German Defense Industry Urges European Independence from U.S. Defense Sector

16 comments

1. About fucking time.

2. The end of the American influence in the world unfortunately is rapidly approaching and they can blame no one but themselves.

3. Ironic, taking into account that among European leaders Shcolz is the first Biden’s lapdog.

4. EU has been trying to form a European army for a while now.

   This may just be the motivation to push it further.

5. Except F35. Germany loves F35 and won’t stop buying patriots too. It’s a bit hard to understand the German schadenfreude sometimes

6. All up for this.

   We have been all over slapped by Americans bashing us with our “failure” to meet our defense preparedness and deterrence to Russian aggression.

   It’s has been like having a guns seller going around like a cowboy wowing and shooting the sky, and telling us that we should buy a gun to be safe.

   It’s not because they care about our safety, and lately, it can be seen with all the aid dripping and political ping pong of bullshit and saying that Europe should help more.

   Europe has been helping Ukraine way more than the US has. In terms of GDP, many countries helped 10 fold more. Sure, Biden is better than Trump, but he’s not so much up to help Ukraine, and it is obvious he doesn’t want it to win. Democrats have been trying to pin the blame on Republicans on failure to pass a bill for money that anyway will stay in America, create jobs, and renew its weapons stockpile. But Biden has options that he could use, but he doesn’t. Executive orders, weapons stockpile going into decommissioning, renewing the lend lease that was never used, and so on.

   And nobody dares to say what they are not saying:

   They don’t want to give aid because they want the EU to use the frozen Russians assets money to help Ukraine and let the EU deal with the consequences of it deterring foreign investors.
   Most of this is for America juicy money that goes to buy American weapons.

   They don’t want Ukraine to take back it’s land and win the war. They want to prolong the war in ways that will keep Russia isolated under sanctions, Ukraine in disarray unable to join the EU and even NATO, as it will be one more permanent hot zone that will increase the cost to America’s military policing the world.

   They don’t want a stronger EU, even more with Ukraine joining, for many economic and political reasons. American politicians cozying with Orban, some even with Putin, and some European extreme rights are part of a constant effort to undermine EU cohesion and progress.

   They talk about Europeans raising defense budget, but never talk about how that is negotiated in ways that some countries give previledges to America, influence corporations access to their markets.

   I think it is time for Americans to decide what they want and stop pretending. If it is an ally and a friend, act so. If not, then stop pretending. Europe can deal with Russia on its own. It can also give good use to the military bases that America is using. It can boost its economy, having less competition from American corporations on European ones, and will give opportunity to grow new ones.

7. Yes I think this is obviously the right thing to be doing now. Honestly though we’re not in a particularly bad place to do that – we make a lot of platforms and weapons that _absolutely_ match or even top the American systems, so we just need to place the orders for those weapons in the right places. I think there’s development work needed for some things though, particularly MLRS – everyone just uses M270 or HiMARS and as far as I know there’s no direct equivalent…and the other one is F-16. That plane is approaching obsolescence but all the current European fighter programs are a heavy fighter to replace Typhoon/Rafale. I think we need a European program for a light multirole aircraft too.

8. For decades european countries and Germany in particular rebuked any proposal of an european strategic indépendance. Now It’s too late.

9. Better late than never.

   The EU must create a common system of deep investment in the military capacity of its countries, including the nuclear part.

   Common debt should be issued that does not affect the deficit targets of EU member countries.

   A formula must be created in which the arms industry is proportionally distributed among the various member countries.

   All of us Europeans realize that once again the US is not a reliable ally.

   The EU has 450 million citizens, we can easily mobilize 2 million operational personnel and have a few million more in reserve.

   The question is whether we still have time before we are attacked.

10. We will see if they want to make joint venture with other european defense industry or if they just want to sell more german’s weapons.

11. NOW WE‘RE TALKING

12. Heh, good luck. The whole point of NATO is for the Us to provide defense from Russia to Europe. The US at least gets some deals out of it, if they can’t then Europe should probably stop crying about the US lack of aid.

13. Sounds cool. But I get the impression that what Rheinmetall makes is of limited value in the war in Ukraine, and will be of less value going forward. Where are the attack drones, the anti-drone capability, anti-ballistic missile defense, offensive long range missiles, nuclear deterrence, AI for keeping soldiers away from the battlefield, you name it? But today is always the best day for getting started on doing what needs to get done.

14. Nice idea if only Germany had cruise missiles to give to Ukraine like Britain and France do 🤔

15. As an American, please do. You guys need to be able to handle Russia so we can handle China. That, and the fact that in the near future you might find yourselves on your own in the fight to preserve global democracy.

16. I so want Canada to do the same and join up with Europe. After this GOP/Trump bullshit and the stopped funding to Ukraine. US go fuck yourself.