The protests will escalate in the summer, when the weather is warmer, more time has passed for awareness of what is happening to soak in, and students are on school break.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Look up ASML, make America great again :)

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 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.

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?

I guess we’ve been lucky so far?