but I know the F35 had major issues as well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Also the F35s are very complex and require a lot of maintenance. Not sure about EF , Rafale or Gripens.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Gripen is specifically built to be cheap and easy to maintain (for a fighter jet, of course). It seems like it'd be a great choice for Ukraine

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also, if any of these contain proprietary code that can not be independently inspected by military staff, they should be considered compromised.

Corporations exist to generate profit. They do not care about borders, and can't be trusted to not share information with current and future adversaries.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Some Finnish guy claimed that it's not just that F35s contain proprietary code, they actively phone home daily to the US and stop working if they can't reach the server.

If that's true, it's incredibly fucked up and whoever made the deal to buy them should be fired out of a cannon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, seems quality of new releases are shit quite over the board - except for some lonely exceptions

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

New air frames tend to have a lot of issues. They're kind of at the limits of engineering complexity. Too many parts optimized for weight/strength just perfectly, until there's that one extra side load, or power drain, that no one expected. That's why a lot of test designs end at the full scale testing stage. It's not until all the parts are in one place that you can really see if they all work together.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The Austrian Typhoons are all the earliest model and Austria chose not to upgrade any of them, so they're approaching 25 years old and a less mature design than everyone else's Typhoons

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, because the Austrian military is a fucking joke
We seem to rely solely on neutrality, because "look at Switzerland during WW2!!", but all of those idiots completely miss, that the Swiss were armed to the teeth to defend themselves.

While in Austria every form of building up self defense measures are always countered by neutrality claims, because as long as we aren't a threat, no one will attack us

Yeah, that will work out great, when we get rolled over...
But if the FPÖ gets its way, we'll probably already showing our bellies to the wannabe strong man in Moscow, because Russia will play a big part in supporting right wing parties and with that, they are happy to meet their master it seems.

Patriots...my ass

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

To my understanding, EU countries aren't in a shortage of aircraft - their air power is enough to match Russia. However, they are in a shortage of bombs to drop and missiles to fire.

They're also in a shortage of artillery and rocket artillery and air defense.

As for the industry that can be scaled up fastest (drones), everyone is in a shortage of them. Fortunately there is one country in Europe that's been doing absolutely everything to scale up their production. So much that it currently out-produces the US, and maybe out-produces both the US and the EU. I'm fairly certain that this country is willing to help on the matter (it's called Ukraine).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Are we still enough equipped, when we throw out all the American jets, the USA can just disable remotely (or at least don't give us the codes to start - actually I'm not entirely sure, what the reality here is, but it seems the USA has some say in the usage of our fighter jets, when they are bought from the USA)?

I'd really like to find some comfort in your words, but all the shit I read doesn't look pretty for us in Europe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I have not yet heard of a single case report of US-sourced military jet becoming remotely disabled.

Also note: Iran has been flying F-14 jets which the Islamic Revolution took over from the Shah's regime.

When a country buys military aircraft, they demand extensive knowledge of the system they are buying, and demand ability to independently perform maintenance.

If they are prudent, they will review all its wireless reception and transmission capabilities, possibly on their own. There may still be a possibility for a logic bomb somewhere, but a logic bomb in flight softtware would ordinarily mean two things:

  • the industrial company involved pays obscene compensations
  • nobody will purchase aircraft from the country involved

These are pretty big disincentives.

P.S. Cryptography: one can likely configure an aircraft so that it won't accept a message through its data link system, unless the message authenticates and decrypts. Subsequently, one can change keys to no longer match a compromised ally's keys. As a result, direct data links would no longer be possible with planes of that compromised ally. So introducing a specially crafted message into a military plane would likely be hard.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks!
I'm basing all my stuff only on hearsay, so I actually have no clue, and always wondered, how this way of acquiring defense weapons can work out, if I have to rely on my salesman in case I actually need them.

I hope you're correct, but that gives me at least some calm - thanks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Jets? The Eurofighter is made by European companies only.

Especially France has some leading Jet / Air combat companies.

Italys Leonardo is leading for combat Helicopters

For ground forces Germans Rheinmetall produces some good tanks.

The UK is also not too weak but it’s ties to the US are a bit too strong… (BAE Systems gets tons of money from the US and I personally wouldn’t be too sure if they would choose the UK over the US if they had to)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

If it's any reassurance, leader of the UK Trump fan club Nigel Farage is getting shit from even the Conservatives for defending Trump's tantrum during Zelenskyy's visit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, we seem to have so good stuff

But I'm worried about all the money we already put into foreign/USA hardware, especially jets, as it seems that the USA has some kind of remote control of the actual operational status of the craft we bought from them.

So I'm worried, that quite some of our EU nations spend money on stuff, that's completely useless in an actual war

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Kill switches makes USA's F35 garbage in EU

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah, exactly!

I don't get how we can rely on foreign unlock codes (or kill switches if it's the other way around), when it comes to our own countries.

That is just so much bullshit...

[–] sommerset 3 points 1 week ago

Europe’s Plans

The EU summit in Brussels is taking place today. I’ve lost count of how many there have been in the past two weeks—this might be the fourth? Zelensky will also be attending. I assume this summit will be crucial for shaping the EU’s future policy on Ukraine.

If any major decisions are made—especially regarding funding the war not just with money but also with weapons to replace U.S. supplies—it will happen now. There’s no more time to delay; Trump has already halted deliveries, so if not now, then when? However, I expect things will end much the same way as before.

The problem is that Europe simply lacks the physical capacity to supply weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Financial aid is one thing—money can still be found or printed—but weapons are another matter. For instance, a representative of the Bundeswehr has once again confirmed that Germany has exhausted its ability to send anything from its stockpiles to Ukraine.

But there are financial issues too. Ursula von der Leyen has presented her plan for rearming Europe, which has already been met with significant criticism in the Western press. Her plan includes:

Spending €800 billion on rearmament;

Creating a €150 billion credit fund for collective arms procurement;

Attracting private investment into the defense sector;

Offering incentives to countries that increase military spending.

However, this is merely a wishlist. Ursula is not a tactician but a strategist. The EU leadership doesn’t have—and won’t have—real money for this plan. The document itself states that the €800 billion should come from national governments, primarily by lifting borrowing restrictions. In other words, she is proposing that individual countries take on debt to rearm their militaries in exchange for vague incentives that will never truly offset the costs.

At the same time, it seems national governments are struggling to convince their voters that rearmament is genuinely necessary. The average European doesn’t believe that Putin—who has been fighting a single country, Ukraine, for three years without capturing a single regional capital and is now looking for a way to end the war—would suddenly turn around and attack NATO. Given the rising wave of nationalist sentiment in Europe, voters are focused on entirely different issues that contradict the idea of sharply increasing military spending.

As for real assistance, Politico reports that even the proposal to allocate €20 billion from EU funds is no longer being pursued due to opposition from Hungary. Anyone who thought Hungary was merely bargaining now has their answer—Orbán is seriously blocking military aid, unlike sanctions, which he has negotiated over before.

There is nothing stopping individual countries from pooling the same €20 billion without Hungary if they genuinely want to help Ukraine. But it’s clear that few are willing to do so. Those who do want to help already do—for example, Ireland recently announced a €100 million aid package, though it appears to be non-lethal aid, likely radar systems. But Ireland didn’t need Ursula or the EU to make that decision; if they want to help, they simply do. France, Italy, and similar countries could do the same, but they don’t.

That’s why I don’t see any reason to expect today’s summit to change anything. We’ll hear a lot of big words, see very little action, and once again, Zelensky will be pressured not to clash with Trump and to agree to his deals.