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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

Europeans have a lot of alternatives to American services, including building out their own.

What Europeans truly lack is the ability to defend itself without the U.S. They have the technical know how and can build the manufacturing capacity but that will take a decade at least.

Also, European financing is just not as strong.

However, with the U.S. voluntarily walking away from its role as the center of the world, this may not be a problem for too long.

Tech is the easiest service to replace considering American tech workers by insisting on WFH have already largely eliminated the geographical advantages American tech used to have.

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Between three and five members of the EU could become nuclear powers complete with delivery systems within a year if there was political will. A couple of them in significantly less than a year. If the EU is truly responsible for its own defense, then it gets to choose how to go about that. There is only one way to do that in the time frame in which it will become necessary.

Nuclear is a bragging tool, but only useful in real war if things are going bad enough that you decide to end the world.

What will take Europe most of a decade is the combination of all the things you really want during war so you are not forced to end the world. Air defense - they have some but not near enough without the US. 5th generation fighter jets. Bombers. A navy - they have some great things but are missing many useful ships. They seem to have enough tanks, but are missing many other parts a modern army needs. And all of the above needs ammunition - they cannot provide Ukraine what is needed 3 years into that war - means they can't scale up to their owns needs if a war were to break out.

Fortunately war with Europe seems unlikely right now, but that can change fast and you need to be ready. Never has a battleship started during a war seen battle in that same war. (I don't know how to verify that claim, but it seems reasonable anyway)

Most of the Iowa class battleships took less than four years from launch to commissioning, so in WW2 your last statement would have been challengeable had the USN not realized the folly of building more BBs.

They were all started before WW2. The Montana class was abandoned - maybe it could have seen service if it was continued but it wasn't. In WW2 battle ships were still king of the ocean - airplanes were showing promise but not yet good enough to replace them (though if the war had gone one just a couple more years they would have)

You mean started before the US involvement in WW2.

And the battleship was definitely NOT the king of the ocean. Carriers quickly took over that role, and aircraft quickly made mincemeat of the best battleships ever built, starting with the destruction of Force Z near Singapore and culminating with the destruction of Yamato and Musashi.

> Nuclear is a bragging tool, but only useful in real war if things are going bad enough that you decide to end the world.

No, it's a deterrent. This is why it's so important that the systems are in place and functional. So they can actually be used, to make sure they never have to.

A deterrent is not like a bragging tool at all.

You don't need a huge navy to battle Russia. It's navy is pretty small (they don't even have a functioning aircraft carrier) and there is anyway a land connection between Europe and Russia.

For fighters I don't think 5th gen is the magic number, you can do well against Russia with more 4th gen, and the generation counter is pretty imprecise anyway, rafale and Gripen are continuously modernized with new software and electronic warfare

Europe has Aster which is a replacement for patriot with similar characteristics. Since the technology exists it should be a small thing to scale up production.

And ammunition has been scaled up since 2022 and every shell used in Ukraina is a shell that does not need to be used in the rest of the countries.

> What Europeans truly lack is the ability to defend itself without the U.S.

Pushing this message is disinformation that has been particularly successful part of the OrangeMan administration.

Europe can defend itself. Combined they have huge military resources and technological replacements for most of what the US can provide.

So - Europe can defend itself. But it prefers to use money, allies and Ukrainian soldiers lives to avoid having to.

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