Anyone have words for this that I’m allowed to post on here without being banned?
Ahhh i didnt know Special K went to go work for the Trump Administration
This is disgusting. The president shouldn’t even have the power to stop the aid like this. It’s got congressional approval. He’s leading by executive order, something normally seen in a dictatorship.
Also, he’s done this before. It’s what his first impeachment was over. He withheld aid to Ukraine in an attempt to get them to hand over supposed ‘dirt’ on Biden.
It’s disgusting, but I’m sadly not surprised.
So, err… Anyone want to tell me how solid the US is on support for UK Trident, or Article 5, or F-35 weapons integration?
The US is now somewhere between being a deeply unreliable ‘partner’, and an undeclared hostile state.
We should not allow ourselves to leave our most vital national interests in the in the gift of this vile, excretable, capricious, hateful creep.
Europe needs to start looking to its own industries again, something the French have always been right about.
We do actually produce a fair amount of defence stuff here in the UK, it just needs to be ramped up. For example, we do produce about 20% (?) of the F-35 components here.
But yes, I’d like to see more investment in the like of BAE, Thales, Rheinmetall, Leonardo etc etc. Let’s get Europe properly making our own defence infrastructure. From R&D all the way through to delivery.
We need to make sure it is also joined up European approach (Tornado, Jaguar, Puma etc) to enable greater cost effectiveness and interoperability between nations and try to avoid multiple development, small production with countries going alone (split of France from EFA/Typhoon to develop Rafale).
This to me will be the issue as politics will start to play as much as defence requirements and muddy the waters (build share, who gets what jobs). We need to be pragmatic about it and work together to get the best cost benefit solution and use each ‘team’ member to play to its strengths
My question would be how much of the software we use is American managed?
For example, could the Yanks simply remotely disable our F35s if they really wanted to?
Yea they could — there’s a video of when 617 were doing the conversion and the RAF couldn’t get the plan to start as the passwords had changed & they need a US serviceman with an over ride code.
Mad that our latest generation fighters operating system is essentially a SaaS 
Certain parts of the maintenance requirements are subject to contract as well I think. Then there’s parts supply…
while i am not against this idea - how realistic is it to achieve it in time to “make a difference”?
on the basis that the current POTUS is only in office until Jan 2029 how quickly can Europe react?
Taking the obvious recent European collaboration aircraft the Eurofighter Typhoon, which i fondly recall was promised to be the aircraft brought into service “fastest than ever seen before” thanks to its revolutionary engineering and technology in both the design phase (CAD) and its manufacturing (CAM) stages - yet the project started in the early 80s, took its first flight in the 90s and wasn’t in service until the mid-late 00s
on the assumption there is sufficient need, funding, and agreement, on the basis that the Typhoon timetable is repeated (considered “typical”) it could be the 2040s when we see the grip of USA military hardware (F35s) released by the UK and other European forces…
while i am not looking forward to riding the wave of confusion for the next ~4 years is it a smaller price to pay?
There’s already 2 separate Next-Gen Fight programs running that don’t include the US. You’ve got Tempest which is UK, Italy and Japan. And then there’s French, German and Spanish project for their own version.
So these wheels are already in motion, and have been for a few years. I don’t think there’s any chance of producing something like a NGF by the end of trumps term. But there’s no reason Europe can’t ramp up production of small arms, ammunition and shells etc etc.
At this point, this is an assumption, and not the strongest of assumptions.
There’s a reasonable chance he’s around for longer than that.
There are a few Reps that are already trying to introduce bills to allow a third term. They’re specifically adding in a clause so you can only do it if you’ve served two non-consecutive terms. Then you can do a third.
It is very unlikely to pass, and will cause a constitutional stir. But at this point, nothing would surprise me.
Yes but this situation today shows what happens if the US pivots away from Europe in totality - ther is no guarantee that another POTUS won’t do the same.
In some respect, what he says is true - we have relied on them and let ourselves slip because we assume they will always be there
Ironically, maybe it is time to be a little more Eurocentric and self sufficient
Assuming he lives post-2029. Not even Trump can escape the reaper.
