Great info madrat, thank you!
Lot’sa fighters and strike capability
There is serious expeditionary capability listed as well. #’s of tankers, EW support, etc.
In my hometown, here in the US, we have a German manufacturing plant and a French plant as well. As I speak with my European friends about contingencies (Iranian nuclear ambitions, China arming to the teeth) and hostilities (war on terror), you would think that Europe was disarmed. I keep pointing out the #’s of Typhoons, Rafales, Tornadoes, etc. And this is just the EU Air Forces. In heavy fighters alone, Madrat had about 1500 fighters. They all seem to perform very well on deployed excercises around the globe, which speaks of training.
Nuclear capabilities, a few emerging carriers, seems pretty damn strong.
Perhaps when you look at Madrat’s figures it is easy to forget that Europe is not one nation. Each nation will only deploy a part of its fighters (if any at all, certain European countries have the annoying habit of not fighting when others are) which means of those thousands of fighters only a few can be deployed at once and is entirely dependent on each individual nation.
You want a strong “EU” force deployed, you have to convince the British and the French to fight (usually the most willing deploy and the 2 largest military forces and the only to be able to carry out the full spectrum of operations), then the small scrappy nations (Denmark and Estonia for example), then you have to drag others in who either can’t or won’t deploy much (Italy, Germany being 2 of the more obvious won’t’s, although the Germans have been trying harder recently). Even after all that you still have a country or 2 in the EU that would rather annoy all the big nations that also happen to be their neighbours rather than lose their neutrality (yes Ireland i’m looking at you).
In short, you asked the Eu to fight tomorrow and you’d not get the response you need unless someone is actually rolling tanks into the Rhineland. Integration won’t change that because they have to go out of the way to satisfy the neutral countries and those who don’t want to fight.
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