Last one to post wins

[Lachlan]

Do you not see how that's still a problem? That it is only VERY recently, within the last 4 years, that NATO members started meeting the 2% or higher goal. We more or less had to brow beat them into it-and let's face it-they only got their shit together because many Americans and the US government is getting fed up-the ties between us are getting weaker, more distant, Russia invaded Ukraine I think in 2014, and again in 2020? 2021? Not good with dates-and the US warned Germany and others not to be reliant on Russian oil and exports-that was ignored. I honestly think that the way things are going, the US and Europe won't be allies for much longer. Things change-what may be an enemy today will be a friend tomorrow and vice versa. I'd be very keen on distancing the US from Europe and it's issues-I feel like for too long they've benefitted at our Expense. The point is though-that it's not a shock that NATO members are starting to FINALLY spend what they were SUPPOSED to be spending this entire time when the writing on the wall makes it seem like they might not be able to rely on US protection for much longer.

It was 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine again.

Yes I am not saying that this was not a problem. This only happened after 1990 when the cold war ended though. Before that Europe was pulling it's weight. Hell after the cold war ended you guys also reduced funding on defense for a little while. Europe realizes the danger now however and you cannot change the past. I think it was less American pressure and more of a collective (excuse my language plz mods) "oh shit" moment when Ukraine was invaded that was more the catalyst.
With the oil and gas though that is no longer a problem as the import from the middle east but now that is coincidentally cut off as well.
I don't think threatening to invade Canada or Greenland is the logical next step that should have been taken and it seems like you don't understand that is a far worse thing to do than a country being lax on defense. I am wondering how you can explain that logic to me as a non American.

[Meliva]

You wanna know the funny part? Maybe if Nato and other European countries weren't so lax on defense, and didn't put all their eggs in one basket for security relying on the US, they'd be able to actually deter any invasion. Weakness invites challenge. For so long European countries have gotten more and more laxed in their defense, their military spending and relying more and more on exports-exports for energy, exports for workers with immigrations, and exporting security by having US bases and less of their own military. I don't believe there was any actual plans to invade Canada or Greenland-because at the end of the day, everyone knew if a fight DID break out-Europe would not be able to hold Greenland-not likely-so by threatening to just take it- pressures them to negotiate-which they ended up doing JUST that-not to mention this also may have served as a catalyst to put a fire under their asses to start spending more on military-which helps the US also. Because once the Europeans think they can't FULLY rely on the US to cater to their security, that tends to be a good motivator for them to step up their own spending. I can't pretend to know all the hows and whys of Trump and his plans or if it's all just off a whim-but I can say this-it's getting results and bringing about change. Where it leads to? Dunno-but I'm liking it for the most part so far.

[Dmanwuzhere]

Australia absolutely could jump its defense spending up today. Politics is stopping it from happening, not poverty.
Blah blah blah Putin this and that.
Ukraine might not have been attacked so soundly if idiots hadn't threatened to put them in NATO.
I mean, you have to attack before they join if you are against them joining.
Kinda dumb to do it after.

I would have attacked them if I could, we already support their broke azzes why would we make it mandatory?
Zelensky also would have taunted until he got smacked then demand defense... fook zelensky

Ukraine ended the treaty that was in place for the Crimea action from Putin, as NATO membership was being tossed out there.
Russia as a whole never agreed to the 1954 decision by Nikita Khrushchev taking Crimea from them and giving it to Ukraine. Also, 96 percent of Crimeans wanted to be with Russia. The handling of Crimea residents before Zelensky was bad. I see no reason to see that changing had Putin not annexed it.

As for stealth drone fighters, Lockheed Martin has them coming soon, ours will pair with US and allied fighters easily.
https://warwingsdaily.com/lockheed-pres ... -fighters/

Your subs are coming on a layaway program, which I certainly do not approve of. 30 years of payments is like welfare. Y'all have wasted plenty of dough, and if you can't pay for 1 every couple years fook ya, but my government is nicer than I am, so it is what it is.

6 good subs and 11 cheap frigates not even hunter class in 2040 ... yay you. Big help you will be. Of course, it doesn't matter as big poppa USA is expected to handle anything you can't.

Oh, and I will always bring up China, as when you mention Russia, you have to mention China, as they are best buds for now.

[Lachlan]

You wanna know the funny part? Maybe if Nato and other European countries weren't so lax on defense, and didn't put all their eggs in one basket for security relying on the US, they'd be able to actually deter any invasion. Weakness invites challenge. For so long European countries have gotten more and more laxed in their defense, their military spending and relying more and more on exports-exports for energy, exports for workers with immigrations, and exporting security by having US bases and less of their own military. I don't believe there was any actual plans to invade Canada or Greenland-because at the end of the day, everyone knew if a fight DID break out-Europe would not be able to hold Greenland-not likely-so by threatening to just take it- pressures them to negotiate-which they ended up doing JUST that-not to mention this also may have served as a catalyst to put a fire under their asses to start spending more on military-which helps the US also. Because once the Europeans think they can't FULLY rely on the US to cater to their security, that tends to be a good motivator for them to step up their own spending. I can't pretend to know all the hows and whys of Trump and his plans or if it's all just off a whim-but I can say this-it's getting results and bringing about change. Where it leads to? Dunno-but I'm liking it for the most part so far.

Most of that rise in defense spending happened before Trump took office and before America started acting hostile towards everyone. You are attributing that rise in defense spending as due to weakening ties between America and Europe which only really started happening last year. Regarding your point about exporting security yes that is basically true. Immigration however is a different and far more complex issue so I will not get into that.
Exporting energy however well they sort of have to. They cannot magically manifest more domestic oil and gas production. Yes they should have switched from Russia to the middle east far sooner but I think everyone thought that Russia would not escalate its invasion of Ukraine or at the very least the odds of that were unlikely.
Invading Canada would be easy for the US. Greenland not so much. I would say the Europeans have more artic trained troops, winterized armoured forces, ice breakers, planes designed for artic conditions etc. Would you guys be able to invade greenland? Absolutely but holding it especially during winter would be a challenge.

[Lachlan]

Australia absolutely could jump its defense spending up today. Politics is stopping it from happening, not poverty.
Blah blah blah Putin this and that.
Ukraine might not have been attacked so soundly if idiots hadn't threatened to put them in NATO.
I mean, you have to attack before they join if you are against them joining.
Kinda dumb to do it after.

I would have attacked them if I could, we already support their broke azzes why would we make it mandatory?
Zelensky also would have taunted until he got smacked then demand defense... fook zelensky

Ukraine ended the treaty that was in place for the Crimea action from Putin, as NATO membership was being tossed out there.
Russia as a whole never agreed to the 1954 decision by Nikita Khrushchev taking Crimea from them and giving it to Ukraine. Also, 96 percent of Crimeans wanted to be with Russia. The handling of Crimea residents before Zelensky was bad. I see no reason to see that changing had Putin not annexed it.

As for stealth drone fighters, Lockheed Martin has them coming soon, ours will pair with US and allied fighters easily.
https://warwingsdaily.com/lockheed-pres ... -fighters/

Your subs are coming on a layaway program, which I certainly do not approve of. 30 years of payments is like welfare. Y'all have wasted plenty of dough, and if you can't pay for 1 every couple years fook ya, but my government is nicer than I am, so it is what it is.

6 good subs and 11 cheap frigates not even hunter class in 2040 ... yay you. Big help you will be. Of course, it doesn't matter as big poppa USA is expected to handle anything you can't.

Oh, and I will always bring up China, as when you mention Russia, you have to mention China, as they are best buds for now.

Money is 100% a problem. We do not have the money to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on defense. We are in the top 15 countries in defense spending and only a little bit behind countries with much larger populations to draw from.
Which brings me to my second point. An increase in defense spending is useless without the manpower to staff our vessels and crew our bases. We simply do not have the population base to support it. Maintaining high enough recruitment rates is becoming an increasingly challenging problem for many countries. Thankfully that downward trend of recruitment in Australia has stopped. To be honest though I think it is that standards in recruitment are too high especially if you are running short of people. Like if someone is a little bit unfit I think instead of rejecting them you should accept them, train them up and once they finish training they will meet your standards. Like between 2024 and 2025 a little over 7000 people were recruited to the ADF which is up about 15% I believe. But then they were saying they were still 1000 short of their recruitment target. 75,000 people applied during that time and I'm thinking surely there were 1000 more people in the 60,000+ other applicants you could have recruited? Sure some would be completely ineligible due to eyesight, hearing or mental stability issues but I am sure some of those 60,000+ applicants could have been recruited.
As for our ships I think it is due to mismanagement. After the collins subs were built, Australia should have had another project in the works like building the destroyers sooner, then the new frigates, then new subs and kept demand consistent and steady but instead the government delayed and revised and then all those skilled shipbuilders were not getting worked and went of to other countries.
But again like I say it isn't like we have the resources or the manpower to magic up a huge navy with people to crew it.
We have helped in other ways such as our rare earths mineral deal which will cut your dependency on china down. In my view it is not really our military which is our main help to you guys but our natural resources and bases which you guys use that are far enough away from china to be safe from anything except long range missiles.
Where is this 30 years of payments stuff for the drone subs? I do not see anything about that anywhere as far as my quick google search is concerned.

[Dmanwuzhere]

You wanna know the funny part? Maybe if Nato and other European countries weren't so lax on defense, and didn't put all their eggs in one basket for security relying on the US, they'd be able to actually deter any invasion. Weakness invites challenge. For so long European countries have gotten more and more laxed in their defense, their military spending and relying more and more on exports-exports for energy, exports for workers with immigrations, and exporting security by having US bases and less of their own military. I don't believe there was any actual plans to invade Canada or Greenland-because at the end of the day, everyone knew if a fight DID break out-Europe would not be able to hold Greenland-not likely-so by threatening to just take it- pressures them to negotiate-which they ended up doing JUST that-not to mention this also may have served as a catalyst to put a fire under their asses to start spending more on military-which helps the US also. Because once the Europeans think they can't FULLY rely on the US to cater to their security, that tends to be a good motivator for them to step up their own spending. I can't pretend to know all the hows and whys of Trump and his plans or if it's all just off a whim-but I can say this-it's getting results and bringing about change. Where it leads to? Dunno-but I'm liking it for the most part so far.

Most of that rise in defense spending happened before Trump took office and before America started acting hostile towards everyone. You are attributing that rise in defense spending as due to weakening ties between America and Europe which only really started happening last year. Regarding your point about exporting security yes that is basically true. Immigration however is a different and far more complex issue so I will not get into that.
Exporting energy however well they sort of have to. They cannot magically manifest more domestic oil and gas production. Yes they should have switched from Russia to the middle east far sooner but I think everyone thought that Russia would not escalate its invasion of Ukraine or at the very least the odds of that were unlikely.
Invading Canada would be easy for the US. Greenland not so much. I would say the Europeans have more artic trained troops, winterized armoured forces, ice breakers, planes designed for artic conditions etc. Would you guys be able to invade greenland? Absolutely but holding it especially during winter would be a challenge.

You sure have a spotty memory for timelines.
What you mean to say is no one took it seriously until he was re-elected.

2018 NATO Summit
Date: July 11, 2018
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Action: Trump urged NATO allies to double their military spending target from 2% to 4% of their GDP. He specifically criticized Germany for its defense spending, claiming it was "totally controlled by Russia."

2019 Demands
Date: March 8, 2019
Proposal: Trump suggested that countries hosting U.S. troops should pay the full cost of American military presence plus an additional 50%. This proposal aimed to increase financial contributions from allies like Germany and Japan.

2025 NATO Agreement
Date: June 26, 2025
Outcome: Following Trump's re-election, NATO members agreed to significantly increase their defense spending, with some countries committing to a target of 5% of GDP. This marked a notable shift in defense contributions among NATO allies.

I won't bore you with the long list of answers reported by the press to questions repeatedly asking DJT if he would ignore an ally that needed help but was delinquent on payments.
As they occurred, I laughed every time.

I take it your knowledge of WW2 is spotty or bankrupt.
I would put the 10th Mountain Division up against any nation's winterized infantrymen.
Our Rangers, Seals, and various special forces units are no joke in any weather.

[Dmanwuzhere]

Australia absolutely could jump its defense spending up today. Politics is stopping it from happening, not poverty.
Blah blah blah Putin this and that.
Ukraine might not have been attacked so soundly if idiots hadn't threatened to put them in NATO.
I mean, you have to attack before they join if you are against them joining.
Kinda dumb to do it after.

I would have attacked them if I could, we already support their broke azzes why would we make it mandatory?
Zelensky also would have taunted until he got smacked then demand defense... fook zelensky

Ukraine ended the treaty that was in place for the Crimea action from Putin, as NATO membership was being tossed out there.
Russia as a whole never agreed to the 1954 decision by Nikita Khrushchev taking Crimea from them and giving it to Ukraine. Also, 96 percent of Crimeans wanted to be with Russia. The handling of Crimea residents before Zelensky was bad. I see no reason to see that changing had Putin not annexed it.

As for stealth drone fighters, Lockheed Martin has them coming soon, ours will pair with US and allied fighters easily.
https://warwingsdaily.com/lockheed-pres ... -fighters/

Your subs are coming on a layaway program, which I certainly do not approve of. 30 years of payments is like welfare. Y'all have wasted plenty of dough, and if you can't pay for 1 every couple years fook ya, but my government is nicer than I am, so it is what it is.

6 good subs and 11 cheap frigates not even hunter class in 2040 ... yay you. Big help you will be. Of course, it doesn't matter as big poppa USA is expected to handle anything you can't.

Oh, and I will always bring up China, as when you mention Russia, you have to mention China, as they are best buds for now.

Money is 100% a problem. We do not have the money to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on defense. We are in the top 15 countries in defense spending and only a little bit behind countries with much larger populations to draw from.
Which brings me to my second point. An increase in defense spending is useless without the manpower to staff our vessels and crew our bases. We simply do not have the population base to support it. Maintaining high enough recruitment rates is becoming an increasingly challenging problem for many countries. Thankfully that downward trend of recruitment in Australia has stopped. To be honest though I think it is that standards in recruitment are too high especially if you are running short of people. Like if someone is a little bit unfit I think instead of rejecting them you should accept them, train them up and once they finish training they will meet your standards. Like between 2024 and 2025 a little over 7000 people were recruited to the ADF which is up about 15% I believe. But then they were saying they were still 1000 short of their recruitment target. 75,000 people applied during that time and I'm thinking surely there were 1000 more people in the 60,000+ other applicants you could have recruited? Sure some would be completely ineligible due to eyesight, hearing or mental stability issues but I am sure some of those 60,000+ applicants could have been recruited.
As for our ships I think it is due to mismanagement. After the collins subs were built, Australia should have had another project in the works like building the destroyers sooner, then the new frigates, then new subs and kept demand consistent and steady but instead the government delayed and revised and then all those skilled shipbuilders were not getting worked and went of to other countries.
But again like I say it isn't like we have the resources or the manpower to magic up a huge navy with people to crew it.
We have helped in other ways such as our rare earths mineral deal which will cut your dependency on china down. In my view it is not really our military which is our main help to you guys but our natural resources and bases which you guys use that are far enough away from china to be safe from anything except long range missiles.
Where is this 30 years of payments stuff for the drone subs? I do not see anything about that anywhere as far as my quick google search is concerned.

I don't do quick Google searches; you kinda have to have a network of military deep divers that research some of the craziest chit. I'm sure if I went looking long enough, I could tell you the percentage of your military that picks its nose on Thursdays.

I could give you a short list of links, but I don't encourage laziness, and honestly, each link isn't the magic news site I may visit 20 to find an answer or even 50 before I give up for the day, as I don't have the time for drawn-out searches, but I refuse to use google as its a left leaning source. I use Duck Duck Go, if I google at all as they rarely disappoint and remove or edit commentary based on political views.

[Meliva]

Most of that rise in defense spending happened before Trump took office and before America started acting hostile towards everyone. You are attributing that rise in defense spending as due to weakening ties between America and Europe which only really started happening last year. Regarding your point about exporting security yes that is basically true. Immigration however is a different and far more complex issue so I will not get into that.
Exporting energy however well they sort of have to. They cannot magically manifest more domestic oil and gas production. Yes they should have switched from Russia to the middle east far sooner but I think everyone thought that Russia would not escalate its invasion of Ukraine or at the very least the odds of that were unlikely.
Invading Canada would be easy for the US. Greenland not so much. I would say the Europeans have more artic trained troops, winterized armoured forces, ice breakers, planes designed for artic conditions etc. Would you guys be able to invade greenland? Absolutely but holding it especially during winter would be a challenge.

You're assuming it would even REACH the Arctic in the first place. Greenland is an island. One that is closer to the US then it is to Europe-which means to get troops ON it, you need ships and or planes. The US has the largest navy and Airforce by far-Hell, the US could even do a sneaky and rather nasty little trick-and just ALLOW tons and tons of European troops to be stationed on Greenland-and then instead of taking it with boots on the ground-just blockade it-starve the whole Island out-it's the Arctic after all-it won't be able to sustain a large force without exports of food.

As for Exporting Energy and 'having to' that is also a load of crap. Yes, they DO need other countries for oil and gas-but if they weren't so opposed to Nuclear, they'd be a lot less reliant. 2nd-it is counterproductive to rely on a nation that you are on BAD terms with, for a key resource-most of Europe does not Like Russia-Hell Nato was made to combat them-and yet, so many rely on Russia for a KEY resource? This isn't something like trading luxuries good you can do without-this is a vital and key resource your nation NEEDS you relied on them for-so when Russia cut it off-it had nasty damage and they had to scramble to get it from the Middle East.