2 ms·
“Self reliance” in military terms is overrated because it means redundancy which increases costs and sourcing everything domestically means missing out on compa
by thephyber 1y ago
“Self reliance” in military terms is overrated because it means redundancy which increases costs and sourcing everything domestically means missing out on comparative advantage of different countries). The UK doesn’t have nearly enough colonies to source materials anymore.
The US already created 3 variants of a 6th gen fighter available to all of NATO and some other countries. AFAIK, the UK hasn’t even built a 4th generation fighter, something EuroFighter, Dassault, and Saab have done (in Europe) and the US has done 4 times over (later variants of F-15, F-16, F-18, and all F-22s).
- sam-cop-vimes 1y agoAgreed - all I'm saying is we have to keep trying. There are benefits in just trying to achieve an almost impossible goal.
- thephyber 1y agoCitation needed. In a world of scarce resources, how you choose to invest is incredibly important.
- rurp 1y agoThe tradeoffs depend a lot on how reliable the external dependencies are. Sourcing from Europe seems pretty low risk high reward for the foreseeable future. Relying on the US seemed really safe 10+ years ago but is much less so currently. If I were any non-US country right now I wouldn't want to find myself in a war critically reliant on US resources.