Direct link below. Not my reasoning, the author’s:
North Korea sends Putin tons of ammo. Europe can’t do the same for Ukraine
Pyongyang beats the EU in supplying shells to the guns in Ukraine.
www.politico.eu
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Europe under extreme duress
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Direct link below. Not my reasoning, the author’s:
www.politico.eu
I certainly hope the defense ministries aren't that clueless.
Interesting article, but, as it points out, European defense industrial complexes are antiquated.. and the reason for that is obviously us. If Europe isn't able to supply Ukraine shells effectively, it's because we have been enabling their pacifist budgets for decades. The solution isn't to continue enabling them to pass the cost of their defense to American tax payers, while we fall into a debt spiral.Direct link below. Not my reasoning, the author’s:
North Korea sends Putin tons of ammo. Europe can’t do the same for Ukraine
Pyongyang beats the EU in supplying shells to the guns in Ukraine.
Fair point, and exactly what I thought you’d say when I posted this article. While you and I disagree on the USA’s best approach to the Russian invasion, it’s good to see someone in the press pointing out concerns about Europe’s laughably limited military industrial base.
Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take more than Ukraine for them to actually do something about it.
One problem is the individual European countries do not have the economies of scale the United States has, so manufacturing/purchasing military equipment individually can be more expensive for them. This could be remedied if the countries all banded together as one Europe to purchase equipment, but then you've got all the different systems the different countries use (as the article points out) and also the different doctrines and politics and so forth.
The Dutch have transferred a number of F-16s this month to a new European F-16 Training Centre (EFTC) in Romania. This is the first step in providing Ukraine with F-16s. The Netherlands, Denmark and Norway have pledged 61 aircraft to Ukraine and Belgium is leaning towards making a contribution as well. I believe the aircraft in question are all F-16AM and F-16BM models. (Source: scramble.nl)
Great looking jet - and perfectly suited to the task.
If they are being used for air superiority and point defense, vs. Russian strike aircraft I agree.
However, if you’re using an $30M F-16 to launch $2M missiles against $1,000 Shaheed drones, that’s losing the resource fight.
It’s a good thing that if you can lock it up on radar to launch a $2M missile at it, I bet you can also shoot $5,000 worth of bullets at it.
If the F-16 can stay behind the drone long enough to get a shot, sure… and then you’ll be out of bullets. Time to go back to base and reload, and all at $15K per flight hour. Unless the frag hit something, and then it’s millions.
High end fighter vs. low-cost threat is a poor matchup, in my opinion.
I'm amazed we haven't seen drone-on-drone action yet.
The current war reminds me of early WWI, where each side's planes were flying by each other. Hey, maybe I should carry a gun...
From what I can tell, all recent air-to-air drone kills have been missiles with nary a gun kill to be found. The speed difference can make things challenging gun-wise from what I understand, any one of the numerous actual fighter pilots here can correct me if I am wrong.
Not if you are selling F-16 spare parts or missiles…
Wonder if we have any of these left in mothballs as a cost effective defense system?
M163 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS)
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Not if you are selling F-16 spare parts or missiles…
Wonder if we have any of these left in mothballs as a cost effective defense system?
M163 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS)
They already have a much better system:
