Why can’t we all just get together at tell Rheinmetall, Nammo, etc. that we’ll buy as much as they can produce for the next five years, with possibilities for extensions?
The primary issue here is that with orders coming piecewise, manufacturers don’t have a strong enough incentive to ramp up production a hundred fold, which is what we need. That would also presumably reduce the per-unit production costs.
I do hope that won’t be needed, I also don’t think the production capacity of European weapons manufacturers is at a level where we would need to move to a war economy to buy out everything they can produce (I may be wrong, in which case I’ll moderate my statement). Finally, I think that with peace-time regulations in place, manufacturers will take enough time to scale up production that we could literally buy everything they’re capable of producing without surpassing like 4% of GDP.
However, I can agree that a better, more moderated statement, would be “We’ll buy everything you can produce over the next five years, up to a limit of <insert absurdly large number here> per year”. To safeguard against accidentally agreeing to spending like 10 % of GDP on weapons.
The point is that manufacturers need an incentive to massively scaly up capacity now, because if shit hits the fan tomorrow, Europe will be suffering severe shell hunger, and other weapons deficits, for at least a couple years until we’re able to scale up production sufficiently.
I’m not worried about a war with Russia and Europe. Europe won’t start the war, they’re cool enough and know to behave. Rusia might might might be stupid enough to attack Europe but that will immediately draw in the US through NATO. Even if it doesn’t, the Russian army is in such a sad state that it can barely hold the relatively small lines in the Ukraine.
How well do you think they’d fare against a European sized line which has an economy nearly 10 times it’s size and a high tech well organized army? The only thing Russia has got going for it is that it can still throw some people for cannon fodder and not care whereas Europe cares a lot about casualties.
You do realize that Russia is preparing for a war, right? Just asking in case you missed a few of the last months and Russias degenerated plan of a new, widespread empire…
Russia IS at war, and doing fucking terrible.
You’re talking an economy the size of Italy (a minor player in the EU) but with a territory more than 59 times that of Italy. It’s known for its deep corruption and the invasion of the Ukraine showed the miserable state of the Russian army.
Let’s ignore nukes and NATO for a second. Russia attacks Europe and it will get it’s ass handed backwards and inside out. If NATO is added, you can add the US army which brings that to utter obligation. Russia would not stand a fucking chance beyond guerilla warfare in its own territory.
All that would be really bad for Europe, probably too for the US, but Russia wouldn’t stand a chance.
The problem is nukes. Russia attacks NATO, the US WILL be involved and nukes will be a near inevitability. Once the first Juke goed off, they’ll all go off.
Given the current state of the Russian army and the level of corruption at every level, I’m guessing that the weapons that should never be used (nukes) are extremely expensive to maintain, and easy to scrape some money off for your second luxury boat, there nukes will likely no longer be in working order.
Russia fires a nuke, it’ll be its own death warrant whilst the rest of the world MIGHT survive.
In any case, Russia is going no where. They might have mighty plans but at this point it can count itself happy if they can be the lapdog of China. I’m much more worried about China, really.
Because Germany. I mean what if next year a different camo pattern is in vogue? Then you’ll be stuck with all the orders of the old one and you’re the one that gets blamed.
The fuck does Germany have to do with this? Germany is the second largest donor right after the US, and by a wide margin too. Where the fuck is the rest of Europe? Where the fuck is the US backing their half-assed security guarantees from the Budapest Memorandum, after forcing Ukraine to give up their nukes & long range bombers? This constant idiotic scapegoating & disinformation spreading against Germany is really fucking annoying.
I was referring to the fucked up military procurement process in Germany. Here’s an excellent video with more details.
@DarkThoughts @LaFinlandia @CapeWearingAeroplane @Diplomjodler3 Germany displays contradictory images. Yes, they are the second largest donor, in absolute numbers. Measured by their GDP, they are at the back. Ukraine is less than 1000 km from the German border, so security concerns should be quite high. The German government acts half-heartedly due to a long standing appeasement policy towards Ruzzia by the ruling social democratic party. They are not all-in which they should be.
Here’s hoping they’ll add another zero to those orders down the line.
