RiiSpeaking of refueling probes, amidst all this talk of arms control agreements collapsing, any prospects of Tu-22M3 being refitted with refueling probes?
RiiThe fantasy land is where national leaders set younger populations up for failure by supporting elderly populations disproportionately. Take the teet out of their mouth and create expectations for the elderly to have saved for the time they no longer can work. Socialism is a sickness in modern society than drains the life out of culture. Previously we’ve seen sustainable double digit defense spending whereas today most countries can count the percent on one hand.
Back in the olden days (pre-Thatcher, Reagan, and the triumph of neoliberal economics) rich people and corporations paid taxes too. When you gut the revenue of the state, don’t be surprised when the state expenditure that suffers most is the bit with no votes in it.
RiiIt would make more sense to buy a helicopter platform from France than build a second carrier.
It’s clear that Brazil will seek to at least maintain its present carrier capability going forward, if not develop it further, and by most economic projections is well positioned to do so over the medium-long term. The question, therefore, is not whether Brazil should have carriers going forward, but rather what is the best way to go about getting them. The French option seems best, in my view, because France has its own pending requirements for a medium aircraft carrier or two, has the required expertise and experience, and has an existing record of industrial and military cooperation with Brazil, including most obviously in relation to Sao Paulo.
RiiIf you want to speak about lazy patterns of thinking, perhaps you should look at the geography of Switzerland. It is a natural fortress.
And this is undoubtedly the nation’s greatest security asset, much as Australia’s isolation is its greatest security asset, and the English channel Britain’s. But this does not alter the reality that the nations bordering Switzerland are more readily able to project power against it than those that don’t. Nor does it alter the reality that larger nations are more threatening than smaller ones. Hence France, Germany, and Italy must rank higher on Switzerland’s threat table than Sweden.
At least you used to slightly mask your utter dislike of the West.
That doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Indeed, the major distinction between my thinking and that of the crowd that finds talk of a European threat to Switzerland inconceivable and even repellent (whilst simultaneously trying to argue for the nation retaining a fast jet capability, a tricky tightrope to walk that one) seems to be a greater sense of history and, thereby, greater appreciation for the contingency of the present and uncertainty of the future. The belief that the present represents a stable equilibrium would have to be one of the deepest and most widespread of human illusions.
RiiWhy this fixation on those three? Why do you ignore the possibility of a threat from outside its immediate neighbours?
Because land borders facilitate invasion. Other things being equal, the nation on your border is a much more serious threat than the nation that isn’t. Even if Sweden were much more powerful than it is and even if the intervening nations were entirely amenable to the Swedish Army passing through their territory (as Germany hoped Belgium would be in 1914), that army would still be forced to operate at the end of a highly extended (and likely unsupportable) logistics chain. Of course far more likely than this scenario is that a newly belligerent Sweden would butt heads with several other nations before getting anywhere near Switzerland, providing ample time to prepare to meet the threat.
EDIT: Or we could forget Sweden and just use the UK. The UK could not seriously threaten Switzerland (short of nuclear annihilation) without the active and sustained cooperation of other powers, preferably those sharing a land border with Switzerland.
Despite the post-modern lala land that many inhabit, reinforced by the lazy patterns of thinking from island dwellers (and pseudo-island dwellers like the Americans) who typically enjoy overwhelming superiority over the nations they choose to attack, borders continue to matter in the world. Borders are the reason why the level of concern about Russia’s actions of late is inversely proportional to one’s distance from Moscow, and why Russia is able to play the role in Ukraine that it has.
Only nations and peoples that face no credible threat whatsoever (read: most of the west) can afford to entertain the illusion that a nation’s borders are of less than paramount significance in determining its threat matrix.
RiiAustria can easily afford to use its toys. It chooses not to.
Indeed; this is what we call the “real world”, where nations have many competing priorities to attend to, and amongst which defending against nonexistent threats tends to take a back seat. That defence planners in many nations prefer to operate in a kind of fantasy land where the nation’s highest military expenditure in living memory is conceived as the expected norm, to be extrapolated from according to the rosiest of economic projections, and coupled with wildly optimistic estimates of costs, capabilities, and timelines of new systems, is hardly something to be applauded.
RiiBut there is a role for air policing, & dependence on other countries to do it for you is felt in many countries to be humiliating.
And yet they already do it on weekends.
And there is the possibility that the international environment may change, & if so, maintaining core capabilities would facilitate rebuilding a credible defence, if circumstances changed so that seemed necessary again.
Or in other words, there is a possibility that Germany, Italy, or France may one day threaten the Swiss Confederation.
Given that, the cheapest (over its lifetime) aircraft capable of the air policing job would do. Typhoon is overkill.
I entirely agree. The only sensible option for Switzerland — besides giving up a fast jet capability altogether which, whatever the merits of such a course, likely represents too radical a departure from existing practice to be accepted by entrenched institutions protective of their existing perogatives — is Gripen.
RiiNext, Martians invade St. Gallen…
There´s some obvious advantages for a new Gripen proposal, but German, Italian or French belligerance its not one of them.
Yet another poster who seems to have difficulty with the distinction between absolute and relative probabilities.
In any case the reactions to this kind of discussion are interesting, because I’ve long toyed with the idea of writing a novel about the future history of the 21st century, and one of the earliest elements I conceived was of France uniting most of Europe under a new Napoleon. Of course such a story is not about what is likely to happen — although any scenario presented must of course be vaguely plausible in its own context — but what is most interesting.
Rii“for two planned new aircraft carriers in the late 2020s”
first time i heard it
Not the first time I’ve heard it, but the latest news I heard was that those plans had been scrapped in favour of life extension for Sao Paulo.
Personally I think the most sensible course of action would be to both life extend Sao Paulo and partner with France to produce one new carrier for Brazil before 2030, with the second replacing Sao Paulo at a later date. Stagger the construction with France’s own needs and you could end up with a run like so:
2027: Brazil Carrier 1
2031: French Carrier 1
2035: Brazil Carrier 2 (replacing Sao Paulo)
2039: French Carrier 2 (replacing CdG)
On the subject of Bill Sweetman’s article, one major difference between Brazil and India is that Brazil’s benign security environment means that it can afford to de-emphasise fielded capabilities in the present (particularly in terms of quantity) in favour of longer-term objectives. The Chinese-Pakistani pincer means that India does not have the same luxury.
RiiAlways thought the MiG-25 was butt ugly, but I must say the MiG-31 isn’t bad looking at all. Subtle differences can have pretty big visual impact.
The beast.
RiiSeriously?:highly_amused::highly_amused: It’s more likely that Sweden would invade them because the world isn’t big enough for two ‘Sw’ countries.:highly_amused::highly_amused:
Italy, Germany, and France are larger nations that can project power into Switzerland with relative ease and speed as they share common borders. Sweden is a smaller nation that is separated from Switzerland both geographically and geopolitically (buffer states). As such, Switzerland has less reason to fear Swedish belligerence than Italian, German, or French belligerence.
RiiThe IAF will need to move quickly…
Does that seem very likely to you? 😉 (Although to be fair the hold-up isn’t usually with the IAF.)
As for Australia, the budget next month should be interesting — although not quite as interesting as the budget a decade from now. As usual, the government has been writing cheques it can’t cash. We could well end up in an Austria-type situation of having lots of expensive toys that we can’t afford to use.
Riiwe aren’t in the 1930’s now, there is no danger of Switzerland being annexed by their neighbours.
A German, French, or Italian threat to Switzerland is a remote possibility to be sure, but less remote than a Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, British, American or any other kind of threat that could reasonably call for retaining a fast jet element.
And being landlocked has some significant advantages for defence. No expensive Navy for example.
Advantages that are massively outweighed by the disadvantages, as history attests.
Really? A threat from the countries that Switzerland feels so threatened by that it entrusts them with aerial policing of its territory when its own air force is off duty, is more plausible than the only real threats Switzerland faces, i.e. stray airliners, terrorism & so on?
That is precisely the point. Air policing in peacetime can be handled by contracting out to Germany, Italy, and France as is already done on weekends. If you want to justify a fast jet capability, you have to do it some other way.
And if “terrorism” is all you’ve got, then it’s clear that Switzerland simply doesn’t need a fast jet capability, given that there are about a million more cost-effective ways to invest in counter-terrorism, even within the narrow field of military spending, which is of course horrifically inefficient for that purpose. If Germany, France, and Italy are not considered a sufficiently credible threat to call for maintaining a fast jet capability, then the capability isn’t needed.
RiiUtter nonsense
A German, French, or Italian threat is more plausible than any of the other bogeymen one might conjure up to justify a fast jet capability for SwAF.
As above. Switzerland is one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
It is also a small nation in a benign security environment, with correspondingly limited military spending and, within that limited budget, many other requirements that need to be addressed as dictated by the nation’s strategic geography as a small nation bordered by larger powers on all sides. As such, Switzerland must exercise far more prudence in defence matters than, for example, the UK — a large nation having borders with nobody.
RiiIt would be foolish for Switzerland to buy Rafale or Typhoon as the supporting nations France, Germany, and Italy are the most likely to present a threat. Gripen is much safer.
If air policing is the main task, I would go for the Typhoon in all honesty. Intercept time can be critical and the Typhoon is able to get their the fastest.
Not if it’s grounded because it’s too expensive to fly.
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