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Comment by phoe-krk | Hacker News Reader

> If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?

Because they are going to besiege many cities and kill many people even if they end up losing a war, just like what happens in Ukraine right now.

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We can clearly see that the current generation of tank the Russians have are useless. We will spend lots of money on very expensive equally redundant tanks. We can clearly see that the Russians were unable to gain air superiority. We will spend lots of money on incredibly expensive new fighters and bombers. We can clearly see the Russian fleet is bottled up. We will spend lots of money on new ships and submarines.

If we were interested in defence, all the (small) spending would be on anti tank and anti aircraft missile systems, logistics, and training our national guard, firemen, police and other citizens. We (the west) vastly outnumber the Russians, have more advanced technology, and hugely larger industrial capacity.

This defence spending is obviously not about Russia, and not about defence, it is firstly and mainly about making money and creating jobs to get ourselves out of the current economic disaster, and secondly about preparing for war with our next official adversary, whoever the Americans decide to nominate for that.

Good example of why you want to read the whole comment before upvoting.

I think you underestimate just how low EU military spending was. In Germany there were reports of a complete lack of readiness: in 2018 DW reported that none of Germany's 14 large military transports were flight-worthy, 21,000 officer positions were vacant, fighter aircraft were averaging 4 months of flyability per year (resulting in a pilot training deficit), and only 9 of 44 tanks promised for the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force were operational. And those are the big flashy items. The articles also note shortages of supplies like winter clothes, automatic grenade launchers, night-vision equipment, and body armor.

The German defense budget was 46.5 bln € in 2021 [1]. The problem is not spending, the problem is the utter mismanagement in the defense ministry and military forces. I have talked to someone who did contract work for the ministry and knows their internal processes. He proposed that the first step should be to fire everyone and restaff the ministry from scratch.

[1] https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Monatsberichte/2022/0... (Ctrl-F "Ausgaben des Bundes nach Aufgabenbereichen", row title "Verteidigung")

Military spending is based on the size of the economy.

Russia's was 6% of GDP , but EU easily outspended it with <2%

True, but presumably EU pays its soldiers EU wages and buys modern technology which has been tested for safety and reliability, whereas Russia sends conscripts to war in austere equipment.

And 70% of Russia's investments in military is probably wasted on corrupt officials.

> We can clearly see that the current generation of tank the Russians have are useless.

You deeply underestimate how much worse things could get.

After receiving tens of thousands of ATGMs, Ukraine still only destroyed a fraction of the current russian armor and equipment. Russia has many times over in storage. Sure, it will take a while to make that operational, but we shouldn't be taking any chances and just build overwhelming force to stop Russia, especially when it's so cheap for us, relatively speaking.

There are some estimates that 25% (500 of 2000) of all tanks involved in the invasion were destroyed. That's certainly a fraction but a rather large one.

The better your military equipment is, the lesser the chance that you will need to use it.

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