British troops exercise with Aussies and drones in America

Working from home offers flexibility and convenience, allowing you to create a personalized workspace. However, it also requires discipline and clear boundaries to

stay productive….. 𝐰𝐰𝐰.𝐏𝐚𝐲𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐡𝟏.𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞/

Put it this way: I’d want to read about it from sources that aren’t known rabid anti-EU guys before I make judgment. I have no reason to believe that Gabi would in any reality portray EU actions with any degree of impartiality or consideration for their POV.

So reading around a bit, this kind of confirms what I was suspecting.

The entire point of the 150 billion SAFE fund is to be as protectionist and exclusionary as possible. It’s there specifically to build up European (EU) Military Industry and supporting Infrastructure, and where at all possible, foreign companies and nations are being shut out. Effectively this is because Europe wants to use that fund to build up it’s own MIC and reduce dependence on others.

To that end: The UK is not being specifically excluded. The default position is exclusion. Turkey is also being excluded, as is the US (in fact given the Trump administration the way that SAFE was set up was probably specifically to exclude the US as much as possible). UKAFC is, as I said, anti-EU to an unreasonable degree and is portraying this in a pretty dishonest light if he’s claiming that the EU is deliberately targeting the UK.

The only countries that are involved at all with SAFE are countries that have specific defence and trade agreements with the EU. Not EU member-states, but with the EU. Hence why some Asian countries can join, they’ve made the agreements, and I suspect that if the EU could’ve phrased SAFE in a way that locked them out it would have (again the idea is to spend that money building up EU Military Industry, not offshoring it to Korea or Japan). The UK, like Turkey, the US, and many others, does not have a specific defence agreement with the EU (in part because we tend to insist on an atlantisist “Why do we need defence agreements with the EU, we have NATO, EU undermiens NATO” line, in part because we tend to go for Bi-lateral treaties with member states instead of EU treaties, and in part because under the Tories brexit negotiations where so “have our cake and eat it too,” that reasons 1 and 2 where easier to go for).

Now if we want in, that’s basicially us saying to Europe “Hey that massive fund that’s suppsoed to be spent specifically on building up EU defence industrial power, we want in on that.” And it’s entirely reasonable for the EU to turn around and baisically say “You’re unreliable since you literally quit this Union, and now you want us to allocate some of the money we’ve earmarked specifically to decrease our reliance on foreign supply chains on your military industry? Okay but you have to give us something in return.”

It doesn’t stink, unless you decide, as Gabi did, to leave out a lot of detail and deliberately try to paint the UK as a victim when it really isn’t. And most definitely we are not the “special case.”

And thankfully ditched the disasterous Tiger and NH90 for the much more reliable American equivalents, Apache and Blackhawk.

They’ve also received their full complement of 72 F35s, complemented by their Super Hornets and Growlers.

The Australians are really stepping up. The RAN recently fired NSM, Tomahawk, and SM-6 from their Hobart class destroyers, and news just hit that a couple of RAAF F/A-18s launched LRASMs in February.

Canada has made several large procurement and construction commitments in the last 4 years for it’s Armed Forces. The Canadian army should also have been present at this exercise.

Stick to CANZUK, the Scandis and the Baltic States (plus Poland). The rest of Europe aren’t worth bothering about. The Defence spend won’t deliver anything substantive for years.

Further to the post above about new ADF kit the first of Australia’s 42 HIMARS have arrived in country.