European Armour

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merocaine said:
Dude are you seriously avocating european countries to become dependent on arms sales to spur economic growth? Before the 1960's the US had a normal economy, this was the golden age for american industry, now the only thing you make that is top of the range are weapon systems, almost every other industry has been eaten into by forigen compeditors.

Less than 40 years ago america was the undisputed world leader in everything. Now at least 30% of your industry is devoted to the military production which you sell to the highest bidder as long as they dont threaten you. And you want other countries to follow that path? What do you think would happen if germany and Japan went in to the arms market in the same way as the US? your profits would be destroyed! Everything else the Japanese went into they dominated, and the Germans arent far behind.

Singapore has to spend that kind of cash it lives in a very dangerous neighbourhood, they dont want to spend that money they have to.

Anyway europe is not america, goverments and people work differently here,
social cohesion and a more equal socity are much more important than booming profits and a lack of a social net. What seems to work for you does not work for other countries, just imagine where america would be if for the last 40 years half of what you spent on militaty R and D was spent on pure industral R and D. Maybe you would still be the top industrial dog.
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Well if you would look at Germany, its industries are also going to China due to very high wages there, that is also the reason for its high level of unemployment, plus it is very hard to fire workers there, this makes employers hesitant to hire more labour when the economy recovers, thus leading to a high natural rate of unemployment even when the economy is expanding at 3 per cent, the reason why Denmark has a lower unmemployment rate is because of its flexible labor laws, and also because at 28 per cent, its corporate tax rate is lower than Germany, this despite it being a welfare state. As for the decline of American industries, it is simply because of the fact that wages are cheaper in China that American industry is migrating there, hopwever when it comes to the services sector, for example Silicon Valley and Wall Street, there is still a very strong presence in America, plus the fact the China's currency is undervalued and it keeps its wages artificially low by suppressing unions does not help much either in keepiung manufacturing jobs in America, it is mainly the unionized labor in factories that are losing jobs, factories that do not have a unionized workforce are actually doing very well, such as the Toyota and Honda plants in the South, plus it is actually a good idea to depend on your own country's companies when buying weapons, and to encourage having your own domestic arms industries, so that your supply of armaments will still not be cut off if war starts, for example, it will not be a good idea for the UK to relocate its weapons factories to China just because labor is cheaper there, since if a war between the UK occurs, then the UK will have its supply of weapons disrupted because its supply of weapons comes not from its own factories but from China, plus it cannot discount the possibility that China may be able to blackmail its trading partners, like Germany or France, into not supplying it the weapons it needs that are being manufactured in Germany or France, by threatening to deny German and French companies access to the lucrative Chinese market of its factories continue to supply weapons to the UK if war breaks out between the UK and China.
 
In germany we have not a problem of getting enough coscriptors (Law also allows a social siervice instead of joining the army).
The problem is that there are not enough young men starting to serve every quarter year.
And some who don't want to do anything have to and some want are not allowed to.
So the situation is not fair here and this is a big problem.

There are still no UKs or italians here. Arrrgh. :lul
 
I think we have enough weapons factories in europe to support us with everything we need.
Why should some part of our defense industry go to china. :confused:
This will never happen.

And now back to topic!!!!!!
 
merocaine said:
I'm not sure raw figures will give you that much insight in to real depoloable military power. It would just be a long list. I'm sure if the russian counted up all there tanks the total would be frightening, but undepolable in any meaningfull capability. The fact that most (all) european counries rely on the
US airlift capabilitys makes such totals kind of meaningless. Its a nice idea dont get me wrong, but maybe it would be better to look at european rapid reaction forces or the nasent Battle groups system.
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I think if ever the European countries decide to increase their budgets, they should consider buying lift capabilities, so they do not have to rely on the Americans anymore for air or sealift.
 
Waylander said:
In germany we have not a problem of getting enough coscriptors (Law also allows a social siervice instead of joining the army).
The problem is that there are not enough young men starting to serve every quarter year.
And some who don't want to do anything have to and some want are not allowed to.
So the situation is not fair here and this is a big problem.

There are still no UKs or italians here. Arrrgh. :lul
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I think I heard from a Discovery Channel program that the UK has about 400+ Challenger 2s.
 
As long as I know they want to keep 250+ in active service. This is not much. I don't even know if they produced so many Challi 2.

And by now we are more relying on ukrainian AN-225 for which we have long time contracts.
That's for sure not the best solution.
 
rattmuff said:
The swedish system has recently been changed (again). 11 or 15 months obligatory + 5 months optional. The obligatory is for defending the country and the optional is more international. This year 8000(15% of thoose who got enlisted) has been called to "serve the country" (i'm one of them). I think 1500 conscripts is placed in "fighting units" and the rest as maintainance, engineeres, staff, guards, royal guards ect. ect.

The goal is that at least 4000 youths is called each year and that 90% choose to participate international, join the Home Guard or become a officer. The problem is that in the near future there wont be 4000 youths available to SAF, the youngsters don't want too go through 2 weeks of "hell in the dark, cold and dangerous swedish pine forrest". So they have to take thoose who don't want this and the result is poorly motivated conscript soldiers. So SAF is planning to start training "tech-officers", keep informing the public, start training proffesional soldiers, make SSG(Särkilda Skydds Gruppen, swedens "top secret elite unit") available for conscripts and train conscripts.

Tearing a down a big conscript system really fast is not good!!!
Sorry for going a little off topic!
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With that in mind maybe conscription is more suited for socially conservative societies, or societies that are more roght of center, since they are also more likely to have a stronger emphasis on patriotism, which will make young people more likely to join the armed forces, I do not know, but I do think that your government should be paying attention to the parts of the Sweden who traditionally vote for more right of center parties, and then concentrate their recruitment efforts there, since those people may be more likely to join the armed forces than those that come from areas that traditionally vote for left of center or socialist oriented parties.
 
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Well if you would look at Germany, its industries are also going to China due to very high wages there, that is also the reason for its high level of unemployment, plus it is very hard to fire workers there, this makes employers hesitant to hire more labour when the economy recovers, thus leading to a high natural rate of unemployment even when the economy is expanding at 3 per cent, the reason why Denmark has a lower unmemployment rate is because of its flexible labor laws, and also because at 28 per cent, its corporate tax rate is lower than Germany, this despite it being a welfare state. As for the decline of American industries, it is simply because of the fact that wages are cheaper in China that American industry is migrating there, hopwever when it comes to the services sector, for example Silicon Valley and Wall Street, there is still a very strong presence in America, plus the fact the China's currency is undervalued and it keeps its wages artificially low by suppressing unions does not help much either in keepiung manufacturing jobs in America, it is mainly the unionized labor in factories that are losing jobs, factories that do not have a unionized workforce are actually doing very well, such as the Toyota and Honda plants in the South, plus it is actually a good idea to depend on your own country's companies when buying weapons, and to encourage having your own domestic arms industries, so that your supply of armaments will still not be cut off if war starts, for example, it will not be a good idea for the UK to relocate its weapons factories to China just because labor is cheaper there, since if a war between the UK occurs, then the UK will have its supply of weapons disrupted because its supply of weapons comes not from its own factories but from China, plus it cannot discount the possibility that China may be able to blackmail its trading partners, like Germany or France, into not supplying it the weapons it needs that are being manufactured in Germany or France, by threatening to deny German and French companies access to the lucrative Chinese market of its factories continue to supply weapons to the UK if war breaks out between the UK and China.
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are we talking about employment law or weapons manafacturing?

Of course its a good idea to depend on your own companies for weapons, I just dont think jacking up your Defence Budget is a good way to boost your economy. At the end of the day those companys are making there living off the taxpayers back. They are non productive capital goods and are usually stored away and never used, and when they are sold its very hard to control how there used by 3th party's. I'm no peacenick but I can only feel disgust when I look at the arms industry and arms trade. Morally it has no justifaction, economly it is counter productive. War is something that has to be engaged in as a last resort, not something to be used to make a few bucks.

Ok the german economy is'ent in the best shape as regards employment levels, but most of those jobs are highly productive, and highly skilled. The work force is probobly the most educated in the world. The german economy has shaken out a lot of ineffiencys in the last 10 years, and german middle size engineering firms (back bone of the german economy) have weathersed the storm, firms with 80 to 400 employees were never in a possition to out source. I wish we had something like that in Ireland, we're multinational heaven, and they could all do a runner when the economic conditions change:(

Toyota and Honda are staying in america (in the south) cause wages are low
and they pay f**K all in corporate taxes, so ok theres jobs but if the workers ever try to join a union to bargain Or the state needs to raise revenue those jobs could end up in mexico.

Anyway were arguing about general economic theory.

This is ment to be about european armour.
 
I think germany is one of the less patriotic countries in the world and one where left wing politics are much more accepted than right wing politics. ;)

If you go fore patriotism the US would have a pure conscripts army.
 
ren0312 said:
Well if you would look at Germany, its industries are also going to China due to very high wages there, that is also the reason for its high level of unemployment, plus it is very hard to fire workers there, this makes employers hesitant to hire more labour when the economy recovers, thus leading to a high natural rate of unemployment even when the economy is expanding at 3 per cent, the reason why Denmark has a lower unmemployment rate is because of its flexible labor laws, and also because at 28 per cent, its corporate tax rate is lower than Germany, this despite it being a welfare state.
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He he he, always funny to read this "germany is almost part of the third world by now"-stuff in foreign news and hearing it from foreigners. If i would believe what they say about Germany on CNN and all those other american or british news stations, i'd have to wonder how well everything here is still going.
German economy is still pretty much doing ok. The unemployment rates virtually only apply on the very low qualification sector. With a decent diploma in your poket you still get a good job in a german company, working in Germany, not in China or anywhere else.
The companies are even complaining that they can't find enough engineers to hire here. The demand is hughe. No wonder with the german companies still being world leaders in export since a long time and the machine building industry still growing about 8 % every year.
They did even send headhunters to my university to hire students that haven't even graduated yet. I was offered 2 jobs as an engineer when i just was in my second year of university.

Also there are massing news and reports in the last years about companies moving their production facilities from eastern Europe, the USA and Asia back to Germany because they missed either the german infrastructure or the availability of well educated working force.
It was like this with the company my father works in. They invested in the USA for more than a decade but disappointed retreated from there because the american hire and fire system virtually only produces badly motivated clerks. They had to move german workers there the whole time to train the americans or to simply do the work themselves and that became way more expensive after a while than just expanding production facilities here in Germany.
And you hear such things from the bigger companies and corporations too.

And the thing with the high taxes is not so easy too.
The rates on the paper may be higher in Germany, but at the same time there are so many possibilities to avoid paying taxes alltogether for big corporations that they didn't pay taxes at all during the last decades.
That is a big scandal and annoys the normal people here very much.
For example i once read that the whole BMW corporation did pay only 14 euros (not 14 millions, not 140000, no just 14.0 euros) in a year, because they were able to use all the little tricks like selling property to itself and stuff like that, to avoid taxes.
Virtually only the little people and the little and middlesized companies are paying taxes here and they still don't leave the country.

But enough being off topic.


I don't see why conscriptors should be worse that professional soldiers. The concept of the "citizen in uniform" that is still applied in Germany makes sense in my opinion.
It is better to have a clever conscript sitting in a tank than a stupid fuckup who only chose a military career because he's afraid of the civil economy or can't make it out there.
In a small army like the german, there is no room for hardly alphabetical cannonfodder like the US forces hire often.
 
Swedens problem

There are no military threat against Sweden.
The public don't know what SAF is doing.
Today you can say you don't want to do military service.
Due to fewer conscripts, you have to score high on all tests.
And even if you do score high on everything they might not need you.
Swedish media overwhelms us with unreported/classified reports about swedish soldiers being attacked by stones, small arms, grenades dispite it happened months ago or even years ago.
Last year two SSG soldiers died by a IED.
Gripen project cost too much.
Going from a big national invasion defence to a small higly efficient armed force.
 
Grand Danois said:
Where are the Scimitars on this list? Or are they perhaps registered as Scorpions?
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No, MoD wouldn't do that. But they might accidentally miss a line off a table. Ooops! :D

Must be a mistake. I can't believe they're all in Iraq.

BTW, table 3.14 is worth a look. It gives a summary of holdings of all countries within the CFE area 0n 01-01-2004. Not broken down by type, unfortunately, but still . . . Germany declared 2171 tanks.

The whole thing's available as a pdf file (free) at http://www.dasa.mod.uk/natstats/ukds/2005/pdf/UKDS2005.pdf

Earlier years are also online.
 
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merocaine said:
are we talking about employment law or weapons manafacturing?

Of course its a good idea to depend on your own companies for weapons, I just dont think jacking up your Defence Budget is a good way to boost your economy. At the end of the day those companys are making there living off the taxpayers back. They are non productive capital goods and are usually stored away and never used, and when they are sold its very hard to control how there used by 3th party's. I'm no peacenick but I can only feel disgust when I look at the arms industry and arms trade. Morally it has no justifaction, economly it is counter productive. War is something that has to be engaged in as a last resort, not something to be used to make a few bucks.

Ok the german economy is'ent in the best shape as regards employment levels, but most of those jobs are highly productive, and highly skilled. The work force is probobly the most educated in the world. The german economy has shaken out a lot of ineffiencys in the last 10 years, and german middle size engineering firms (back bone of the german economy) have weathersed the storm, firms with 80 to 400 employees were never in a possition to out source. I wish we had something like that in Ireland, we're multinational heaven, and they could all do a runner when the economic conditions change:(

Toyota and Honda are staying in america (in the south) cause wages are low
and they pay f**K all in corporate taxes, so ok theres jobs but if the workers ever try to join a union to bargain Or the state needs to raise revenue those jobs could end up in mexico.

Anyway were arguing about general economic theory.

This is ment to be about european armour.
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I am not advocating raising your defence budget in order to lift your economy out of a recession, for example, France has an adequate defence budget at 2.6 per cent of GDP, and its economy is still growing very slowly, what is needed is an environment that is conducive to business, that is low corporate taxes and a friendly regulatory environment, an adequate defence budget, i.e. 2 per cent of GDP is needed in order to make sure that your armed forces are not underinvested, you can have a very high defence budget and yet still have a collapsing economy, like the USSR for example.
 
This thread is getting wierd now! Economy, conscripts.... The title do say "European armor" .... i am sorry for making off topic posts. Please let us go back to the topic now. :offtopic
 
ren0312 said:
I am not advocating raising your defence budget in order to lift your economy out of a recession, for example, France has an adequate defence budget at 2.6 per cent of GDP, and its economy is still growing very slowly, what is needed is an environment that is conducive to business, that is low corporate taxes and a friendly regulatory environment, an adequate defence budget, i.e. 2 per cent of GDP is needed in order to make sure that your armed forces are not underinvested, you can have a very high defence budget and yet still have a collapsing economy, like the USSR for example.
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I agree with what you said, with the one exeption about the USSR.
I think the problem there was that due to the communistic system, the companies that build the weapons were somewhat part of the state instead of real companies and free buiseness ventures. That means that all the money spend for weapons was just gobbled up by the production instead of being re-invested into the economy.
In some way the state itself was the customer and the supplier in one, which meant it was a supplier that only financed itself and didn't really have a customer.
It is different when there just is a politician telling a bunch of engineers "build me this" or "build me that" and gives them the money they needed for it, or if you have a gouvernment that pays a functional free venture for it's service and that supplier re-invests that money into the economy and pays taxes.

But that is rather a theory of mine than rock solid knowlege.
 
rattmuff said:
This thread is getting wierd now! Economy, conscripts.... The title do say "European armor" .... i am sorry for making off topic posts. Please let us go back to the topic now. :offtopic
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Well, that just shows that military issues always are economically issues too. It is closely linked and that is why a little off topic talk in this direction isn't that much off topic actually.
 
United Kingdom.

At 21 April 2006, this were the numbers of disponibility of MBTs & IFVs said by Adam Ingram [Minister of State (Armed Forces)] in the House of Commons:

Name: Operationally deployable/Total Fleet size

Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank (CR2 MET): 327/385
Saxon: 579/622
Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle (all variants): 735/794
Spartan: 452/478
Scimitar: 303/328
Striker: 47/48
Samson: 48/50
Samaritan: 46/50
Sultan: 196/205

Edit: Added link
 
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