The war in Ukraine has profoundly changed military strategies and
defense policies, impacting the choices needed to provide a country witha military power modestly defined as deterrent. These policies concern
on the one hand the management strategy of a possible nuclear arsenal,
but even more so the availability and management of a "traditional"
army. Leaving aside the certainly very complex nuclear issue, the debate
must necessarily be brought back to the discussion on the creation of a
common European army that would have to face a war of attrition similar
to that of Ukraine.
First of all, it should be noted that an army that wanted to attack one
of the states that are part of Europe, due to the ties that unite the
different countries today, would have to be able to have a number of
troops much higher than the availability of armed personnel that Russia
has in relation to its population in order to hypothetically achieve the
goal. Invading and keeping occupied such a vast territory would require
a number of soldiers that the hypothetical invader does not have. On the
contrary, if we only think about the length of the Russian border, which
goes from the Pacific coast to the Black Sea and is surrounded by a land
border from the Arctic to the Black Sea. On the other hand, the European
Union countries as a whole have a population of 450 million inhabitants,
which is countered by 148 million Russians, and therefore Russia's fear
of being invaded is understandable.
Nonetheless, we note that the army that Russia would have to face would
be composed of 32 different armies (that of NATO) which would be reduced
to 27 if the response came from the European Union alone. It follows
that any discussion on the creation of a common European army that would
have to face a war of attrition, full of variables and unknowns, and is
in any case poorly set up, inadequate and obsolete, especially when it
continues to refer to the existence of 27 national armies. This
observation retains its validity even if we were to refer exclusively to
some elite units that today constitute the NATO troops and are
coordinated by this Alliance.
Even in these forms, the army that would constitute the result is
outdated and obsolete in its strategies, its constitution, its
departments, its specialties, and the weapons systems that distinguish
it. The most direct consequence of this observation is the
impracticability and absolute ineffectiveness of the decision to
allocate 800 billion euros to rearmament, especially after the Brussels
offices have detected the illegitimacy and flaws of the procedure
adopted by the Commission to approve Von der Stupid's decision. It
follows that the structure of a common European army should be entirely
rethought in its organizational composition, in its structure and above
all with regard to the weapons systems adopted and the strategies used,
proceeding however to provide it with a political-military direction
that can only come from the existence of a common foreign policy of
Europe that today does not exist and is yet to come.
Structure and weapons systems
The strategies, tactics and combat methods adopted during the Ukrainian
war demonstrate that today an efficient army can no longer be organized
in a tripartite form between navy, air force and land forces, since not
only are the tools of the three types of armament integrated more and
differently from the past in combat, they must be supported at least by
aerospace departments and electronic technicians.
Not only that, but the problems relating to the constitution,
organization, and subject matter differ depending on the goals being
pursued and that is, what is the defense strategy adopted for the coasts
and seas, that of the air and that of the land or if the decision taken
concerns the projection of a global power policy as part of a multipolar
balance.
Here there is obviously room for brief and summary considerations that
we believe are preparatory to an open debate that we are willing to
host, but which we will try to introduce in such a way that the
questions posed are sufficient to answer significant questions regarding
the appropriateness and usefulness of the expenditure in relation to the
objectives. Restricting the observations to the adoption of a rearmament
policy limited to deterrence and defense, we note that in the Ukrainian
conflict the navy played a completely marginal role in the war actions.
This did not depend only on the fact that Russia is not traditionally a
naval power, but on the particular configuration of the battlefield,
extremely limited to the Black Sea. In this chessboard, the conflict
demonstrated that the operability of a fleet depends on the availability
of safe ports. However, if those ports are close to the coast of the
enemy country, they allow the defending country to carry out an
effective action to counter the military potential of the navy even
without having battleships, as it is possible today to create attack
vehicles consisting of small boats equipped with drones or coastal
batteries of missiles and guns that are able to neutralize the role of
surface vessels. Considering the configuration of the Mediterranean
coasts of the European Union and the Atlantic ones, the defense of an
attack from the sea should be structured by preparing agile and
streamlined defense vehicles, as for a defense policy the era of large
battleships and aircraft carriers seems to have definitively set. It
follows that, unless a State wants to have a navy capable of covering
the seas to protect its trade - in which case that country must equip
itself not only with a fleet of large surface ships and submarines, but
also with aircraft carriers, have support ports and supply ships that
provide the necessary logistical assistance and must have a shipbuilding
industry capable of constantly fueling the production and technological
updating of such ships - it will be necessary and sufficient to equip
itself with agile structures, capable of inhibiting the use of a surface
naval force and countering that of submarines. The English and French
bases still existing, scattered throughout the seas of the world,
constitute a residual structure of no effectiveness, with increasing
costs, with non-existent strategic effects.
Not only that but. the European shipbuilding industry, no matter how
hard it tries, is not able to match the production capacity of China and
the United States at even minimally competitive levels in terms of the
quantity and quality of the ships it can deploy, and this regardless of
the unbridgeable gap that currently separates the European states from
the large Chinese, American and Russian fleets. Even some regional
powers such as Turkey and India have a naval force of considerable
standing, capable of competing with the European one. In other words,
the naval forces of England and France are the remnants of ancient
powers that are now disarmed, if only for lack of crew. These
considerations are even more true and realistic if crossed with those
relating to the availability of an air force capable of providing
sufficient air cover for the operations of a fleet, certainly deficient
due to an evident shortage of aircraft carriers available for European
countries, without considering the fact that looking at the personnel in
service in the navies of the national states, a clear lack of vocational
sailors is evident, in sufficient numbers, capable of even just sailing
the currently existing vessels.
The role of aviation
As regards the role of aviation, this seems to enjoy better operating
conditions, considering that it is possible to more easily aggregate and
coordinate an air defense army, equipped with an appropriate radar
sighting system for surveillance of the territory, as well as electronic
surveillance of the airspace which, however, needs systems and
coordinates belonging to the aerospace sector and in-flight sighting of
appropriately equipped aircraft, as well as ground-based missile
batteries that contribute to forming a protective shield at least in
certain areas.
However, the objectives would be so many and so scattered that the
defense of the airspace appears to be more problematic than ever,
especially since the sighting services depend on the aerospace sector in
which there is a technological and instrumental gap that is difficult to
fill in at least a reasonable amount of time.
As regards the modernization of the air force, it is noted that the
Chinese have recently because it has been demonstrated that a war of
attrition inexorably consumes armaments, both due to repeated use and
the destruction of the opposing side.
Having inaugurated the flight of a sixth-generation fighter, the
Russians are in an advanced stage of designing a similar aircraft, while
the United States follows closely behind with a project that is very
behind schedule. But even more behind are the Europeans where two
different consortia of countries operate, so even in this sector the gap
to be recovered is abysmal both from a technological and design point of
view. It follows that no matter what we do, whatever the availability of
resources made available, it is unthinkable in the short term to have
jet aircraft capable of sustaining a comparison with major international
competitors or even with regional powers such as Turkey, India, not to
mention Israel or North Korea.
The role of the ground army
It is certainly true that the Ukrainian conflict has highlighted the
great importance of having a ground army capable of conducting a war of
attrition, but even in this sector the configuration of the European
forces on the field is decidedly deficient and not so much and not only
for the variety of weapons systems adopted by the NATO armies which
produces the non-interchangeability of the availability of ammunition
and certainly creates difficulties in the operation of the troops on the
field, but therefore the high-tech armaments adopted by the armies
belonging to NATO, are subject to greater deterioration, as they are not
suitable for being recovered and repaired to be reintroduced onto the
battlefield even after a firefight, which is not the case for example
with regard to Russian armaments. The use of missile weapons, especially
if advanced models, is accompanied by high costs that can be better
achieved and with equal effectiveness on the battlefield through the use
of glide bombs and even more so drones, a sector in which Western
technology has proven to be certainly inferior to the performance
provided by the armament adopted by the Russian army, which does not
appear to be immediately replicable. The use by Russia in the combined
optimization of Fabs, bombs, missiles and medium-range medium and
long-range guns has proven to be effective and devastating, but requires
a high production capacity at an industrial level, especially with
regard to the availability of ammunition. In particular, the Ukrainian
war has shown that between the fighting army and the support and
logistics services there is a ratio of 30% of fighters and the rest of
logistics and support services, and a rapid rotation of personnel
trained to fight to be rotated on the battlefield is necessary.
Furthermore, the development of the electronic warfare sector should
have a large space in the rearmament, equipping itself with specialists
capable of carrying out counteractions and electronic warfare,
consisting not only in the boycott of communications, but in the active
performance of information gathering in the field, because the actions,
even if conducted by small groups of men, require constant direction,
observation of the operations, which are monitored and followed live,
developing in particular, both from a technological and creative point
of view, new uses and performances of drones, so as to be able to
conduct remote warfare in the most effective way, including the
possibility of hitting the enemy and defending oneself by acting from
space. All of the above, even if summarily, requires not only resources
but above all time.
Rearmament and relaunching production activities
Although these considerations are now part of shared knowledge, the
rearmament proposed by Europe risks resulting in investments aimed at
the reconversion of industries, especially metalworking, which would be
used for the construction of cannons, tanks and traditional heavy
weapons, shipbuilding, and partly in technological investments aimed at
aviation and the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes
and the design of new weapons, even if certainly at least part of the
resources would be used for electronic warfare and for computer systems
for communication and sighting.
In order to make military spending more palatable and digestible for the
population, there are also those who are eager to argue that there are
positive effects of research in the military field that end up improving
the quality of life, without considering the very high potential for
destruction and death produced by work on the large-scale application of
war on European territory more than anywhere else due to the population
density and the urban configuration of the territory.
Given this situation and the choices that are emerging, rather than
being a tool to contain a possible Russian aggression, the proposed and
implemented rearmament would end up arming European countries
individually, creating the conditions for an internal conflict between
them to address and resolve disputes that have never subsided,
especially in the disputes open in the Balkans and on the eastern
borders of Europe, even before the border with Russia.
But what, in our opinion, is more serious and worrying, is the
configuration that the productive and economic structure and the trade
regime are assuming, which is such as to bring with it as one of its
peculiar characteristics the reciprocal and generalized rearmament. It
must be taken into account that alongside the war being waged, an
economic war is underway that is leading to a complete restructuring of
the terms of exchange of goods and in fact to the birth of a neocurtense
economy made up of many productive and consumer islands that tend
towards the reduction of exchanges and international trade and towards
autarchic self-sufficiency. The crisis of the American empire is
accompanied by a general decline in the global dimension of exchanges
that advises every global operator that acts on the market to fence off
its own sphere of influence and action, guaranteeing with force the
exclusivity of economic relations, creating a closed system that
globally opposes other competitors, claiming its own self-sufficiency at
the expense of exchange. The resulting decrease in relations and
interconnections leads to a recession in the freedom of relations and
interactions that, producing less communication and exchange, ends up
causing an impoverishment of research and innovation, with a consequent
regression of the general overall rates of development. Every economic
area, every country or group of them, confederated by necessity to
balance competition and reduce its effects, ends up assuming a
competitive dimension that can at any time lead to armed conflict, seen
as one of the possible resolving elements, a variable of competition, a
tool for solving the competition between systems of relations and
economic models. The tendency towards this model of relations is a
characteristic that tends to assert itself especially in states of
ancient industrialization and development, such as old Europe and is
accompanied by demographic decline. History has shown and has always
shown that the crisis of empires is accompanied by conflicts between
territories that were part of it and are detached from it. The process
of dissolution in progress is destined to exhaust itself over time and
to produce social disintegration, surrogate for the prevalence of more
dynamic forms of economic and social relations represented by the Asian
production model, collective social, open, mass.
G.C.
https://www.ucadi.org/2025/04/28/europa-della-difesa/
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