The Russian armed forces have revealed to have been hobbled by mismanagement and corruption. So their impressive numbers on papers get a lot less impressive when the supply trucks' tires explode because they've been left parked outside without moving for over a full year. Also the morale of their troops is low because they've been kept in the dark about this "military intervention that's not a war, you go to jail if you say it's a war" right to the point where they were sent to cross the border. They don't understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.
However, despite all that, yes, Russia is absolutely still a threat. Can you take the gamble that their strategic forces (i.e. nuclear-tipped ICBMs) are at the same level of mismanagement and disarray? Maybe they are, but maybe they aren't. Dirty Vlady is asking us if we're feelink lucky.
What Europe needs is a pan-European army, supported by the USAF. This way, Europe contributes and the US still keeps quite a bit of its influence due to air presence.
A pan-European army would not be in any way practical. You've got to keep in mind that the European Union is not a nation-state. It's a
sui generis union of independent nation-states. It's not a federation like the USA or India. So something where you need the agreement of all 27 member states to deploy a unit would just be a nightmare. By the time all the red tape is gone through, the enemy has already won the war.
Something that could work instead is having some sort of European defense headquarters that coordinates the troops that have been deployed by their respective countries. However, such a thing has always been blocked under the pretext that it'd be redundant with NATO. Even though there are EU countries not in NATO, and NATO countries not in the EU.
Honestly, the only functional way I can see of having troops from all EU countries operating effectively is to just have them join the French Foreign Legion. But this puts the financial burden squarely on France.
Dassault aviation's CEO is losing patience
I think this is the end of the Franco-German SCAF and the beginning of the 100% french made SCAF.
Yes, of course he's fed up. Who wouldn't be?
I wish I could just swap up the German negotiation team for the SCAF with the German negociation team for the F-35. It'd be nice to see the Lockheed guys having to listen to the insane prattle about how Germany wants to be in charge of manufacturing and maintenance and to have full intellectual property over every system and subsystem and to be able to veto any export contract and and and and and; while the Dassault guys get interlocutors who just say "jawohl" to everything sight unseen.
