Interesting but another article mentions it's so expensive that the UK was reducing its F-35 order to pay for it.
In the light of its rekindling with the US and Australia this week, I doubt that will be appreciated.
6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
131–140 of 218 posts
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#132How is this affected by the new pact between US, UK, and Australia? The news here made it appears as that caused some bad blood between EU and the US/UK.
That doesn't affect the EU as a whole. Sweden is skeptical about giving EU that role anyway, they're working for closer strategic ties to the US, and have signed agreements to that effect. They already chose Patriot over a German/French project for air defense.
They've never been team players. Don't forget they were happily building Nazi tank parts in WWII while playing nice with the allies. On the other hand, many EU countries have picked US fighters over Swedish offerings like the Gripen. It does go both ways.
I'd love to see the EU more militarily independent from the US. Especially because they tend to start wars for economic reasons. Sponsoring the military industrial complex, oil reasons.. In Europe we view the military more as defense and not as a geopolitical or economical tool. We also view joining the military more as a job and less as a duty to our country. But if EU countries start opting out it'll never happen.
We can still be friends with the US, but less military ties would be appreciated IMO.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#133War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials, and facilities that money can buy. But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? For example, what could $2 trillion have bought in Iraq, Portland, or Jerusalem if it had bee…
> I know there is no handbook for peace
You mentioned Jerusalem. I'm Israeli, so I'm biased towards one side of the Jerusalem story but let me try to frame the other side of the story as to not play my biases. I probably won't be accurate because my propaganda is different from their propaganda. And I won't reply because this will otherwise turn into a flamewar real quick.
Does peace mean to you that the Palestinians stop fighting for a state of their own? They just raise their hands, lay down their guns, and embrace Jewish rule? Should they accept your $2 trillion - the number that you stated to invest in the peace project - as reparations for loosing their olive groves, villages, and roads to Israeli settlers? Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Will that be enough to forgive the years that cousin Ahmad sat in an Israeli prison? Will that be enough to forget the eye or leg or life that cousin Mahmaud lost?
And what of the five million people whose grandfathers either fled or were chased from Palestine in 1947? Should they accept some slice of the cash and relinquish their dream of returning to Palestine? Sure, some of them live in the US or Italy or the UK with their nice standard of living. But some of them live in refugee camps - to this day - in Lebanon and Syria and they have no rights in those countries. Under your peace plan, what becomes of a child in Yarmouk, whose family has been forbidden from education, health care, and most forms of work for three generations? Does he take that slice of $2 trillion and now buy a house in Syria? Forbidden to him. In the UK? He doesn't even qualify for a passport. In Palestine? Palestine has not enough land to quadruple its population. In Israel? To live under _their_ laws?!?!? What if Palestine and Israel are a single entity under this plan... does that make the situation easier or more difficult?
In my opinion, some problems just cannot be solved with money.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#134Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.
Sometimes people build things of value and want others to take it. For example, open source.
> Sometimes people build things of value and want others to take it. For example, open source.
And it's always suboptimal for the person who does it.
Want to compare the bank account/quality of life of Linus with the one of Larry Ellison or Bill Gates?
People rebut that given the geographical constraints and the "winner take all" market that is software Linus played his hand in the best way possible because there would have been no space to fight Microsoft, Apple or Oracle on a for-profit basis.
If that is true then it's not a real rebut, because it ceases to be altruism . It's just the same mental process experienced by entrepreneurs who decide to be at the helm of for-profit organizations. Except it has virtue signaling baked in it to sell it in a better way and capture a niche of people who are politically charged or hate big for-profit organizations.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#136War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials, and facilities that money can buy. But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? For example, what could $2 trillion have bought in Iraq, Portland, or Jerusalem if it had bee…
> I know there is no handbook for peace What does peace look like to you? Do people just stop fighting and start loving their neighbours? You mentioned Jerusalem. I'm Israeli, so I'm biased towards one side of the Jerusalem story but let me try to frame the other side of the story as to not play my biases. I probably won't be accurate because my propaganda is different from their propaganda. And I won't reply because…
> Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays?
Crazy idea. Jews drive/catch public transportation on Fridays, muslims drive/catch transportation on Saturdays, and the rest of us ride around everyday of the week, because in what world is any of this a good idea?
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, it's not like nobody has ever thought of that before. Naturally. What we haven't done before is invested in tools. We've invested trillions to make tools for advertising, but almost nothing to make tools for achieving peace. > The best we've been able to do is deterrence, which requires developing advanced weapons like aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and nukes. I'm not suggesting war or deterrence can be…
> We've invested trillions to make tools for advertising, but almost nothing to make tools for achieving peace. I'd argue the European Union was an experiment in peace along these lines, to bind a war-torn continent so close together that war becomes unthinkable. And it's worked - war between France and Germany, or the UK and Ireland, or Denmark and Sweden is unthinkable.
It's difficult to know if it's been the reason. Chances are that there wouldn't have been any wars without the EC/EU anyway.
Not sure Ireland vs. UK is a great example BTW.
And your example with Denmark and Sweden is particularly off-base since war between these has been unthinkable for over 200 years[1] -- much longer than the EC/EU has existed. Also, Sweden joined the EU in 1995, more than 20 years after Denmark did.
[1]: and it could be argued it goes back longer than that because the last clash was forced by their respective allies in the Napoleonic Wars, but neither Denmark nor Sweden actually did want to fight each other at all.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I know there is no handbook for peace What does peace look like to you? Do people just stop fighting and start loving their neighbours? You mentioned Jerusalem. I'm Israeli, so I'm biased towards one side of the Jerusalem story but let me try to frame the other side of the story as to not play my biases. I probably won't be accurate because my propaganda is different from their propaganda. And I won't reply because…
> Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Crazy idea. Jews drive/catch public transportation on Fridays, muslims drive/catch transportation on Saturdays, and the rest of us ride around everyday of the week, because in what world is any of this a good idea?
In the world where transportation staff does not need atleast 1d/week day off.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We've invested trillions to make tools for advertising, but almost nothing to make tools for achieving peace. I'd argue the European Union was an experiment in peace along these lines, to bind a war-torn continent so close together that war becomes unthinkable. And it's worked - war between France and Germany, or the UK and Ireland, or Denmark and Sweden is unthinkable.
This is not correct. NATO has been the peacekeeping element in Europe. Not the EU, which is a far younger organisation than NATO.
They do different things. Metaphorically, NATO is a wall-building exercise while the EU is bridge-building.
NATO has an external focus, initially keeping Europe safe from the Warsaw Pact.
The EU is an economic bloc: while it does have a mutual defence article, that article is explicitly secondary to NATO obligations. More importantly it builds the peace, with the primary threat being economic/political, with loss of access to the decision making process (if they’re a member state) or much softer and less well defined big-fish-ness (for non-member-states) rather than violence.
Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.
That isn't "just how the world works", that's how a subset of people in the world behave.
It's because of this subset that the world works the way it does. This subset is larger than you'd think and looking at countries beset with racial or ethnic or religious strife, it seems to me that nearly everybody has the potential for it. You are fortunate to likely live in a country where your existence isn't dependent on limited resources which have to be defended, so you can easily say "well, not everybody fights over resources or because they hate each other".