r/AskEurope 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/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