• 9 Posts
  • 161 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • It is easy to say this when you are just a rando on the internet. But these politicians are responsible for the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Keeping the tariffs because a manchild is in charge of the most powerful country, would have had significant negative effects on those lives.

    The only thing we can do is pivot the EU away from the US, slowly, while building its military/IT capabilities. Trump(and the US) will suffer eventually. Treating the global economy like a shitcoin has severe long term consequences, consequences that will not be reversible for decades, if not centuries.

    But in order to do this while causing as little damage as possible to Europe, it will take time(at least a decade or two).






  • I dont think Turkey will do anything bad with Cyprus(ie third invasion), any time soon, that would draw too much attention and reaction. The kurds in Syria seem to be close to a deal with the Syrian government.

    However Turkey had a non 0% chance* of getting ready to cause an incident by invading or disputing greek islands(basically what Russia did in Ukraine) but after the Russian invasion, the strong and meaningful reaction by the West(instead of the usual stern letters of disapproval) and the whole F-35 fiasco, Turkey atm seems to have cooled off atm. The Russian invasion was one of the best things to have happened to Greece.

    • Check Erdogan’s comments about how Turkey might come one night(to Greece) and how their new missiles could reach Athens. Yup, thats the big ally of Europe, protector of liberal values and democracy, the wall that will stop foreign Imperial ambitions.

  • You dont need the F-35 just for the russian planes, you need it for the russian ground to air missiles and radars(and targets that those things might protect). While you can suppress enemy air defences with non stealthy aircraft, that is much riskier and much more limited in scope. Which is why Russia isnt using its massive airforce in a way that is expected(by western standards). Even Ukraine’s very limited anti-air capability has shut down the ukranian airspace to russian aircraft.

    A stealth aircraft allows you to penetrate much deeper into enemy airspace and/or in a safer manner. It unlocks a completely different mission capability.

    This is also useful against airplanes. Imagine if european planes have a radar with 120km range and a missile with 60km range. The equivalent russian planes have a 100km range radar and a 50km range missile. So while the european planes have the advantage, this advantage is anything mindblowing.

    Now imagine a european stealth aircraft, with the same missile and radar but because it is stealth, it can only be detected within 20km of a russian aircraft. That means that the stealth plane can go in, shoot a missile and get out before the russian plane even detects it. The advantage is immense and allows the stealth aircraft to be orders of magnitude more effective.

    There is a reason why everyone, including China, is spending billions to make stealth airplanes. The only reason people think stealth is irrelevant is because of russian propaganda, because Russia is too poor to produce stealth airplanes. The thing is, designing AND producing a stealth airplane is very expensive. There are a few european designs but those things wont be coming out for another 10+ years at the earliest(or in 20 years if we want to be realistic). In the meantime, Europe decided to use the f-35, which is a very capable and cheap aircraft(actually cheaper than rafale, etc).

    It doesnt help that we have 2 different 6th generation airplane designs in Europe. It’s a clusterfuck. Maybe Trump will help Europe get its shit together.


  • Partially but the big advantage of being in a big alliance, is sharing stuff. That is the most effective way of progressing.

    Take microchips for example. Taiwan is making them, with european machines and the european machines use american technology. Taiwan is able to create cutting edge microchips because they are allied and dependent on their allies. Similarly, a lot of russian technology has its roots in the soviet era, when russians had access to scientists/technology from all over eastern Europe.

    Apes together strong. Thats the strength of alliances. But if you have a bad faith ape, that ape can destroy the effort of all other apes. Thats the weakness of alliances. For strategically important things(jet planes), you might be willing to take an efficiency hit, by creating things independently for security reasons. Which is why the french have rafale.

    But keep making cutting edge things in order to maintain and improve your defence industry capabilities is very expensive. Thats why Canada doesnt have a jet plane industry, even though they used to have a very capable fighter jet industry. Or you could be like Russia, where you can design new planes but dont have the money to produce them, so you are basically spending a lot of money, creating one off planes.