High-tech weapons help Europe to close military gap with US

[emad]

March 02, 2005
Times
By Anthony Browne, Brussels Correspondent



THE European Union is to develop unmanned drones, new armoured vehicles and advanced communication systems in a strategy to become a military superpower and close the defence technology gap with the United States. The programme involves setting up a joint EU fighter-pilot training programme and co-ordinating the testing of military equipment on proving grounds and in wind tunnels.

The initiatives from the newly-created European Defence Agency represent the EU’s first step in military research and development. They are aimed at transforming the EU from being solely a political power, in charge of policies such as agriculture and trade, to a military one, capable of sending troops around the world to enforce a foreign policy agreed by its member states.

The strategy has proved controversial to EU members such as the Irish Republic and Sweden, who fear that their traditional neutrality is being threatened, as well as in Britain, where there has been concern that it will undermine Nato and its close military relationship with the United States.

Nick Witney, the British chief executive of the European Defence Agency, set up last month, explained his plans to boost Europe’s “defence, technological and industrial base” by co-ordinating the military activity of EU members.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1506532,00.html

[ladjf]

1. Bear in mind that potential opposing Countries don't have to

match our military strength on an 1 to 1 basis. In the era nuclear weaponry, mutual destruction levels are achieved even when the overall relative strengths are not equal. All it would take is for some sort of opposing coalition form for the purpose of striking the U.S. pre-emtively, or simply to stop the crazy imperialistic campaign by Bush and the neo-cons.

[DBoon]

3. Which is why so many countries want nuclear weapons

They are a sort of "poison pill" against a US invasion.

These countries do not expect to win a war using nuclear weapons - just to make the consequences of waging a war against them insufferable

[ladjf]

8. Their key strategy is to keep their expenditures far below

ours, using the strategy of asymmetrical damage while still having the firepower to deter. As you've said, the tendency is toward conventional weaponry. However, that would be overridden by a smaller
Country, on the verge of an American takeover. From their viewpoint, they would have nothing to lose by launching a nuclear attack. This could be done from the decks of tramp freighters cruising outside the U.S. territorial waters.

What this all adds up to is that the Bush idea of using raw power all over the world to carry out his plots is only making a bad situation much worse. The only hope for reducing the risks, is to find ways to reduce the motivations for attacks. In other words, do what can be done to make it counter-productive for anyone to attack us.

I can't find the words to adequately describe the full extent of the current administration's short-sighted stupidity. It's as though they are from another planet. Homo sapien has been on Earth less than 300,000 years. Evolutionarily speaking, that's a very short period. At the rate we're going, it's likely that humans will break all records of "shortgevity". (Turtles, for example, have been on Earth for over 200,000,000 years.)

[Stella_Artois]

4. Thats true

But ironically the theory of MAD means that warfare has tended to be conventional since 1945.

The EU must spend a LOT more money on defense to equal the US. Not that this is a wise idea, since the US seems to be spending itself deeper and deeper into debt.

[RogueTrooper]

10. The EU spends more money on defense than people may realise

it is just done by the member states; rather than the organisation as a whole. I think it is the British and the French that have the largest defense budgets in the EU.

[Stella_Artois]

11. Thats right

The EU doesn't spend a penny on defense, it has no military and no ministry of defense.

If you add the spending of every single EU state together it doesn't even reach 25% of US spending, IIRC.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. "striking the U.S. pre-emtively" -Gee - is that legal ?

.
.
.

Oh right -

Preemption doesn't require the blessings of the UN or the rest of the world.

Just one madman with his finger on the buttons.

So at this point, Iran, Korea and Syria have more justification to preemptively strike the US than the US did to strike Iraq.

After all,

The US has been threatening these countries openly for some time now

So the United States is INDEED a "Clear and Present Danger" to these countries . .

Hmmmm :freak:

[Wright Patman]

2. CIA says EU will soon implode

Although given the CIA's recent track record, this might mean the EU will be ruling the entire world within 15 years.

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=56762005

[lanlady]

5. CIA sez

The CIA also failed to predict the biggest event of the late 20th century: the breakup of the Soviet Union. And when it did fall apart, the CIA published a paper stating there would be major civil war in Ukraine any day now (Russian-speaking East agnt Ukrainian-speaking West). Yup, it's best to expect the opposite of that they say!

[bobthedrummer]

9. They are determined not to talk about the Nazis and Nazi partisans

that they had already "recruited" before their foundation in 1947, this was the original "intelligence failure" employing Nazi war criminals in the battle against godless communism.

These CIA Nazis found a political home in the RW of The Republican Party.
Old Nazi Networks in US (Russ Bellant's work)
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/political-science/fascism/bellant/bellant.pt1

[Tempest]

6. Don't forget, this is Goss talking

Naturally the report is going to be gloom and doom.

The Bushies are scared shitless of the EU and them becoming a superpower.

There's another thread in LBN where the EU are developing new weapons to rival the U.S.