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this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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I do hope that won't be needed, I also don't think the production capacity of European weapons manufacturers is at a level where we would need to move to a war economy to buy out everything they can produce (I may be wrong, in which case I'll moderate my statement). Finally, I think that with peace-time regulations in place, manufacturers will take enough time to scale up production that we could literally buy everything they're capable of producing without surpassing like 4% of GDP.
However, I can agree that a better, more moderated statement, would be "We'll buy everything you can produce over the next five years, up to a limit of per year". To safeguard against accidentally agreeing to spending like 10 % of GDP on weapons.
The point is that manufacturers need an incentive to massively scaly up capacity now, because if shit hits the fan tomorrow, Europe will be suffering severe shell hunger, and other weapons deficits, for at least a couple years until we're able to scale up production sufficiently.
I'm not worried about a war with Russia and Europe. Europe won't start the war, they're cool enough and know to behave. Rusia might might might be stupid enough to attack Europe but that will immediately draw in the US through NATO. Even if it doesn't, the Russian army is in such a sad state that it can barely hold the relatively small lines in the Ukraine.
How well do you think they'd fare against a European sized line which has an economy nearly 10 times it's size and a high tech well organized army? The only thing Russia has got going for it is that it can still throw some people for cannon fodder and not care whereas Europe cares a lot about casualties.
The issue is that 1000x the economy doesn't help one bit unless you can use that economy to produce matériels. Currently, Russia's production capacity for e.g. artillery shells is estimated to be larger than Europes.
We're actively seeing in Ukraine that throwing cannon fodder at troops that are running low on ammo is a viable strategy if you can eat the losses, which Russia appears to be able to do.
Of course, I believe that Europe would be able to get its shot together and scale up weapons production if attacked. At the same time, I believe that while we are scaling up production, we would need to plug gaps in the line with bodies. In short: Do we really want to lose a bunch of people just because we waited to increase production until we were attacked?
Also, I think Europe should be capable of defending itself without the US. Having the US as an ally should be a bonus on top of already being a force capable of beating Russia.
Europe & US would gain air superiority within weeks. Once air superiority is there, artillery will be gone in weeks, and all that is left is guerilla tactics