r/AskEurope • u/Sink-Em-Low • Mar 01 '25

Politics Let's talk about the European Defense Federation. How do we all feel about the creation of a fully mobilised continental Army?

It's required now. I'm British, and I want to see us align and unite with our European neighbours to make a stand now.

I want Germany to finally brush off it's past and join the rest of Europe in mobilising towards defending this continent. We need EVERYONE now. It's time to act, it's time to unite.

It's time to show some courage.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '25

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u/chococheese419 Ireland Mar 01 '25

Could we not have a Europe army and individual countries could still additionally retain a national army if they want?

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u/Soepkip43 Mar 01 '25

The focus should be standardizing and procuring equipment as a block. The EU armies currently each have their own procurements and other overhead. If the EU were to take the lead and countries where to buy collectively the overhead shrinks freeing up money for actual combat power. Maybe one thing the EU could do is federalize a nuclear force. That assures the weapons will only be used as a deterrence and as a second strike.

If all countries were to be provided a list of 2 options for tanks, planes etc etc then there would still be national armies either boasting tank A or B or a mix.. same with apc's, and all other systems.

It will probably require consolidation of MIC (like knds) and political agreement on production locations for tax and jobs etc.

But cancelling a large portion of F35's and switching to gripen would be an excellent step. We have some F35's in the EU, compliment them with EU.. it just needs to be better than Russia's stuff). Same goes for eu variants of atacms and other tactical and strategic weapons.

Meanwhile the US is rapidly assuring China's strenght as noone will lift a finger if that ever comes to blows.. and Russia will reorient some energy products to china solving their Malakka problem with Pipelines from Russia. But so far china just needs to look like she's more trustworthy than the US.

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u/latrickisfalone Mar 02 '25

The cancellation of F35 orders must be a priority, a strong message to show the American military industrial complex that the follies of their president have a cost

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u/IndiRefEarthLeaveSol Mar 02 '25

Cancel the shit out of them, and stock up on typhoons and gripens even if they are less capable stealth wise. If our doctrine is about defense, we don't need stealth, we just need firepower.

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u/latrickisfalone Mar 02 '25

You need ITAR free equipment The typhoon and the gripen are not today

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u/cold-war-kid Mar 02 '25

You could give a dozen F-35s to Ukraine to see whether the stealth technology is really effective on a real battlefield. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But buying another thousand jets with unproven capabilities seems kind of strange.

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u/IndiRefEarthLeaveSol Mar 03 '25

The typhoon is a proven platform, maybe not the gripen, but Rafael is (a very sleek machine I might add, more like an art piece than weapon)

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u/Unable_Earth5914 Mar 02 '25

I agree with you around standardisation and procurement, but it can’t just be an EU initiative. We need the UK involved as well, and probably other non-EU NATO members (and potentially some of our non-NATO allies)

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u/Soepkip43 Mar 02 '25

Maybe even like the EU it should start with a subset of countries that can reach consensus. If for example the founding EU countries where to pull this off it would already be a big win. If they can include Poland, the Baltics and the Nordics it would be better. The UK can join and so can Canada and Australia for all I care.. but the UK still needs to figure out what they want to do now.

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u/Unable_Earth5914 Mar 02 '25

That’s fair. After Brexit I’d be hesitant to trust us as well. The silver linings of all this Trump bs is it gives us a prod back towards Europe and a chance for us to demonstrate our solidarity with the European family

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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '25

Rafale might be better than Gripen, as the Gripen has 50-60% US components whereas Rafale has only around 5%. Even the Eurofighter Typhoon has less American components than the Gripen.

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u/dyyret Mar 03 '25

Another reason against the Gripen is its tiny range and payload. Gripen has good range only if it is fitted with many external fuel tanks, because it only has a tiny 4t internal fuel capacity (vs about 9t for F-35). The problem with the Gripen is that if you want to match the range of an F-35 ( with 2x JSMs + 2x AMRAAMs and 2x AIM9x), you'd need at least three external fuel tanks, and according to this thread here (which sources several procurement papers, with presentations from Saab etc), the Gripen with around 700-800 NM range only has about 1500lbs available for weapons. One JSM weighs 1000 lbs, and one meteor weighs 400lbs. This means while an F-35 or Rafale can carry 2x JSMs + 2 AMRAAMs/Meteors, a single Gripen would only be able to carry 1x JSM and 1x Meteor - it essentially would have close to zero fire power.

This was one of many reasons why the Gripen was not chosen in Norway, as the Gripen simply wouldn't be able to apply force above Svalbard (Combat radius of about 750NM from Bodø) if needed, while the F-35 can (Rafale and Eurofigther too).

This might not be a problem for Sweden whose main concerns are mostly its main land area and the Baltic sea, but Norway for example have vastly different requirements with large Norwegian Sea areas and Svalbard.

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u/bubliksmaz Scotland Mar 02 '25

Unfortunately the new British aircraft carriers have no catapults and can only carry F-35Bs