The EU is setting up a high-level group of political and military leaders from member states, Ukraine and the UK to speed up efforts to close Europe's defence capability gaps amid rising Russian threats. #EuropeNews

The EU is setting up a high-level group of political and military leaders from member states, Ukraine and the UK to speed up efforts to close Europe’s defence capability gaps amid rising Russian threats.

  • majster@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    15 days ago

    What I’m getting at is two things:

    • there was a pervasive opinion that EU defense industry will massively outproduce Russia who has GDP size of Italy. That hasn’t materialized. In fact Ukraine relies on its domestic weapons developed under war conditions to deal serious damage to Russians. Why will now be different? Why wouldn’t they again produce a bunch of high-tech low volume wunderwaffen?
    • my next claim is that this high tech and low casualty warfare has been shown to be a myth. In middle east wars stats were padded by local mercenaries and that was the main reason behind politically acceptable low casualty rate. Wars against Russia and Iran have further shown that its foolish to expect low casualty war.

    So I’m very sceptical that in event of war we will all be fine. Also I see no conspiracy behind any of the claims.

    Furthermore I’m not claiming that there should be no defense spending. It just worries me that things could in fact go out of control like they did in Ukraine for Russians and to lesser extent USA&Israel in Iran.

    I think we are pairing defense spending surge with no accompanying strategic policy. Where is EU on Ukraine issue? Iran issue? Its just expected to foot the bill.

    • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      15 days ago

      there was a pervasive opinion that EU defense industry will massively outproduce Russia who has GDP size of Italy. That hasn’t materialized.

      russia has always relied on producing more but lower quality. Comparing them is not a 1:1 thing. But if you do compare them like that, the difference is not as big as one would think. Sure, they produce more, but 1. they are in war economy, 2. they’ve always produced more and 3. the differences is not that big, in fact, I’d argue that russia should be producing way more if they intend to have their material advantage to be any way meaningful

      https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-nato-weapons-production-us-germany/33482927.html

      So I’m very sceptical that in event of war we will all be fine.

      That’s not the point. Nobody will be “fine” in the event of a war. The point is to 1. make the probability of war as low as possible, that means having a credible amount of defensive capabilities to make the enemy think real long and hard about attacking. And 2. if war does come, having modern stuff is better than having outdated stuff. But the main thing is to have stuff. And at this point its stupid to start producing stuff from decades ago, might as well keep the current production rolling and investing into modern and new stuff.

      Also, talking about wunderwaffes is a bit a disingenuous, nobody is suggesting making invisible space lasers or thinking about building one weapons system that will win the war. The money wont be spent on one or two systems that the leaders wrongly think will be enough. The military planners know that you need combined arms that are proven to work. So unless you have evidence about plans to waste money on stupid bullshit, I’m going to disregard that complaint.

      It just worries me that things could in fact go out of control like they did in Ukraine for Russians and to lesser extent USA&Israel in Iran.

      I’m not sure what you mean with “getting out of control”. If russia attacks, I consider that “getting out of control” and if that happens, that’s precisely the time we will need all the investment, research and production we can get. Better start preparing now so we don’t have to be caught with our pants in our ankles, swinging our dicks in a vain effort to scare them off.