>>25557468
europe doesn't have production facilities. you can't win a war with a design bureau somewhere in zurich, you need manufacturing on a massive scale. everyone has design bureaus, russia has design bureaus, perhaps even ukraine has design bureaus. the military drones are not design-heavy at all, they're off-the-shelf solutions with simple modifications, so having design competence does not even help. what does help is an industrial base that makes disposable parts as cheaply as possible and on a massive scale. europe doesn't have this, and europe doesn't have raw materials, things like plastics and metals, it will have to import these somehow across an ocean patrolled by drone boats. and most importantly europe doesn't have chips. you don't need the latest generation, but you need a lot. building a chip fab takes tens of billions of dollars and a decade or so to build the facility and train the personnel. china has a 10-20 year lead on europe because they started a long time ago. to catch up, europe will have to ramp up production at a higher slope than china, and that's not in the cards. europe will have to wait in queue at ASML until US and taiwan have their orders filled, and the queue is full for years to come.
europe had a chance in an alliance with russia, it would get endless raw materials, at cost+ basis, delivered via trade routes invulnerable to attack from sea. such an alliance was offered, and it was rejected with contempt. europe chose instead to place its trust in its vassalage relationship with the usa and deindustrialize and disarm even further from an already sorry state. it is now time for europe to face consequences, now it is defenseless and ready to be carved up and served for dinner. any talk about supposed european potential is purely palliative at this point. it can stay where it is in nato, or it can choose a different master, but in either case there will be a demotion in status and terms less favorable than before. attempts at independence will be shot down because america still pulls all the strings through business ownership and the media, and what it doesn't control, britain does. observe that britain already started saying stuff like "we europeans must do this and that" as if europe is its backyard.