Defense budgets climb as NATO countries step up spending

[Kellhound]

We did consider going STOBAR instead back when we were choosing between the F-35B or the naval variant of our Eurofighter Typhoon but government backhanders resulted in the F35B/STOVL. The next government announced a switch to the F-35C and CATOBAR but then after review decided it wasn't worth the cost.



In fairness India's is a refitted 1970's Russian aircraft cruiser, it's hardly like India have built any from scratch (their other carrier being a British one from the 1950's).



Not really, that one anomaly was the last time we needed a carrier (and essentially the only time since WW2), the Falklands are much better fortified these days to deter any Argentinian aggression/conquest.



It wouldn't be a US level of force intergration but it would proberbly work better than Russia's military and we have more thna enough to kick their ass.



You don't need to eradicate all life/buildings, the UK/France can knock Russia back to the stone age* in a nuclear exchange hence they would never try anything nuclear against us.

*Not that impressive as 80-90% of the place is still there.

STOBAR isnt a huge upgrade from STOVL really, but going CATOBAR would have made for a significant upgrade.

India has actually launched an indigenous 40,000 ton carrier, not a refitted Soviet ship.

Funny thing about carriers though, when you need them, you NEED them.

Without US supplies, NATO would exhaust it munitions in a matter of days., and NATO is very dependant on US C4ISR and EW assets.

110kt, while powerful, is not that powerful. The UK and France combined is getting closer to MAD capability, either one on their own is not capable of it.

[caervek]

India has actually launched an indigenous 40,000 ton carrier, not a refitted Soviet ship.

Do you have any links to this? It's just Wiki still says they only have two carriers, the refitted 1970's Russian aircraft cruiser and the British one from the 1950's.

The UK and France combined is getting closer to MAD capability, either one on their own is not capable of it.

Capable of wiping out every major Russian city though (shockingly they actually have more than two), enough to make them think twice.

[Kellhound]

Do you have any links to this? It's just Wiki still says they only have two carriers, the refitted 1970's Russian aircraft cruiser and the British one from the 1950's.


Capable of wiping out every major Russian city though (shockingly they actually have more than two), enough to make them think twice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Vikrant_(2013)

It would take no less than 9 150kt warheads to destroy Moscow.

[dribbles]

Russia ranked 4th in overall spending and has a huge, compared to Europeans, 5.4% of GDP spent on the military. They already invaded Georgia and Ukraine......<snip>

Sounds really impressive until you understand that Russia as a country has a smaller GDP than Italy.

[caervek]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Vikrant_(2013)

Ahh, it's not finished yet that explains why it doesn't show in the inventory.

[Tijuana]

Romania has increased spending for Vampire Jets

What a cool looking jet though. I assume it's a jet, and not a glider anyway. If EU nations had gliders in their arsenal, I might not make it up off the floor laughing though.

[Kellhound]

Ahh, it's not finished yet that explains why it doesn't show in the inventory.

Hence why I said it was launched, not commissioned.

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What a cool looking jet though. I assume it's a jet, and not a glider anyway. If EU nations had gliders in their arsenal, I might not make it up off the floor laughing though.

Yes its a jet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Vampire

[caervek]

What a cool looking jet though. I assume it's a jet, and not a glider anyway.

Not just a jet, the Vampire was THE jet in it's day, IIRC there were only like four 1st world countries that didn't use them, it set all sorts or records and world firsts, was a super cool plane

[Tijuana]

Hence why I said it was launched, not commissioned.

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Yes its a jet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Vampire

Ah, it's really old. That explains the tiny engine. Still looks really cool. It's like mini P-38.

[Easo]

Europe have twice the manpower and triple the military budget of Russia. There's absolutely nothing Russia could do. All that would be needed is UK+France really, anything more is just a bonus.

France alone could destroy the majority of populated cities of any country in the world. It has 300+ warheads, that's 100 potential cities in Russia, USA and China all at once going boom.

Firstly you would be wrong about that, the EU military completely dwarfs Russia, we have more than a 3:1 numbers advantage in modern air fighters (and ours actually work!), and it's very hard to advance when the enemy has air supremacy (hell air supremacy completely changed the course of the Libyan civil war).

As for nukes we have enough to wipe out all their major cities, they would never try anything against us (MAD doesn't require you to be able to wipe out every single person in the enemy territory, just to be able to cause so much damage/death with the counterattack that a first strike would be suicide).

What are the actual sizes of European armies? The same ones which have been (and still are) reduced in size? Same ones with 200+ tanks each versus thousands of Russian ones, shitty as they might be? Manpower is good and nice, except when your standing forces aka actual army is small. This is not WW2, poorly armed and hastely asembled militia and possibly even reservists won't cut it. Industries won't manage to work until they get captured by infantry, because they will be one of the primary targets for ballistic missiles. You CAN'T roll off tanks today straight into front line like you could in Leningrad, nor can you make planes in a few days.
Will the France and Britain even manage to move their divisions to Poland in time?
And I totally don't trust the politics, there will be arguing about what to do in case Russia goes crazy and invades and whether to actually do anything, do something or commit fully. When being backed by America everything changes quite a lot.
Currently the whole defense of Europe plan is to hold until americans arrive, not go conquer Russia by separated units of different countries.

And nukes?
How many of those nukes will actually hit the targets? If Russia can shoot thousands, chance of success is on their side plus their size does give them a favour.

[Kellhound]

What are the actual sizes of European armies? The same ones which have been (and still are) reduced in size? Same ones with 200+ tanks each versus thousands of Russian ones, shitty as they might be? Manpower is good and nice, except when your standing forces aka actual army is small. This is not WW2, poorly armed and hastely asembled militia and possibly even reservists won't cut it. Industries won't manage to work until they get captured by infantry, because they will be one of the primary targets for ballistic missiles. You CAN'T roll off tanks today straight into front line like you could in Leningrad, nor can you make planes in a few days.
Will the France and Britain even manage to move their divisions to Poland in time?
And I totally don't trust the politics, there will be arguing about what to do in case Russia goes crazy and invades and whether to actually do anything, do something or commit fully. When being backed by America everything changes quite a lot.
Currently the whole defense of Europe plan is to hold until americans arrive, not go conquer Russia by separated units of different countries.

And nukes?
How many of those nukes will actually hit the targets? If Russia can shoot thousands, chance of success is on their side plus their size does give them a favour.

European NATO countries in total have more than 1900 modern (120mm cannon equipped) MBTs in service.

The UK uses the most reliable SLBM in history, so there is a very good chance they will hit their targets, while the French SLBM is a bit more of a mystery it is still considered reliable.

[Skroe]

And nukes?
How many of those nukes will actually hit the targets? If Russia can shoot thousands, chance of success is on their side plus their size does give them a favour.

Russia's "problem" is that they put their 1550 warheads on about 450-500 launchers, while the US put's it's 1550 warheads on 800 launchers. Why? Launchers are among the most expensive components of nuclear infrastructure, being essentially, two thirds space launch vehicles (easiest way to think about it). There is a very high cost of ownership.

Most warheads are aimed at the other sides' nuclear weapons infrastructure, not the other side's cities. Russia is more interested in preventing getting nuked by US warheads than killing a lot of Americans, so they aim their warheads at South Dakota more than the Eastern Seaboard. The popular-culture understanding of the powers nuking cities is something of a fiction. It would be the last thing, not the first thing, they targeted.

So by having more launchers the US requires Russia to aim aim at more targets, but under a hard warhead cap of 1550. By having fewer launchers, Russia allows the US to aim more it's 1550 warheads at Russia's launch sites, with more warheads per aim point.

A key difference is in the US/Russian nuclear approach. Russia heavily MIRVs their warheads. Nominally, they do this to show how big their nuclear cock is, and people like Ulmita get all impressed by in. In reality, they do it at this point because it's cheaper to put 10 warheads on 1 launch vehicle than 1 per 1. Back when there were tens of thousands of active warheads, without a cap, MIRVing and many launch vehicles was obviously the way to go for defense in depth and reliability in making sure the aimpoint in question WOULD get it, but the caps under START then NewSTART means that over-mirving has depreciating returns.

For the US's part, the most reliable part of our deterrent, the Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile Trident IIs, are MIRV'd, with 4-8 warheads depending on the model (though they can carry more) and a greater share of our arsenal is in those 14 Ballistic Missile Submarines. Our land based arsenal used to be heavily MIRV'd through around 2005 with the Peackeeper MX and Minuteman III. Peacekeeper is arguably the most powerful weapon system of its age and could take 12 warheads, but was extremely complex and expensive, and in a world with warhead caps, retired in favor of the smaller, cheaper, bult also 20 year old Minuteman III. The Minuteman III has the capability to be MIRV'd with 3 warheads, but the US only arms them with 1 so as to MIRV our submarine Trident IIs more. This is in a way, is genius because by having one warhead, Russia must absolutely hit every single one of the 450 Minuteman III silos (spaced out so that they would need to launch a minimum 450 warheads to hit all 450 sites), but because the MIRVing is done elsewhere (on Submarine missiles), losing a single Minuteman site does not deplete the size of our counter attack capability.

That's the problem with Russia's nuclear weapons. Because cost is the driving issue at hand here, they're forced to put all their eggs in fewer baskets. If the US were to lose one minutemann III site, it loses 1/1550th of it's strategic arsenal. If Russia were to lose one Satan launch site, it would lose 1/155th of it's strategic arsenal. This is why when Russia announced earlier in the year they're going to build a superlauncher that could carry 15+ warheads, I said, half jokingly, "I hope Russia builds 100 of them!!!!". Because under NewSTART they would have 1550 warheads to put on the 100 launchers, and thus give the US 700 launchers to aim at 100 aim points, or allow us to launch 7 warheads at per target. As you can imagine, that's immensely favorable conditions for a US.

The Russians and their sympathizers in these threads have always had a complicated relationship with these numbers because they view it mostly as an issue of how tough they are rather than as a measure of actual effectiveness. MAD is not some force of nature. It's an emergent property between two closely matched powers that have a parity. The problem is that while the US has monstly maintained and enhanced it's arsenal since the end of the Cold War, Russia's money problems and it's decaying defense industrial base have seen it's side of the MAD equation dramatically slip. The US does not have the same degree of MAD with Russia as it did 30 years ago because of this. Under certain scenarios, the US could even prevail in a nuclear conflict. That's not me egging one on by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact remains that having a lead seat at the nuclear table is an expensive proposition (which is why China is in no rush to build a 1550 strong arsenal, staying around 70 modern weapons and 170 older ones). Russia needs to do its part, or MAD will give way to US Nuclear Hegemony by default. Things like 15 MIRV'd launchers do not constitute Russia "doing its part".

[Easo]

Russia's "problem" is ...

I am fascinated that you did not read that the scenario here was Europe standing on it's own against Russia, without USA. Basically, nukes of Great Britain and France only vs Russia's arsenal.
P.S.
Once I liked your posts. They were detailed and supported with facts. Then, as time passed, you became as bad as the most nutty supporters of "Russia is teh powerfulest country in the wurld". Both like to build theoretical scenarios in which opposing side totally sucks and get's destroyed.

[THE Bigzoman]

Part of being in a defense treaty agreement is that all parties involved uphold their commitments and pay their share of the cost.

God forebid we make people say what they were going to do.

Ughh. Such shitlords.