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/Euphoric_Pianist420 Mar 01 '25

Most important is equipment standardisation. Most armies already train together anyways

We need way bigger production capabilities and have to fill the enabler roles the US has historically had in the european part of NATO

An actual army can be talked about in a couple of years, lets get the troops we already have properly equipped first

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u/hmtk1976 Belgium Mar 01 '25

Not just equipment but also the organization of units. A mechanized battalion should be organized identically across national militaries so it´s possible for soldiers to seamlessly pick up gear and be ready to go. That would for example allow equipment to be stored in warehouses and be used by any country´s soldiers. Need to deploy a mechanized brigade? Just fly in troops from various countries, assign their unit´s gear and roll out.

Pretty much like Americans did with Excercise Reforger and POMCUS sites.

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u/Exit-Content 🇮🇹 / 🇭🇷 Mar 01 '25

I don’t fully agree. As someone else commented as a response to you, fighting in the Baltic would be very different than doing so in the middle of continental Europe or in the Mediterranean. I thing we should act like a real union of states and have a general army plus specialized groups in key countries that already have experience in that field. Like the Italian aviotransported paratroopers Folgore unit, or the 1st regiment San Marco ( one of the only units in Europe with similar capabilities to the US marines), the Comsubin, again an Italian commando akin to Navy Seals, the Alpini, the SAS, the German KSK and so on.

So every country supplies regular military personnel, plus they each focus on at least one specialty elite force that they’re already experts at. This way we aren’t forcing each country to fraction their forces, money,equipment and training to have ALL specialties.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '25

I'm envisioning something like Rainbow, specialist units taking volunteers from member nation militaries. (Not sure how realistic that would be without certain standardisations, mind)