Germany proposes European aircraft carrier
 

Weird but its almost as though the UK's membership of the EU deterred them from doing this sort of thing...

Still I guess the swivel-eyed tendency will shout that their fears were justified - whilst simultaneously moaning about Germany not investing enough in their military

We could sell them one of ours.
We don't need two.

Spot on!




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The French will need to up their game if they expect to beat the Germans out onto that big sun lounger.

Wrong on so many levels. One carrier gives you half a carrier. When it's in dock for refit you have no carrier at all. THAT is why we have two, so one is always available to deploy at short notice

Perhaps we could sell them a job lot of Typhoons instead we only need the one squadron to cover UK AD, after all its only the occasional ancient 1950s vintage Tu-85 Bear that probes our airspace?

See it's easy to talk bolleaux on these matters. No European nation is buying F-35Bs apart from Italy and they'll only have enough for a single sqn on one of their baby carriers. The French are looking for the rest of the EU to finance the replacement of the CdG, and they'll insist on cat and trap to operate their Rafales. They'll also insist on a ship built in their shipyards, as the unions will raise merry hell if they even suggest buying in from abroad. So dream on, PoW is staying RN!

Those aren't carriers.

OK boys, hold back now - he's not worth it...

NOW we know what our Brexit divorce settlement will be spent on!

I thought it was three carriers you need, not two as we bought, so one would be on refit, one would be working up post refit and one on operations.

The number used for Trident is 4, albeit that requires one to always be at sea.

Perhaps the Germans might put that money into the NATO Funding it is pledged to provide.....and count upon the British, French, and American Navies to send several Carriers when needed.

Just saying!

What they want is possibly "share" some french carrier or similar. Like the army's french-german brigade. No plans for some national german carrier at all. However carrier capable Growlers have ended up on the german requests shortlist now.

Not just Growlers, but Super Hornets too.

Germany (and everybody else) has a target to spend 2% of GDP on defence, not on NATO. Any carrier initiative (either to operate or share one) would be included in this. Just saying!

How does that accounting work.....do they split the NATO budget from the National Defense Budget...segregate ships, aircraft, tanks, troops into NATO tased units and non-Nato units?

How do the NATO Planners know what forces to count on from all the Members if what you say is correct?

If the Russians invaded Germany tomorrow....would the German Military only field part of their forces and their European NATO Partners only send their "NATO" units?

Care to explain to how that all works?

It sounds like an interesting concept.....perhaps we could adopt that for our own Military.

Units typically have multiple assignments. So a unit can be called up to serve NATO or national duties like against floodings and such.

ISTR seeing a memo dated late 1949 that posed that very question....

The first test of the NATO "NRF" concept failed because the Lead Nation refused to bear the cost.

There is some real basis for concern over how all this is done....putting Troops into "action".

I also question what response time is involved in actually fielding a sizable force for combat operations.


https://www.nato.int/docu/review/201...e/EN/index.htm

I can just imagine the landlocked EU members rushing to be part of this



not

The nuts-and-bolts of which assets are earmarked to NATO is not directly dictated by the members nations' budgetary contributions, but is done separately by the goverment and military planners.

I think the US spends something like 3% on defence, but that covers bases in Japan, Guam and everywhere and everything else that comes with being the world's only military superpower. Pretty sure less than 2% will be allocated to NATO (though that's not to downplay the US contribution to the alliance).