Good stuff, reaming by buying foreign equipment is only kicking the can down the line.
Investing into defense industry that can build new weapons is far stronger then temporarily buying weapons.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Or worse, renting or “licensing” weapons.
"Unless their home countries sign defense pacts", which I kinda expect the UK and Turkey to sign.
Dangit, if only we had some sort of defense agreements with the US... /s
Do any European defence companies have SAMs competitive with the Patriot, or are they still a generation behind?
Multiple
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surface-to-air_missiles
German Iris-T Norways NASAM French Aster 30
You're comparing apples and oranges.
Of those I would say that only Aster 30 + SAMP/T is a viable Patriot alternative.
And I believe IRIS-T is superior to current US alternatives.
The big advantage of Iris-T is the price of a missile. As in Iris-T is at 250k, Aster30 at 2million and Patriot at 4million. The problem with it is the much shorter range and no anti ballisitc missile capability.
There is going to be so many Boxers..
my beloved 😍
What about Israel?
We should definitely stop selling weapons there but do we even buy anything from there? They have their own heavy vehicles and AA but I’d be surprised to see a Merkava tank or something in a European army and Iron Dome only works on rocket equivalent of rocks thrown over a wall.
[edit] we probably get ammo
Yes we do. Finland has ordered David's Sling for example.
PULS is bought by Germany and Spain, with the Netherlands and Denmark using it already.
Germany has also bought Arrow3 as a anti ballistic missile AA system. There is nothing like it available in the EU.
Lots of those advanced Israeli AA weapons are developed together with US defence contractors and multinationals (Arrow3 = Boeing, David’s Sling = Raytheon) so one could hope they’re off the table too.
We already know different countries buy intelligence software for law enforcement purposes. I would not be surprised if other intelligence and cyber warfare suppliers were Israeli.
I doubt tools for policing citizens are in scope of this fund.
If you abstract to intelligence tools, which is what they are, I am quite sure they will be included.
EDIT: and indeed they are
Thanks for finding this! Still holding on to the hope that there’s a difference between electronic warfare and electronic surveillance.
I learned the hard way that hope, like fear, is a bad habit.