Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Feel free to marvel at our stockpile of high-tech spy balloons. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
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I wonder how much of a dent the European armed forces get in their equipment by sending it all to Ukraine.
The entire Dutch armed forces have 18 tanks and they are all leased from Germany.
They are co-owners of 49 PzH 2000’s, together with Germany. Five of them have already been sent to Ukraine.
Can’t be good for armed forces that had years of defunding happen to them recently.
Same goes for aircrafts. The Dutch airforce has 26 F-35’s of which 18 still have to be manufactured. So that’s 8 semi-functional F-35’s. And 40 F-16’s who appear to be falling apart if you look at them in a funny way.
It’s like Yogthos wondered in another thread. There could well be a massive wave of austerity coming to Europe, pulling state funds out of social services and dumping it into war, under the pretense of the conflict in Ukraine and the decimated weapons stocks of EU/NATO countries.
And then there’s the German-US tank politicking going on, which in some ways looks like the US-MIC trying to replace German defense contractor Rheinmetall.