Posted on 01/12/2005 8:06:20 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Speaking on Monday (10 January) at the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels thinktank, Nicholas Burns outlined NATO's new role in the world as focussing on the Middle East, North Africa and South and East Asia. He also said that the Alliance's main focal points in 2005 will be Afghanistan and Iraq... After severe disagreement between NATO members, the Alliance is now also in Iraq - personnel there will be extended from 60 to 300... he said there are two potential problems to NATO achieving its wider aims: the growing military capabilities gap between the US and its European counterparts and the lack of troops. Mr Burns said that while the US spends 420bn dollars per year on defence, the rest of the NATO members combined (24 European countries plus Canada) spend less than half that amount... reserved praise for... the Czech Republic for specialising in biological and chemical decontamination... Only 3-5% of European forces can be "deployed beyond European national borders" this contrasts with up to 75% on the US side... Mr Burns, who has been at NATO since 2001, refused to comment on media reports that he is to become the under secretary for political affairs at the US State Department.
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"the growing military capabilities gap between the US and its European counterparts"
Its so easy to lose track of the importance of investing R&D and production costs into national budget, especially when the Umited States has been covering all your "big ticket" security items since the end of WW2.
Archetypcial: Canada's Disaster Response Unit - grounded and useless because no one had the foresight to look at lift capacity.
Ireland not to take part in EU battlegroups
EU Observer ^ | January 10 2005 | Honor Mahony
Posted on 01/12/2005 8:00:11 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1319698/posts
Just wait until Russia offers to provide the transportation capabilities... if the EU partially foots the bill. This puts Putin in the enviable position of delaying any EU buildup of military capabilities while simultaneously getting someone else to foot the bill for part of his own infrastructure.
I suspect that the EU will gladly turn to Russia because, after all, "they're European!"
I also suspect that the EU will come to understand the old adage, "Beware Greeks bearing gifts."
Europe was preparing its surrender to the inevitable invasion by the USSR. Imagine how disappointed they were when the USSR fell apart. ;')
Supply shortages after D-Day led within a few years to heavy airlift capability in the US. That helped Truman when he said (regarding the Berlin crisis), "we are going to stay, period." In the Yom Kippur War (1973), the US couldn't overfly European countries, or use their airports, with the exception of Portugal. Using the Azores, the US managed to out-airlift the USSR by a factor of more than two, actually I think it was nearly three times as much. The USSR had a much shorter route.
Among the things transported by plane were a dozen or so complete, ready-to-roll tanks, but mostly it was spare parts for tank and aircraft repair, and ammo. All of that was coordinated with the Israelis. Nixon (who spent a lot of nights hungover or drunk, during the Watergate crisis) had ordered the airlift, and when told that it would be difficult blah blah blah, said, "use everything that will fly."
I've read that Al Haig ordered TOW missiles shipped and that it pissed off Henry Kissinger. Can't find anything about that online. Read it onetime in one of those obsolete printed hardcopy things with the shiny covers. :')
The National Guards of any of several US states could take the EU head to head and win hands down.
[snip] The airlift officially ended Nov. 14. By then, the Air Force had delivered 22,395 tons of cargo-145 missions by C-5 Galaxy and 422 missions by C-141 Starlifter. The C-5s delivered about 48 percent of the tonnage but consumed 24 percent less fuel than the C-141s. Included in the gross cargo tonnage was a total of 2,264.5 tons of "outsize" materiel, equipment that could be delivered only by a C-5. Among these items were M-60 tanks, 155 mm howitzers, ground radar systems, mobile tractor units, CH-53 helicopters, and A-4E components... "For generations to come," said Golda Meir not long after the war's end, "all will be told of the miracle of the immense planes from the United States bringing in the material that meant life for our people." [unsnip]
Nickel Grass
Walter J. Boyne
Air Force Magazine
Journal of the Air Force Association
December 1998, Vol. 81, No. 12
http://www.afa.org/magazine/dec1998/1298nickel_print.html
"The National Guards of any of several US states could take the EU head to head and win hands down".
Absolute nonsense.
Speak to anyone who has served alongside the British or Germans and you will find that they lack the numbers and hi tech that the US Army has but are exceptional well run and effective fighting units.
The idea that a State National Guard could take down either one of them is total BS
In other words, Europe has already put all the forces it possibly can into Iraq. They are maxed out.
I thought that their military capability consisted mainly of surrendering and hollering "help us" to the USA and Briton.
I saw a topic about Turkey considering joining a mutual cooperative defense association with Russia, China, and some of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Turkey's armed forces are larger than France's and Germany's combined. Not as well equipped, although they do get US weapons, sometimes through Israel.
When the war in Europe starts, it'll be from within, from the Moslems in their midst. And it is going to start. It'll be a few years yet though. I'd say, the timetable has been set, and the street battles will begin early in 2008, the US election year.
By 2006, if Syria hasn't begun regime change, Egypt and Syria (and possibly Saudi Arabia) will attack Israel again, and the PLO terror groups will join the attack. I doubt that they will succeed; afterward, Israel will annex the "West Bank" and level every structure in Gaza, after demolishing the Egyptian and Syrian armed forces, and dropping (conventional) bombs on Cairo and Damascus.
Egypt has made an agreement with Israel to move Egyptian forces up to the border. That's one of the necessary steps. Egypt is seeking nuclear arms. Syria is developing missile systems. The planning has been going on for quite a long time.
States like Texas and California have scores of Guard and Reserve units including multiple full divisions. The Bundeswehr today is only 250K men/women the majority of which (as in any army) are support personnel. You can give a pass to the British for being the only European country left who can fight overseas, but I wouldn't discount the Texians in a Anglo-Tex matchup. There is no argument that the British and Germans have outstanding military units within their forces. The point of the article is simply that they are so few and so unable to get where the fighting is. 3-5% of European troops can be deployed beyond their borders. That says to me that if we face a world-wide conflict with Bolivia tomorrow there will be more California Guardsmen there in 6 months than Europeans.
Which is all very good, if the original point was on overseas deployment.
It wasn't. My point stands.
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