EU's von der Leyen proposes €800 billion defense plan – DW – 03/04/2025
www.dw.com
The European Commission president says increasing defense spending is necessary in "an era of rearmament." A European summit on defense and Ukraine is planned this week amid tense transatlantic relations.
    • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      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

      • mtoboggan@feddit.orgEnglish
        19·
        2 months ago

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

        • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          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

            • einrobert@lemm.eeEnglish
              4·
              2 months ago

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

              • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                2 months ago

                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.

                • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                  5·
                  2 months 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.

            • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

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

          • Skyrmir@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 months 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.

      • perestroika@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        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).

        • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          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

          • perestroika@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            1 month ago

            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.

            • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              2·
              1 month 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.

        • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          2 months 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…

      • Wronnay@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        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)

        • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          1 month 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