Messages

31

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 15, 2019, 10:32:07 pm »

and C7 are beauties as well. 

Can you please.... PLEASE not say anything positive about the C7?

32

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 14, 2019, 10:22:00 pm »

This is for the second quarter in 2018
First quarter as compared to year before.
For 2017
total of 2018 and projections for 2019 and 2020

I really think you should read the briefings more carefully


That's EU, Statista and World Bank sources. The last one is the Guardian but really Steve?

33

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 14, 2019, 12:45:34 pm »

Nah. Fuck the country I guess.

34

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 10, 2019, 01:14:50 pm »

Was it written in China?

35

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 09, 2019, 11:17:08 am »

Not a photoshop

36

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 09, 2019, 10:00:26 am »

Yeah I am clairvoyant actually.

37

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 09, 2019, 08:56:33 am »

He is actually starting to do harm now... He's literally making this up as he goes. Just like when that journalist asked him if he was going to declare state of emergency over the border wall, he literally got the idea there and then and just throws it out there.

38

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 08, 2019, 01:48:00 pm »

Because we're not fighting an interstate conflict right now, hello.

And when we do, our twelve tanks will surely tip the balance.

More are coming. There are concrete plans now to expand to batallion size.

I'll grace it with an answer:
Intel

I have to disagree with you there. Like you said yourselves, airplanes allow you to run low-risk operations. The benefits of showing your involvement in the world with the minimum amount of risk. If you don't have tanks, you can't be asked to send them to some UN mission and get them put out of action by a African childsoldier with a RPG. We don't need our Armed Forces for national defence, just for national interests. Like bombing people in Syria. The decisions to invest in the airforce (and in the military in general) is for political reasons, not for actual military reasons.

Yes it was mainly a political reason to invest in newer aircraft. Yes the decision to go to the F35 was also mostly political. The other, military, side of it, is that the Netherlands, who already have a reputation of having a high efficiency with IMINT (any intel, really), can fly mostly recon flights. The number of aircraft could have been made bigger, but that wasn't the point.

39

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 07, 2019, 10:38:36 pm »

The point I'm making is that the Dutch might be better off giving up any pretence of being a military power and simply spend the money on other projects. If others have agreed to die on your behalf then it's viable from a security perspective.

The Dutch is more of a military power than you think... Just not in the absolute numbers kind of way.

40

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 07, 2019, 10:35:43 pm »

Because tanks play such a incredible big role in all the conflicts we're fighting today, right? No, they don't.

Because we're not fighting an interstate conflict right now, hello.

 

We send scouts to Mali,

Because we wanted a seat at the Security Council and there was a requirement for an ISR component that fit exactly what the Dutch are good at. it failed, but come on, it's a UN mission, what did we expect.

infantry to the Baltic states,

Mechanised infantry. We sent tanks to Norway with Mechanised infantry. Also the eFP is not there to actually fight. It's an insurance to ther Baltics NATO will fight if the Baltics egt attacked. Sending tanks there that would be destroyed anyway would be a wasted loss.

F-16s to Jordan and ships all over the place.

First one because it was asked for and it was the only low-risk operation we could lay our hands on. Second one because it is literally the most Duitch thing to do.

Tanks would do absolutely nothing and serve purely as a PR-tool. That money can be spend way more effectively. Don't get me wrong, if we would place those tanks in Latvia or Lithuania I'd be all for it. But we won't.

Because of aforementioned reasons. the Dutch CHOSE to not deploy tanks to Afghanistan, in spite of the Norwegians (I think) and the Canadians choosing so anyway.
Just because we don't have a mission that could involves tanks now, doesn't mean we'll ever get one. Serbia is stirring shit again, who know if something blows up anywhere. It is not likely, but it is really not an expensive insurance to have when you need it.
The reasoning you're offering is as if we'd never get a regular war again on the European continent. This is simply too uncertain to tell, and considering other countries aren't selling theirs, we shouldn;t either.

Then again, personally I don't like how the tanks are gone about now in the NL. As a small country we can make ourselves much more relevant elsewhere by jumping into niches, we barely do and that's a shame. Unitl the NL state in their development strategies for the militayr they want to fill exclusively a niche role, then we can do out with the tanks, until then, we need them. Not very hard, but we do.

Why bother buying loads of F-35s etc?

I'm just gonna assume that question is not meant serious and you can tell the difference between the political and militairy reasons to buy a jet and not a tank. Especially considering the sort of missions we actually perform with our military.

I'll grace it with an answer:
Intel

Same reason we are buying Predators and buying Hornets for Recces. The Netherlands is a budding ISR/intel military.

41

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 06, 2019, 03:26:31 pm »

So, did the NL actually sell their tanks or did they just decommission them and store them somewhere? I never quite understood why a country would sell perfectly fine military equipment. Wouldn't it make more sense to just store it somewhere, in case you might need it later? It costs more than selling your tanks, but it will still be cheaper and faster than buying it all new.

Sold most of them to Norway I believe. And to some shithole coutries.
It is not cheaper to store them. They still need regular maintenance and the location where they're stored needs to be under constant guard.
Getting rid of tanks doesn't mean you're going to get rid of just vehicles. You are getting rid of maintenance infrastructure, spare parts and storage, ammunition and the whole infrastructure behind that, personnel to operate tanks, training facilities plus staff and logistics, staff capacity.

Just storing tanks wouldn't solve the problem of it being expensive to bring them back. The thing that makes it more expensive than just buying new stuff is that it takes a couple of years to get tanks operational in a unit again. The costs are there.
Also, the time tanks are in storage not being used, they're also not being kept current. If you're storing tanks for 8 years, after you've been using them for ten years already, the second they're going to get out of storage, they will require a midlife-cycle upgrade. That is going to cost a couple of million per tank. No the current construction is much cheaper. We steal everything from the German motorpool and only pay for it if the tanks are deployed.

42

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 06, 2019, 02:19:10 pm »

If I got a nickle for every time someone working for the militairy uses slang, I'd buy the Dutch army a Leopard tank.

=(

Apparantly we're getting the tanks back. Because you know, they're so useful and cost-effective.

If you want to see if it's a good idea to get rid of military equipment, look around you to other countries.
Nobody else is selling all their tanks, so why should we?

43

Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 05, 2019, 10:16:46 pm »

Sonic weaponry to temporarily decapacitate people...

I swear I read that as 'temporarily decapitate'. I thought it was pretty amusing.

=P PArt of the reason I use it. It's one of these 'fancy slang words' you hear every now and again used by LEOs and military.

44

Off Topic / Re: Movie & TV Show Critic Thread

« on: January 04, 2019, 11:06:08 pm »

There is going to be a Frozen 2?
Wow that's some new level milking the cash cow. If it'd've been only the Lion King remake I'd've said they could've gotten away with it. But what they're doing now is just obscene.

Hyped for Avengers: End Game though.

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Off Topic / Re: The General Political Thread

« on: January 04, 2019, 11:04:37 pm »

And that is still ignoring the fact AP-mines are illegal =P

Sonic weaponry to temporarily decapacitate people would be shot down too, considering the natural environment in the area, people would die of heat exposure, dehydration or fall prey to wild animals (if there are any). Even with experienced smugglers the death toll of the crossing is considerable.

A border "wall" has been done before with relatively high effectiveness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_German_border

I think minefields work pretty well to stop people from crossing the border.
Sure, the Mexico US border is twice as long, but the US also has like 2012038120380 billion more citizens, soldiers and money than the GDR ever had.


So I wouldn't say its impossible.

Maybe not but that wall was also notorious in the fact that you'd be shot on sight being seen to cross it. That's a fear factor you couldn't ignore.