Who Owns the Nile?

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I have talked with a few Egyptians on the subject. Unfortunately most think a military solution would be simple and straightforward. "Egypt has hundreds of fighter jets. Ethiopia has 20, We can turn the dam into dust". They probably can. But then what? History is not over yet.

Egypt thinks of Ethiopia as enemy state. A lot of Ethiopians believe Egypt supports every rebel group in Ethiopia. But Ethiopians still don't view Egypt as an enemy, more like a thorn on the side. For thousands of years the Nile has been flowing toward Egypt without much objection. Bombing the dam will change that. It is the equivalent to creating a monster at your water source. Ethiopia will not try to block the water or anything like that. But it can and probably will start small irrigation projects everywhere. And it will stop consulting with Egypt. In the end, this will be much more devastating to Egypt than a hydro-electric dam which isn't even used for irrigation.

What baffles me about the Egyptian stance is, climate change is coming. Projections for fresh water in Africa in the coming decades don't look rosy. Mitigation for this is, fresh water sources should be developed and protected from environmental degradation. And you need the cooperation of upstream countries to do that. Being source of 85% of the Nile, Ethiopia's support is needed to do that.

Even if Ethiopia stops constructing the dam right now, in 50 years, at a time Egypt is sporting 200 million souls, there is potential that water levels on the Nile are probably going to decrease purely from climate change.

The talk of war is stupid. Playing zero sum game of "Only Egypt" is a bad idea.

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I called your opinion reductive because, it does not consider potential consequences and is oblivious to the various factors behind Sudanese change of position. I called your opinion idiotic because it contained this statement "Egypt can just occupy them, install a puppet regime and then move on. They definitely have that capability" which is an idiotic statement and because it will create more problems than it solves. I am sorry it sounds rude but some things need to be made clear.

Fyi, Egypt invaded Ethiopia twice already and were repulsed.

But yes, the planes would be expendable. That said, Egypt could very well breach the dam itself. It would needs some creative use of munitions but modern munitions are precise enough to allow for breaching of dams.