Comment by rapjr9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rapjr9 | Hacker News Reader

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>Europe stops buying F35s? Trump tells Europe that if they don't buy them he's going to sell them to Russia.

Actually Europe would stop supplying components for the F-35's so the US would not be able to build any more or keep the ones they have working, let alone sell them to Russia. Russia would never buy them anyway, how could they trust that the next US president wouldn't pull the plug on spare parts? Would they trust that Trump is going to become dictator for life? (And what happens after he dies?) Russia has their own fighters that may not be quite as capable in some ways, but are good enough. Russia sells jet fighters themselves, they do not buy them.

>Europe is completely reliant on the US and US technology for defense right now, these systems took decades and trillions of dollars to build and refine, and an 800 billion EUR investment does not magically create a military industrial complex overnight.

Europe already has a large local military industrial complex. Half of what Ukraine has received has come from Europe. They would only have to expand what they have, not develop new technologies, except perhaps for a replacement for the Patriot missile system. They'd get a boost from converting their existing factories from building US weapons components to building EU weapons components as well.

I'm actually surprised that the US military industrial complex (MIC) is not screaming bloody murder about some of this. They stand to lose sales of replacement weapons for those sent to Ukraine, to lose support contracts for F-16's, and to lose a whole lot more if the US pulls out of NATO. Even if the US does not pull out of NATO, the NATO countries have already started investing in their own defense industries, which is going to severely cut into US MIC profits. They should be terrified.

The US has so many options to bully Europe. What about turning off cloud providers and other services like word, excel etc. Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff. There are a thousand options to bring europe to its knees. And there is nothing Europe could do.

Or restricting hardware like GPUs or other consumer stuff.

Look up ASML, make America great again :)

Without Cymer (based in San Diego) ASML is nothing.

ASML acquired Cymer in 2013 to accelerate the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) semiconductor lithography. Based in San Diego, California, Cymer was founded in 1986 by two college friends Robert Akins and Richard Sandstrom to develop laser and lithography light source technology for the semiconductor industry.

I can't imagine whatever Cymer is doing is completely hidden from the parent company and that it's non-replicatable anywhere else in the world?

Maybe there is some way the IP is blocked from ASML on national security grounds or something, I don't know, but what I do know, is their mutual destruction for the sake of some crusade against something ridiculous like "the woke mind virus" is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

There has been zero reason given for this attack on Europe.

>I can't imagine whatever Cymer is doing is completely hidden from the parent company and that it's non-replicatable anywhere else in the world?

I mean this is technology that is not in textbooks and is so specialized that China of all groups have yet to replicate it and have been trying like its life or death(because it is).

>Maybe there is some way the IP is blocked from ASML on national security grounds or something, I don't know, but what I do know, is their mutual destruction for the sake of some crusade against something ridiculous like "the woke mind virus" is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

The technology was originally developed by the US Research labs. The acquisition was only approved by the US government given certain stipulations: namely the US can tell the Dutch to do whatever they want when it comes to chip tech using their research. Thats why when the US phones up the Dutch to block sales to China, they dutifully complied. I would argue that it is pretty reasonable. The US put in the effort to develop these innovations, then gave up the freedom to commercialize it (to the complaints of some US politicians) because the Dutch had other necessary components ready to go.

It remains to be seen how the Dutch will now react given current realities but im sure there is a lot the US government can do to damage ASML if it came to that so surely that much be in the calculations.

I suspect given the right amount of money they can have access to whatever is required.

The beatings will continue until... LibreOffice finishes downloading?

SAMP/T exists and is allegedly better than Patriot.

I don't think there are any particular weapon types for which there is no qualified European alternative. Very many systems are however designed around some amount of American components. Even if there are locally produced, reasonably equivalent versions of those components, you can't just swap them out without major redesign work.

For example the license-manifactured jet engines used in the Saab 39 Gripen. If Trump/Musk pulls the plug on support for those, it will be an epic headache to rebuild around some other engine. Not quite designing a new plane from scratch, but very major rework.

> I don't think there are any particular weapon types for which there is no qualified European alternative.

Strategic bombers and fifth-generation multi-role aircraft are definitely missing. You could maybe convert A400Ms using a Rapid-Dragon style system into an adequate B-52/Tu-95/H-6N-like bomber, but it wouldn't be a modern penetration bomber like the B-1 and certainly not like the B-2 or B-21. The arguably best European fighter is the French 4.5+ gen Rafale. It's damn good but lacks the stealth of the F-22 and J-10, and the sensor fusion of the F-35.

Maybe also add heavy-lift helicopters, I don't think Europe produces anything in the class of the CH-53/CH-46 and definitely not the Mi-26, but a good-enough big heli is a much easier engineering problem compared to the other two aforementioned equipment categories.

Stealth is losing its effectiveness with new VHF targeting radars that can track stealth aircraft. Maybe EU sensor fusion algorithms are not as advanced as in the F-35? They certainly must have some kind of sensor fusion algorithms, if just to create coherent cockpit displays of what is going on in an airspace. Maybe they lack cooperative sensor fusion across multiple aircraft? Are bombers still effective any more? I know they are being used by Russia to launch stand-off weapons, but isn't a long range missile as good as or better than having a bomber? Maybe the modern way to think of a bomber is as a reusable missile first stage so the missiles can be smaller and cheaper. Actually flying bombers over cities/bases and dropping bombs no longer happens, does it? Stealth in a bomber buys you nothing if the bomber is directly above you because the cross section becomes enormous. Maybe precision glide-bombs are cheaper than surface to surface missiles. I think if an army had a choice they'd rather have many S-S missiles rather than many glide bombs and a few bombers. The missiles would be much more versatile, as long as they had enough of them.

I have yet to see a good analysis of the tradeoffs between big expensive weapons and many cheap drone weapons. It seems possible that very soon the big expensive weapons will be seen as too expensive and less capable. Ukraine is making millions of drones, maybe when the are making tens of millions they'll care less about conventional weapons. Seems like making lots of drones could help the EU scale up quickly without a lot of research and at lower cost.

I'm actually surprised that the US military industrial complex (MIC) is not screaming bloody murder about some of this.

You know the announcement that the US is supplying weapons to Russia and potentially even North Korea isn't that far off don't you?

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