Out of curiosity, I did a bit of digging. There's not much to find but here it is:
- this Norwegian company is known for its Naval Strike Missile (NSM). This missile is supposed to be a supersonic version of the NSM.
- NSM [1] is a quite recent anti-ship missile, first deployed in 2012. It does not look like it was ever used in action, but it pleased a lot of its operators, so that the US Navy decided to mount it on all its Littoral Combat Ships [2], and the Royal Navy decided to use it to replace its "aging" Harpoon missiles [3]
- the current gold standard for anti-ship missiles is the Harpoon missile. The NSM is about half the size of a Harpoon (both in total mass and warhead), but has a longer range, and more importantly various sources claim it is very stealthy. That appears to be its main advantage
- so I guess the new missile will try to build on this: to continue to be stealthy, but to also be supersonic. If they deliver, it could be a game changer.
Kongsberg Defence makes NASAMS (used to protect air space around the White House), and the Penguin, JSM, NSM missiles. They also build a bunch of other stuff like the RWS which is kind of well known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_RWS
What's your source for this? I was also under the impression Norway had a large arms industry, but from what I can find online, it's fairly small with stats from $50 - 300 million/year
It's hard to predict how that game of chicken would have played it. It seems likely that Russia may not have invaded of Ukraine had nukes, if they believed Ukraine would use them.
The entire scenario rewrites 30 years of history, everything would be different. Would Russia have invaded? Would Ukraine have made itself more of an international player if it were on the list of nuclear powers? Would Ukraine have actually used nukes after an invasion? Could their allies have pressured Ukraine to avoid a nuclear war? Would Russia be in the same position or is today if Ukraine left the USSR as a nuclear power?
officially, ukraine could not use them on their own. only russia had the "launch codes". part of the reason why they gave them up in the first place. not sure how much of a problem that is in practice. in any case, ukraine would have also needed the resources to maintain them which is no easy task. so I guess the answer is: we'll never know if it had any impact.
US nukes in Germany are actively controlled and operated by the US military. If the US dissolved you better believe Germany would have the technical know-how to begin operating those facilities and weapons themselves, if they wanted to.
> They were soviet nukes. They had as much control over them as Germany has over the US nukes parked in Germany.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. We are talking about what happened after that.
You compared the situation with US nukes in Germany today. But that is not the same situation at all. The US has not ceased to exist like the Soviet Union did.
And if it did, it is far from obvious which US states will control the nukes in the mainland ex-USA. That would be the parallel with the Soviet Union and Ukraine/Russia. Not US nukes in a foreign state.
What I am saying is that if the US dissolved, similar to the Soviet Union in your example, there isn't anything technically preventing Germany from being able to take over the nukes.
Do you not see a difference in comparing post-USSR Ukraine with Germany while allied with the very much alive US? Hosting US military installations that house nuclear weapons is very different from hosting abandoned nuclear weapons of a state actor that no longer exists.
The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. We are talking about the time after that, when Ukraine became an independent country.
Since Russia had to negotiate to transfer the weapons from Ukraine to Russia, it stands to reason that Russia did not physically control them. Otherwise, it would just have transferred them on its own.
Do you have any sources to back up your claims in this thread?
Just leaving this here to contrast with the “murder tech good” vibe.
If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction.
If you feel like defending cool missile tech to avoid offending a potential juicy customer - maybe you need to get your family bombed and remember that “skin in the game” can be literal.
If you think that violence is necessary - maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it.
Everyone deserves the receiving end of their designs.
> If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction.
In other words, American Indians who were proud of their spears and axes should instead have embraced self-destruction.
Yikes.
My ancestors were vikings. Should their victims also have embraced self-destruction rather than make the best weapons they could to defend themselves from the vikings?
> maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it.
Tell me more about how the vikings "didn't want violence"?
Nice, but it is planned to be operational in next 10 years. While we(NATO) need a useful deterrent in place in Europe in next ~6 years tops. If people of EU truly believe people have rights not to be enslaved, killed, have a right to govern themselves in a democratic way, more money and effort has to be invested in mass manufacturing of currently and previously available weapons. Such as artillery shells (preferably smart, with rocket assist, but dumb too). Also systems using drones and manpads (the latter are being manufactured in Poland for example, but in two orders of magnitude too low a volume).
There is no legitimate threat from Russia to Nato within the next 6 years. Russia is struggling against a technological 3rd rate power such as Ukraine. If NATO mobilized the economy for wartime production, it could quickly produce enough hardware to overwhelm Russia. And Russia's economy would have no response.
China, though, is a completely different matter. Their industrial and technological base is an order of magnitude larger than Russia's.
The GP didn't specifically call out Russia, seems reasonable that they may very well have had Russia + allies in mind.
It is worth noting that many countries have poured money, weapons, training, and in all likelihood special forces combat troops into Ukraine. Ukraine clearly has the numbers and devotion to fight a long, deadly fight that has in some areas devolved into WWI-era trench warfare.
It isn't as simple as the Russians struggling with a 3rd rate power, however that is measured. Ukraine has the numbers and the will, allies provided resources/training/intel, and Ukraine had the tactical advantage of protecting their homeland rather than being the invading force.
> There is no legitimate threat from Russia to Nato within the next 6 years
Roark66 said "next ~6 years tops", so you two do not really disagree; the question is what comes after those six years. The number is presumably taken from this recent publication:
That publication, presumably intended for German decision makers, state that it would take Russia at least 6-10 years after concluding the war in Ukraine before they could rebuild to a point where they would be any threat to Nato.
Furthermore, if the war ends with either a stalemate or a Russian loss, there will still be an Ukraine between them and most Nato countries (unless Ukraine joins Nato).
While I definitely agree with the article that it makes sense for Germany increase their capabilities (not only by increasing budgets, but also by making sure the money is used to expand abilities, not just subsidise various industries or communities), there is no way Russia could become a serious threat to a united Nato even given 6-10 years of buildup.
Also, countering Russia over a time over the next 10-15 years almost certainly will only require building up stockpiles of current generation hardware, combined with ensuring that enough personell is available.
To do their fair share, Germany could aim at matching Polish strength, for instance.
The article in question here is about the next generation of hardware, a "superweapon" by today's standards. If it arrives in 10 years, then that's pretty good timing. Let's say the War in Ukraine lasts to 2026, and Russa starts intensive rearmament (or just let the wartime production lines continue to run), then moderate Nato buildup would be enough until the 2030's.
From there on, error bars grow larger. It is possible that Russia will collapse under corruption and demographic collapse, but it is also possible that they will be able to turn their economy around (possibly through heavy automation) while continuing to develop their military, especially if they maintain close relations to China.
In such a world (that I think of as low probability), it's good to have new generations of weapons available.
Meanwhile, China is in the middle of a collossal force buildup right now. I'm sure the "German Council for Foreign Relations" doesn't focus very much on that. But for Nato as a whole, China is a much, much more urgent danger within the next 10 years, and probably for at least 30 years.
The only way I can see this change, would be if AI could be used to convert Russia's huge reserves of energy and raw materials into military strength. But countering that that would require a completely different type of planning, anyway.
The curious thing about what you say is that until a few months into the Ukraine war, it was far from commonly accepted knowledge. I can't count how many analysis articles and opinion pieces from before this war spoke frequently of Russia's possible ability to attack the Nato Alliance heavily.
Some people, remembering the strong WWI and WWII lessons that economics eventually always decides victory, looked at the Russian economy compared to the combined economies of the NATO alliance countries and quickly saw that a Russian invasion of anything bigger than a small nearby country (think Georgia; not even Ukraine fits the bill as small enough) would be an eventual disaster for Russia itself, but its projected image of new fighting might under Putin's supposed military modernization held just enough media sway to make this easily forgettable.
Those are that an economically smaller power that achieves surprise and has a well honed military may do a lot of damage before finally defeated.
The fact that Russia still has a lot of nukes _could_ tempt them to take the Baltic countries and some more border territories and demand a cease fire along the new border.
I've not been one of those who used to think that there was any realistic chance of this, though, at least until a full incorporation of Belarus and Ukraine into the Russian Empire.
Unless something like brain cancer made Putin completely crazy, that is.
Yes but Germany was run by a partly insane gambler whose entire personal purpose in life was welded to going for broke on his big military ambition. One assumes with plenty of good reasons across 23 years of his rule that modern Putin doesn't have the same mentality, that he's generally more the calculating Stalin type at worst.
In WWI Germany made a similar mistake to what it did in WWII but the dynamics of the situation made its Imperial leadership "feel obligated" to war, bolstered by them really thinking victory was reasonably possible, as terribly wrong as they were. Hitler and his coterie on the other hand knew at the outset that victory was extremely unlikely (they after all had the previous experience of WWI hindsight to look to, which the Kaiser and his general staff did not), but the Nazi leader didn't care anyhow. He was willing to bet everything on the small window of possibility that did favor spectacular victory.
The overall lesson of both wars still remains that barring extreme luck which ends a war victoriously for the smaller aggressor after only a brief series of strategic surprise attacks (you're right in what you say about a smaller power achieving much through surprise), the eventual result of any prolonged war between dramatically imbalanced economic powers will be the crushing defeat of the weaker power IF its the aggressor. Once both Germany and Japan failed in their strategic surprise gambits, they were absolutely doomed. Russia would be too if it did the same. Now even more so because it already spoiled any possible surprise against NATO by attacking Ukraine, and partly failing even at that.
I mention the requisite of the weaker power being the aggressor because in cases where it's simply defending itself, victory against a much bigger power is possible even in a prolonged war if the smaller country is determined enough despite horrific costs to keep bleeding its large enemy into making further fighting not worthwhile. Afghanistan and Vietnam being great examples.
Interesting analysis, though I think you should extend it to include the Franco-Prussian, Austria-Prussian wars as well as the Napoleonic wars if you want to understand the mindframe that Germany had going into WW1 and WW2.
In 1939, Hitler knew he was an underdog. His plan was to quickly switch to taking out France after the fall of Poland (according to himself in an audio recording with Mannerheim), but he was stopped by bad weather.
After the fall of France in 1940, his confidence must have been very high, though. He had basically won, and only British stubbornness kept the war going.
Had he ended his ambitions there, and just started to blockade the UK, while fortifying the USSR border, he might very well have won. Espeically if he could help Italy gain control of the Middle East.
However, it seems like Hitler's real ambitions were in the east all along. He did not hold Russia in high esteem, especially after the collapse in 1917. I would say that the planning leading up to Barbarossa, including the failure to put the economy on a 100% war footing, indicates that he expected a quick and easy campaign.
I don't think he realized that it was hopeless until some time 1942.
As for Putin, he is obviously not Hitler. But anyone in Europe over the age of 50 (ie all leaders) would remember the end of the cold war, where the USSR was definitely seen as capable of making a massive attack deep into Europe.
I think most people expected that Putin would not make a massive attack before first ensuring that the forces were in peak fighting condition. Combined with their numbers, poor readiness and amount of equipment, as well as the sorry state of most European militaries, it was not unreasonable to expect that only the US Army would be able to stop an assault.
Only when Russia was thrown back so brutally by Ukraine, one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe, did it become clear how corruption and incompetence had completely corroded the Russian military.
If there's a common theme in the above, it is on-paper numerical strength is only a part of the equation when estimating the outcome of a conflict. Leadership, determiniation and popular support are equally important. Those factors caused Russia to collapse in 1917, France in 1940 and Italy in 1942, Palestine in 1948 and two wars each in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Now most Europeans may not have thought it very likely that Russia would attack Nato at any point, but some would argue that a strong defense is better insurance than trusing that Putin would not be stupid and that the US would save Europe again if needed.
The Finland border affair has shown that all the effort put into ending democracy by furthering totalitarian parties can not be deterred. Why build rockets if they hit and defeat you anyway.
Out of curiosity, I did a bit of digging. There's not much to find but here it is:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile[2] https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/navy-plans-put-naval-st...
[3] https://maritime-executive.com/article/royal-navy-signs-up-f...