👀🇪🇺 EUROPE JUST GOT BROKEN UP WITH. Time to stop complaining and get to work. But different than you might think 👇

The US is pulling a third of its fighters out of NATO Europe, all of its aerial-refueling tankers, a third of its maritime patrol aircraft, a carrier, a missile-launching submarine and a group of bombers . EUCOM's own commander calls the old arrangement an "unhealthy co-dependence."

Translation: Europe now owns its deep strike and airspace protection, alone.
If you're surprised by this then you haven't read a single one of my posts or articles.

Don't be mad at the US, learn from them: 50 billion dollars for drones this year, more than 200 times of last year's budget. Europe's "future strongest conventional military" increase YOY? 13x.

Time to double down on unmanned systems?

Iran, Russia, and Ukraine have proven that many of the mission profiles of multirole fighters and strategic bombers CAN not only be atomized into affordable unmanned systems platforms, but that this is ACTUALLY a VIABLE path to SUPERIORITY. Let me break it down for you:

1️⃣ SEAD: Done at a fraction of the cost by Ukrainian strike drones.

2️⃣ A2/AD: I'd recommend asking CENTCOM about their willingness to fly Apaches into south-eastern Iran, or even stealth missions over the north-east. Or Russia's willingness to fly its bombers or gunships into Ukrainian airspace.

3️⃣ (Deep) strike: See 1.

There's no such thing as 100% mission profile coverage, but the people arguing that we definitely need a 6th-gen fighter plus UCAV in 2040 are the same ones who were mocking Ukrainians and Russians for mounting "cope cages" on top of tanks, only to quietly birdcage the Leclerc at Eurosatory.

Let's not forget that these are very young platforms. Platforms, however, which are already showing teeth at a consistency which even early next-gen multirole platforms often lack. At a cost-efficiency which makes me publicly question whether any of the UCAV currently on the table make any sense in a world where a V3 of a 359 loitering missile picks them out of the air for chicken-scrap.

I hope you see the pattern here. Sophisticated platforms are the victims of what I have called the atomization of mechanized warfare, and there is undeniable evidence that the nations that reform their industries to enable the creation of dozens of new champions a year under constant pressure to innovate are the ones which gain and maintain the upper hand.

And no, that's not the same as handing out a drone contract or two. The uncertainty about what will be relevant in a year from now should be baked into the system in a way that doesn't allow only a handful of companies in, and with a procurement system which is large-funnel, agile, and evidence-based, so the opposite of what we have today.

I broke down how to do this, AT COST, in Capability Factories: How to Test. Recommended reading for EU leadership still stuck in the FCAS vs. GCAP mind-space.

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