Lacking a military industrial base, a steel industry, low cost and plentiful energy, advanced research, the UK and EU are not in a position to expand their military capacities however much money, debt the WEF elite through at the problem, says a new report.
Moreover, the expansion would have to be truly gigantic jsut to match the US army s current abilities.
It would may take years if not decades to expand the EU army to the point where it can match the US army today.
Without an industrial base to produce weapons, the EU s announcement of 150 blllion in loans is mostly just a piece of paper. It could buy weapons from India, perhaps. But China? Iran? Israel?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/eu-proposes-eu150bn-defense-loan-us-commitment-wavers-under-trump
800 billion E over four years is far, far, far too little.
It amounts to about same sum at 824 billion USD that the US spent in 2024 alone on its military.
https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-appropriations.house.gov/files/Defense%20FY24.pdf
In the four years the EU plans to spend 800 E (as debt with interest), the US may spend 3200 billion USD on its defense.
The weapons stocks of France and Germany are now so low, their armed forced cannot fight for more than 2 or 3 days as discussed in the posts below.
The stocks which were sent to the Ukraine have not been replaced for the most part because there is hardly any industrial base left for arms manufacturing.
As for advanced space, hypersonic, anti missile and other weapons, there is virtually no research or production capacity.
Where is all of thie new industrial capacity to come from? Where are the raw materials to come from? At waht cost? Where is the energy to come from needed to manufacture weapons? The gas? At what cost? Where is the supply chain to come from? From China?
To compensat for a lack of weapons and equipment, the WEF elite may seek to introduce conscription and overwhelmn by masses of soldiers.
However, modern warfare means masses of soldiers alone can not fight and succeed against aerial bombardment , drones, infrastructure attacks.
Plus, EU conscripts are likely to desert or start shooting their superiors as in the Ukraine.
To sum up, Zelensky and the Kiev regime cannot expect to get any thing like sufficient help from Europe to replace US military aide .
Zelensky should be forced to resign immediately by his Ukrainian cronies unless they want to be under the Russians....
A Minister has to be appointed to sign whatever peace deal Trump and Putin decide as soon as possible or Russia will start taking more and more territory
From media
https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/defending-europe-without-us-first-estimates-what-needed
From a macroeconomic perspective, the numbers are small enough for Europe to replace the US fully. Since February 2022, US military support to Ukraine has amounted to €64 billion, while Europe, including the United Kingdom, sent €62 billion. In 2024, US military support amounted to €20 billion out of a total of €42 billion. To replace the US, the EU would thus have to spend only another 0.12 percent of its GDP – a feasible amount. A more important question is whether Europe could do this without access to the US military-industrial base.
The question of what capacities would be needed to secure a peace deal in Ukraine is at some level secondary. While there are estimates that Ukraine would need around 150,000 European troops to effectively deter Russia 6 , these troops would need to be ready to be deployed rapidly to wherever Russia might decide to attack the EU.
The current assumption of NATO military planners (RAND, 2024) is that in case of a Russian attack on a European NATO country, 100,000 US troops stationed in Europe would be rapidly augmented by up to 200,000 additional US troops, concentrated in US armoured units best suited for the East European battlefield.
A realistic estimate may therefore be that an increase in European capacities equivalent to the fighting capacity of 300,000 US troops is needed, with a focus on mechanised and armoured forces to replace US army heavy units. This translates to roughly 50 new European brigades.
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Military coordination
The combat power of 300,000 US troops is substantially greater than the equivalent number of European troops distributed over 29 national armies. US troops would come in large, cohesive, corps-sized units with a unified command and control tighter even than NATO joint command. Furthermore, US troops are backed by the full might of American strategic enablers, including strategic aviation and space assets, which European militaries lack.
Europe, including the UK, currently has 1.47 million active-duty military personnel (SIPRI, 2024) but effectiveness is hampered by the lack of a unified command. NATO works under the assumption that the Supreme Allied Commander Europe is a top US general – but that can only function if the US takes a leadership role and provides strategic enablers.
Therefore, Europe faces a choice: either increase troop numbers significantly by more than 300,000 to make up for the fragmented nature of national militaries, or find ways to rapidly enhance military coordination. Failure to coordinate means much higher costs and individual efforts will likely be insufficient to deter the Russian military. Yet collective insurance means moral hazard and coordination problems need to be credibly solved.
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Rapidly generating such increases requires an extraordinary effort, though experience shows market economies can do it. For instance, under Chancellor Schmidt (1974-1982), West Germany rapidly modernised the Bundeswehr in response to the threat of modernised Soviet mechanised forces.
Taking the US Army III Corps as a reference point, credible European deterrence – for instance, to prevent a rapid Russian breakthrough in the Baltics – would require a minimum of 1,400 tanks, 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles and 700 artillery pieces (155mm howitzers and multiple rocket launchers). This is more combat power than currently exists in the French, German, Italian and British land forces combined. Providing these forces with sufficient munitions will be essential, beyond the barebones stockpiles currently available. For instance, one million 155mm shells would be the minimum for a large enough stockpile for 90 days of high-intensity combat.
Europe would also need to generate aviation and transport capacities, and missile, drone warfare and communication and intelligence capacities. This includes scaling up drone production to match Russia – to a level of about 2,000 long-range loitering munitions per year. Meanwhile, 300,000 new personnel would have to be recruited and trained.
To reach these targets, production across Europe would need to surge. Military equipment spending is currently about 0.7 percent of GDP (Wolff et al, 2024); it would need to increase substantially. According to our calculations, the recent surge in military spending in Poland saw the government dedicate 70 percent of the additional funds to equipment purchases. Similarly, Germany’s Sondervermögen debt fund has so far gone exclusively to equipment purchases. A greater share of defence spending increases will eventually have to be invested in personnel recruitment and training.
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