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
      4·
      2 hours 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
        11·
        2 hours 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
          3·
          2 hours 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

          • Skua@kbin.earth
            1·
            13 minutes ago

            The Austrian Typhoons are all the earliest model and Austria chose not to upgrade any of them, so they’re approaching 25 years old and a less mature design than everyone else’s Typhoons

            • einrobert@lemm.eeEnglish
              4·
              1 hour ago

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

              • Skua@kbin.earth
                2·
                15 minutes ago

                Gripen is specifically built to be cheap and easy to maintain (for a fighter jet, of course). It seems like it’d be a great choice for Ukraine

              • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                33 minutes 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.

            • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              1·
              42 minutes ago

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

          • Skyrmir@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            42 minutes 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.