Why do small countries purchase modern military equipment?

I don't see how this makes any sense. Austria purchased 24 used Saab Draken in the 1980s and used them for 20 years. They did their job fine. But the militaries pressured politicians to purchase Eurofighters to replace the Draken. What for? The only thing those planes are doing is making pictures of American fighter planes violating Austrian airspace... which leads to diplomatic notes of protests, which are ignored by America.

Why the hell do small countries purchase expensive useless military equipment?

Anyone from a small country where the government does the same?

Other urls found in this thread:

thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghof_(residence)
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Because small countries are also run by idiots, shocking.

Switzerland is the only small country that gets self-defense right.

What a neat looking plane.

Because they aren't only worried about superpowers you nitwit.

america gives alot of aid money with conditions, like, spend the aid money on buying american tanks. see: egyptian arab spring.

Buy Swedish again. GRIPEN 39. I'll get you a special deal, goyim.

>Switzerland is the only small country that gets self-defense right.
How so? They also just make pictures of American fighter jets violating their airspace... leading to diplomatic protest notes to America, which are ignored.

I concur.

I know you can never realize these planes and other gear have ancillary uses.

I know you don't get the manual / briefing on how to use such gear.

>the militaries pressured politicians
It was the other way round m8.

its shit though

because its not about self defense anymore but money and helping NATO in "international operations"

>Buy Swedish again. GRIPEN 39. I'll get you a special deal, goyim.

The Gripen would actually have been by far the best plane for Austria when they looked at Draken replacement options. The options were the Mig-29, the F-16, the F-18, the Eurofighter and the Gripen.

The Mig-29 was dismissed because of political problems with Russia. 36 used F-16 would have been the cheapest option, but the F-16 was American. The F-18 was dismissed because it was more expensive than the F-16. And then there was the Gripen and the Eurofighter. The Gripen was underperforming the Eurofighter, but it was a heck load cheaper and thus the perfect match for Austria + Sweden and Austria are both neutral.

But the corrupt politicians opted for the Eurofighter because of bribes etc.

>Saab Draken
20 years for a plane is a long time, user. They had to be replaced.

Better then the f35

>because its not about self defense anymore but money and helping NATO in "international operations"
We aren't part of NATO.

Consider it the price for being inside the NATO tent.

A small army could invade Austria with relative ease.

No army could invade Switzerland with ease.

>20 years for a plane is a long time, user. They had to be replaced.
There are still military training schools in America flying the Draken in current year. We could have flown those Draken until 2020 at least. Then bought some used F-16 from Greece for only a few shekels.

Spending heavily on the military boosts the economy, in the short run, and to be in NATO and to get US protection everybody has to spend 2% of their GDP in defense

>A small army could invade Austria with relative ease.
Yes. But if we actually wanted to defend ourselves, the plan would be to retreat to the Alpine areas which make up 60%+ of Austria. It is damn hard to take the Alpine areas - look at Afghanistan, it is virtually impossible for tanks to operate in that area, so you have to send in special forces, which do not know the terrain, while Austrian do.

>No army could invade Switzerland with ease.
The strategy of the Swiss army is exactly the same as the strategy of the Austrian army - retreat to the Alpine fortress.

>Spending heavily on the military boosts the economy, in the short run
How so? We bought Eurofighters from Germany... manufactured in Germany.

>, and to be in NATO and to get US protection everybody has to spend 2% of their GDP in defense
We are not in NATO and we do not get US protection. The US is violating our airspace regularly, that's all the US does for us. Russia has been more a friend than the US in the last 25 years.

in austria there is a jew think tank called "oiip" which lobbies for heavy arms for austria in order to make proxy wars.

We would need just one strategic nuke.

>We would need just one strategic nuke.
And our Russian friends would retaliate against the American imperialists to avenge their Austrian friend.

>He believes in the Alpine Fortress meme

Lets all laugh at this retard and point our fingers at him.

>Lets all laugh at this retard and point our fingers at him.

Ok. It is still the Austrian strategy in case of an actual invasion - which is a theoretical scenario anyway.

Quick NATO map for people that don't know.

Also it is not really normal for a small country to purchase expensive weapons. Most likely it could of been some back door EU talks to help the French manufacturing for some kind of return.

>Eurofighters
Following the single-source principle, the four partners share production as follows:
Alenia Aeronautica left hand wing, outboard flaperons, rear fuselage
BAE SYSTEMS front fuselage, foreplanes, windscreen and canopy, centre fuselage frames, dorsal spine, fin, inboard flaperons and rear fuselage stage 1
EADS (Spain) right hand wing and leading-edge slats
EADS (Germany) centre fuselage

Four final assembly lines are being set up by the four partner companies:
Alenia Aeronautica Caselle near Turin
BAE SYSTEMS Warton
EADS (Spain) Getafe near Madrid
EADS (Germany) Manching

Shut the fuck up you ubergerman nigger, Austria was partly liberated by USA and stayed neutral because of USA instead of falling to gommunism.

Go take your pet german citizen for a leash walk

>Ok. It is still the Austrian strategy in case of an actual invasion

Where you even the military or did you clean old peoples asses?
Pretty much every military in our neighboring country could fuck us up. Lichtenstein included.

Strange to think it was developed in the 1950s

>They did their job fine.

you know airplanes do have a limited life-time yes?

You cant keep a jet-plane from the 50s flying forever, there is a point where its just cheaper to buy a new one instead of wasting all the money on maintenance of the old one.

not even mentioning how completely outclassed by everything else those planes are.

>Austria was partly liberated by USA
Not a single US soldier was in combat on Austrian soil, while Russians actually fought to liberate Vienna and killed Nazis in Austria.

When will this meme end that America did anything for Austria ever?

Nobody asked you for your involvement, shabbos goy, why do you act as if you destroying the future of the European peoples gives you any credit?

Small Western European countries never go to war except when France/UK/Germany do. Its been like this for hundreds of years. They only have militaries to ensure that other countries will negotiate before violating their borders, and so they can have a small piece of skin in the game when asking for defense. Its a lot easier to ask someone to defend your heroic dieing soldiers than it is when you did literally nothing to ensure your national defense.

>Where you even the military or did you clean old peoples asses?
>Pretty much every military in our neighboring country could fuck us up. Lichtenstein included.
Fuck off you Zivildiener.

The difference is that the Swiss have all their infrastructure ready to be demolished and enough weapons and supplies to field their entire nation, and enough bunker space to house every single person. They have tank traps in their fields FFS. They don't need to retreat to anywhere, the whole place is a fortress.

Unless you have bases and logistics already setup in the alpines, and enough weapons and supplies to arm a significant percentage of your population, and unless those people have some basic grasp of military training -- you're gonna have a very rough time. In the short term, even a small professional military force fighting innawoods is likely to be extremely successful, but if you can't feed them and tend to them appropriately their effectiveness will drop like a rock with time.

Of course they'd look after their rape babies.

>You cant keep a jet-plane from the 50s flying forever
America is planning to keep the B-52 (designed in the 1940s and produced in the 1950s) in operation until 2040 at least.

>The difference is that the Swiss have all their infrastructure ready to be demolished and enough weapons and supplies to field their entire nation, and enough bunker space to house every single person. They have tank traps in their fields FFS. They don't need to retreat to anywhere, the whole place is a fortress.
You are delusional. Not to mention that Swiss women are not subject to the Swiss draft, so your picture is 100% misleading. Women are second rate citizens in Switzerland.

They probably should have retained Draken 15 years longer, but yes to have any hope in hell against modern fighters you need a modern fighter plane.

Draken also may have been prohibitiely expensive to airframe maintain and upgrade.

Certain shit can be swapped out/upgraded sooner rather than later. If your country is wholly dependent on aerial air defense.
(PROTIP: You are) then you need cutting edge fighters.

Austria only has radar directed 35-mm AA guns and Mistral Short Range SAM's - this shit is only useful for point defense and battlefield/front defense

MOst countries are ruled by comprador elites.

For an object lesson, look at how Greece was made to buy French equipment despite being broke.

Is is a good idea to keep the 30 year olds mig-21s my austrian emporor?

>Fuck off you Zivildiener.

Are you just repeating what i said you dumb basement autist? You were probably "untauglich" because of mental retardation.

thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghof_(residence)
>Only hours later, the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived at Berchtesgaden along with the French 2nd Armoured Division. In his interview with the Library of Congress, Herman Louis Finnell of the 3rd Division, 7th Regiment, Company I, stated that he and his ammo carrier, Pfc. Fungerburg, were the first to enter Berghof

I don't know why anyone would celebrate being liberated by soviets. The Austrian people were more complicit in the war than the Germans.

Hitler as a proud Austrian, and all the best Nazi's came from Austria

delete this

Bribery, dawg

we have tripled our military funds. stupid jew think tanks fuck off. i don't want a ww3.

Die selbe sache hier in kroatien mein Österreichischer meister

>Austria purchased 24 used Saab Draken in the 1980s and used them for 20 years. They did their job fine. But the militaries pressured politicians to purchase Eurofighters to replace the Draken. What for?

Fighters usually have service life of 25 to 35 years. You bought 'em in 1980's as used aircraft. Those were verymuch on their last legs when retired.

DK is objectively the best looking plane ever.

>its shit though

Kill yourself.

>Saab 35XD
>51 Danish export versions: F-35 single-seat strike aircraft, TF-35 two-seat trainer and RF-35 reconnaissance aircraft. The type was heavily modified to make it into a strike aircraft; compared to the Swedish versions the outer wings where completely redesigned, and the radar was missing. These aircraft could carry heavy bombs as well as Bullpup missiles; during the WDNS upgrade of the 1980s they received the ALQ-162 jammer, a Marconi 900 Series HUD and a Ferranti LRMTS (laser rangefinder and marked target seeker)

Purely coincidence. Purely...

MiG-29 is shit and expensive to keep running.

>The F-18 was dismissed because it was more expensive

Yet, they chose even more expensive Eurofighter.

thats a bomber, its basically a long tube with wings you can cram always the newest electronics in and hang the newest engine on. It doesnt get the stress a supersonic fighter gets put under and its way easier to upgrade.

>There are still military training schools in America flying the Draken in current year. We could have flown those Draken until 2020 at least.

They are using it far less and far more gently than military would be using it as fighter. If I recall correctly ex-Danish AF Drakens are used for two things. Electronic warfare training OPFOR for military and as test pilot training aircraft.

>Then bought some used F-16 from Greece for only a few shekels.

Given how hard Greek have flown their F-16's, there is good chance that those are literally scrapmetal when retired from Hellenic AF.

>America is planning to keep the B-52 (designed in the 1940s and produced in the 1950s)

B-52 production ended in 1962. It's pretty obvious that remaining aircraft are from end of production.

>in operation until 2040 at least.

2038 under current plans. It's still quite absurd service life for aircraft.

Bombers will never be flown in as aggressive way as fighters. Comparing bombers or airliners to fighters is seriously apples vs oranges comparison.

>its basically a long tube with wings you can cram always the newest electronics in and hang the newest engine

Yet, Americans have refused to upgrade engines of B-52's since 70's because it will be retired soon(TM) and high bypass turbofans would increase it's RCS... as if it would be ever used to penetrate hostile airspace, B-52 has been cruise missile carrier from early 80's against any opponent that doesn't fuck goats and dancing boys.

>The Mig-29 was dismissed because of political problems with Russia.

ahahaha even fucking russia pretty much gave up on that piece of shit.

But how else they would hold off Czech imperialists when they attack?

Bribes?

cant even reach top speed without leaving Austrian airspace

>Why do small countries purchase modern military equipment?
Cause it's money to prodicer of weapons.

>I don't see how this makes any sense.
It's a way we extract rents from countries.

Also they like having shit for prestige, in case they have to intimidate other nearby shit countries.

It's pretty.

>ywn Take part in Unification War and fight Giantess Aliens with your Robot ship.

Because it would be impolite to just call the money we're making you give us be called "tribute" in this day and age.

They're featured near the end of Firebirds (an early Nic Cage/Tommy Lee Jones movie)

If you were invaded and retreated to the alpine you probably already lost the war the 40% of land you lost would most likly be their main goal to take

If you are at war with a country useually the US being the aggresor you would not want to nuke the land you want to conqour thats just retarded

BRRRRRRRRT

>But the militaries pressured politicians to purchase Eurofighters to replace the Draken. What for?

Lobbying from arms dealers

NATO obligations

Deterrence

It's allmoot because of nuclear weapons, but that is how it is

Austria was a big empire and a military superpower once.

Because the fucking Chinese always looking to invade us at the slightest chance they got
So yes, we need to buy modern military equipment or we will get crushed in the upcoming war

>Why do small countries purchase modern military equipment?
- Hey, psss, If you purchase our 100 brand new jets for 10 billions of dollars, I'll give you 10 millions.
- k lol.

Only three countries (excluding usa) in NATO even spend the 2% on defence, iirc it is UK, Poland and Estonia

>spending money on ditch digging boosts the economy

Worked for FDR

Whoever declares war on austria declares war on germany

Because jews and 1984.

>The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

at the same time Russia uses their old ass Migs to a great effect in syria, new figthers are only needed against some other modern armies. older planes are super effective against armies whitout decent anti air defences.

>in the short run

austria why don't you get these guys?

Sure Atanas, we'll just lower your paycheck by 100 levs and use those to cover the expected 2% on millitary defence :^)

>Spending heavily on the military boosts the economy

Not if you import most of key big ticket items like fighters.

They bought Eurofighters not that long ago.

The Draken was a 1950s design. Some aircraft can really go the distance when properly maintained and updated but eventually you just need to buy new kit.

Whether its useless or not is something which can't often be determined, because the only way to measure the effectiveness of deterrence is via it's failure rate.

And fuck mate, you got new jets what the fuck are you complaining about? Just be thankful that you don't have a government like ours which decided to replace it's 1950s jets with....drumroll....nothing.

Eat my dust Nigel.
And don't you go starting a war on me, I'm gonna blast you with my no-fuel Cruise missiles

gay

Only if you export you military equipment, and since ive never heard bulgaria exporting anything i doubt you boost your economy

lol thought u were joking with eurofighter.
they are all slave states forced to keep an army

Oh shit I forgot about Greece

Sorry m8

emus can't fly... also maoris would scare them... why the fuck would you need jets?

This is what Amerigoys believe. No one asked you to "liberate" Europe

Drones are going to wipe the floor with piloted fighter aircraft soon. Faster and simpler to build, longer duty cycles, and the ability to execute maneuvers that would turn a Human into jelly. How hard can it be to teach a machine to hunt aircraft and people?

Assuming this isn't a complete bait thread, which is unlikely

>Maintenance
Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years. You literally can't fly a passenger jet that old without it coming to pieces. Fighter jets become extremely expensive to maintain

>NATO
We're all buddies. In an armed conflict all our gear gets put in a resource pool. Interoperability is useful and modern gear is helpful.

NATO implemented defense budget quota (not many reach it though)
Weapons purchase diplomacy and international relations
Arms race between countries (Greece Turkey for example)

>Austria
>small
have some more respect for your nation, fag

>You literally can't fly a passenger jet that old without it coming to pieces.
Nuh uhh.

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years.

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years. You literally can't fly a passenger jet that old without it coming to pieces.

Check how old average plane of USAF tanker fleet is at the moment. Tankers are modified airliners.

Airlines, especially first world flag carriers keep their fleets very modern, because new planes are way cheaper to operate than old ones.

>Fighter jets become extremely expensive to maintain

Fighters are flown in way more agressive way than airliners. Airframes have to deal with way higher G-loads.

>We're all buddies. In an armed conflict all our gear gets put in a resource pool. Interoperability is useful and modern gear is helpful.

Austria is neutral, also known as enemies of everyone.

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years.

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years.
s

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years.

>For Air Force Captain David ‘Swoop’ Welsh, flying the legendary B-52 bomber is a family tradition.

>The 28-year-old pilot is the third generation to fly the half-century-old aircraft; his father, retired Lt. Col. Don Welch, was trained to drop nuclear bombs from the B-52 during the Cold War, and his grandfather, retired Col. Don Sprague, flew B-52 combat missions in Vietnam.

>Three generations: Air Force Capt. David Welsh, 28, pictured center, is the third generation to fly the B-52 bomber. His father, retired Lt. Col. Don Welch, right, was trained to drop nuclear bombs with the plane during the Cold War, and his grandfather, retired Col. Don Sprague, left, flew B-52 combat missions in Vietnam.

Why don't they keep making these glorious chromed bastards?

>Planes start falling apart after 20-30 years.
nb4

F-16 was the best deal
The only cheap option you have would be a upgraded F-5E type plane. Planes are expensive.