NATO has just 5% of air defences needed to protect eastern flank

https://www.ft.com/content/5953405f-d91a-4598-8b6b-6345452ca328

by JumpCrisscross • 2 years ago

12 6 2 years ago

ft.com

tus6662• 2 years ago

From what exactly? Turkey?

thfuran• 2 years ago

Turkey is in NATO.

tus6662• 2 years ago

Exactly.

verdverm• 2 years ago

of course the implied adversary is Russia

Andaith• 2 years ago

Can't read the article, but I'm assuming this is talking about land-based AA.

Soviet doctrine was that the Soviet Airforce couldn't go 3 rounds with the combined European/American airforces, so the Soviets invested a lot more in ground-based AA systems, having multiple overlapping systems for short/medium/long range. The purpose was to be able to advance their army under the cover of AA and deny NATO air superiority even though they themselves wouldn't have it.

Whereas, NATO doctrine was to just have air superiority and have aircraft shoot down aircraft & bomb ground-based AA with missiles and whatnot.

So yeah, NATO doesn't have much ground launched AA, but to project air defences they'd have their combined air forces, which is a ridiculous amount of firepower compared to everyone else. The USA has the first, second, third and I think fifth largest air forces, and the UK & France are up there in the rankings, then there's Germany, Italy, now Sweden.....

sillywalk• 2 years ago

Archived article.

https://archive.ph/J0Lg9

NATO has just 5% of air defences needed to protect eastern flank

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