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💰Military Spending

🇪🇺📉Even if the European members collectively reached the US level of around 3.5% of GDP, their spending would still trail that of their superpower ally because Europe’s economy has been on a path of decline relative to the US since the global financial crisis of the late 2000s.

🪖Troops

🇫🇷🇬🇧🇩🇪 France’s active armed forces shrank by 56% between 1990 and 2024, to 203,850. The UK is still cutting: A 2023 Defence Command Paper states that the British army will be reduced to 73,000 soldiers by 2025 — the lowest level since the Napoleonic wars of 1803–1815.
Germany could possibly deploy one brigade — numbering a few thousand soldiers — to the Baltics and that “would be considered an accomplishment,” said Max Bergmann, director for Europe, Russia and Eurasia at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

France could mobilize 20,000 soldiers in 30 days, according to the joint chief of command of its land army, General Pierre Schill. The UK could at a best effort muster one division of between 20,000 and 30,000 soldiers, though this would probably take more than a month, said Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based defense and security think tank.

“Ukraine’s losses against Russia of 31,000 troops would be the fighting strength of the British army gone,” he said.

🇺🇸 American special forces alone number around 70,000, and the US has some 80,000 military service personnel stationed just in Europe.

⛴ Naval Power

🇺🇸 Some US submarines carry more Tomahawks than the entire UK Royal Navy has in its stocks, according to RUSI calculations.

🇫🇷🇬🇧 France has one remaining full-scale aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, typically carrying around 30 Rafale fighter jets. The UK has two such vessels, which together have the capacity to host 48 F-35 combat jets in addition to helicopters. But it’s expected to have only 37 of the fighter planes by the end of 2024. (The F-35’s predecessor, the Harrier, was retired more than a decade ago.) A single US Nimitz-class carrier, of which there are 10, has an air wing of up to 69 aircraft.

Ships have some of the longest construction lead times of any military hardware. In early 2024, the British government said it was decommissioning two of its 11 Royal Navy frigates; the Telegraph newspaper reported it was due to a lack of manpower.

✈️ Air Power

The bulk of NATO’s long-range cruise and ballistic missiles, which in combat would be propelled over hundreds of miles from mobile batteries and warships, are provided by the US. And Europe doesn’t have Patriot-style anti-missile systems in numbers that would constitute an effective defense against incoming projectiles.

“In a ground fight with Russia, NATO success would be heavily reliant on achieving air superiority,” said Savill at RUSI.

🇺🇸 Currently, only the US could carry out effective suppression and destruction of modern Russian air defenses.

The US military has a shot at defeating so-called integrated air defense systems because it has large numbers of highly-trained pilots flying stealthy combat jets such as F-35s, which work in tandem with imaging satellites and long-range reconnaissance aircraft to pinpoint multiple targets quickly and accurately. The US also has large, readily available stocks of long-range “standoff” munitions that can be fired from outside the danger zone to destroy those targets.

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📈 The Outlook

🇩🇪🇵🇱🇳🇱🇬🇧Positive developments include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s announcement of a €100 billion fund to modernize the country’s defenses; a significant expansion of Poland’s armed forces to make it the third-largest in NATO, with a heavy focus on ground troops; a Dutch plan to restore tank forces that the country got rid of in 2011; and the arrival of new Apache helicopters and Archer howitzer guns for the British army.

🇸🇪🇫🇮🇳🇴🇩🇰A subgroup of members — Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark — also have moved in that direction by creating a Nordic air-defense alliance to combine command and control; share facilities, information and situational awareness; and improve interoperability. The group plans to have almost 250 modern combat aircraft by the end of the decade, of which at least half will probably be F-35s.

It’s also taken considerable credit for a rapid increase in European production of artillery shells — expected to reach 2 million by the end of 2025 from 1 million in early 2024.

Some security officials say European military spending may need to rise to as much as 4% of national budgets — levels not seen since the end of the Soviet era.

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❗️🇷🇺🤝🇰🇵🇺🇸🇬🇧🇪🇺🚀🇺🇦 North Korean missiles used by Russia to attack Ukraine contain components from the US, UK and EU, according to a report by Ukraine's Independent Anti-Corruption Commission

"This is outrageous. A recent examination of the North Korean KN-23/24 missile shot down in Ukraine found numerous recently manufactured Western components. Putin and Kim still have access to them," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote in X.

Analysts analyzed the remains of the KN-23/24 missile (improved Hwasong), shot down by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Poltava region

📌Most of the microelectronic components found in North Korean missiles were made in the US, including by Diodes Inc, Bourns, Broadcom, Analog Devices and Avago

📌Experts also found components manufactured by Traco Power and STMicroelectronics in Switzerland, NXP in the Netherlands and XP Power in the UK

❓The DPRK is under strict sanctions from the US, UK, EU and UN member states. They prohibit, among other things, the export of weapons, ballistic missile components and any dual-use goods

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🇬🇪 Thousands of people rally in Tbilisi for Georgia's European choice
Four columns of people from different parts of the Georgian capital converged on Freedom Square.

On October 26, Georgia will hold parliamentary elections, where, as is traditional, two main parties will oppose each other: the pro-Russian "Georgian Dream" of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili and the "United National Movement" of former Georgian President and now prisoner of freedom Mikheil Saakashvili

"Georgian Dream" intends to gain full control over parliament.

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