this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
305 points (98.4% liked)
World News
840 readers
856 users here now
Rules:
- Be a decent person
- No spam
- Add the byline, or write a line or two in the body about the article.
Other communities of interest:
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What everyone talks about is losing Europe as a customer, which then increases US costs. What no one is talking about is Europe becoming a huge arms exporter, which then competes with US equipment which then increases US costs. Right now Europe gives not very good options, but a few decades of integrating their product line and bringing costs down from coordination and they will have excellent products. This moves Europe from not just a purchaser to a non-purchaser, but to a competitor.
I feel like Europe has a leg up in this situation and can scale into it faster than people expect as well. Many European nations have experience in joint projects either with the US (like Germany with the Leopard 2 coming out of the same program as the US M1 Abrams and probably being the biggest export MBT outside of Soviet tanks from the Cold War) or with each other (like with the Eurofighter, the standardization of ammunition, and every NATO nation using the Rheinmetall L7 120mm smoothbore cannon as the gun on their tanks). Every NATO nation - and even plenty outside of it - are already on a standardized logistics platform, and moving that away from any American standard would be as easy as using an American standard, and could prove difficult for American arms manufacturers if the two diverge and NATO nations suddenly become an "export market."
What I mean is they have to streamline it. The Leopard 2 currently has to compete with the Leclerc and the Challenger 2. Having 3 tanks means 3x R&D and more costly manufacturing and support. Eurofighter has to compete with Rafale and Gripen. Just the eurofighter engine has 4 manufacturers and must be a coordination nightmare. How many rifle designs are there? How many IFV designs? APC designs? Streamline this and you get a better quality product at a lower cost and you have a more competitive product for export. Even for non export there are 2 carrier designs, 2 nuclear Sub designs, etc.
Are new LeClerc and Challengers even produced currently?
Some competition, diversity, and redundancy isn’t bad strategically and helps improve development and quality.
Countries also have different geography and infrastructure that might lead to preferring other models of IFVs for example. Not every country needs it to be easily air transportable or able to swim.
Spreading production and spending throughout Europe is fair as well.
That isn't necessarily an issue. The US uses their own designs as well, so if you count them, you can add an additional 1 or more to every category. You have the Abrams, as well as the F-15, F-16, A-10, C-130 and AC-130, B-52, B-2, Bradley IFV, Striker IFV and variants (if we still even use those), M109, etc. Even between different branches of the military, they use totally different designs for the same role. The army, air force, and navy all use Blackhawks for their transport helicopter, but the marines use Super Hueys, a refit of the Vietnam era Huey. Even the Abrams has multiple variants, such as the short barrel one that's been used in the forever war in the Middle East, as well as tons of armor kits and equipment packages produced by different companies. Hell, the world's first purpose-built sniper rifle that wasn't just the best firing of the infantry rifles they had on hand was built by 2 guys in a shed in England who made match rifles for shooting competitions, and the current US sniper rifle is a civilian hunting rifle.
You can have different planes for their different roles and functions. That's different than each country making their version based on wanting to protect their own industry. And you can have design progression, also different than each country doing their own thing. Sorry but short barrelled is so minor, the European tanks are completely different tanks.