Joe,
Re: "Europe's Future Infantry" et al, all I can say is, LoL.
As as been highlighted by any number of WoC posters, the military world of the future is, of course, the US plus India, Israel, Australia, Taiwan, Japan (at least if the PRNK continues its' suicidal course) and, if it survivies self inflicted damage, the PRC. Guess who's on which side of a conflict?
Mike

Don't be so quick to laugh.

First of all, European defense efforts are coming together in ways that will give them projectable force in the coming decades. Don't mistake the fact that it's happening slowly and with lots of snags for the belief that it isn't happening at all.

Second, I'm seeing Europe's consolidating defense industry start to turn out very capable equipment. MBDA, BAE, and EADS are becoming as consequential in the defense world as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop-Grumman. The Europeans can pull these programs off.

Which brings us to consequences. As these concepts mature, it will become easier for some European forces to fight alongside America because they will share more doctrinal similarities and technology similarities than they do now. USJFCOM is also helping with this process, and I personally expect the US military to learn from watching these efforts abroad.

Finally, the results of these programs probably won't stay in Europe. While doctrinal difficulties would keep an adversary such as, say, China from fully exploiting this technology even if it was given to them, the future is unknowable and this diffusion may have consequences for other nations.

You mentioned Russia, for instance. I have my doubts about where a future Russia fits into anything, but their efforts get some coverage in eDefense Online and that ought to be of interest. Some of these European efforts are also likely to serve as a model for the Russians, who are really feeling their way along slowly to a professionalized force.

All of the above being a long way of saying: stop laughing, don't let rhetoric get in the way of good analysis and observation of trends, and consider paying attention to these kinds of developments.

Do the Europeans have the political will to spend enough on Defense related stuff?

Otherwise all the research is just research.

Enough to bring large chunks of these programs to fruition? For various reasons and given a number of trends, I think so.

What's it going to cost? Who's going to pay? Will they ride to combat in A-380's?

I see the same thing, i dont doubt their technical ability to build them, The germans especially, what I cant see is their ability to afford them.

Let them cut aggregate taxes below 40% for a decade, and the unleased boom could recreate the tax base that the taxes are destroying.

But they seem so busy exterminating the economy with socialism and regulations, the economic support to fund a real military seems to have been taxed out of existance.

Short term inflation could be used to fund a lot of jets and tanks, but that bill comes due pretty fast in a devalued currency.

An effect the USA can see in their own currency easy enough, without all the socialism

Richard Heddleston:
Maybe not the A-380, but there is a project for an Airbus-derived military transport, the
A-400M and a tanker/transport the A330 MRTT
I also recall (can't find a link though) a newspaper mention of tentative proposals for a more rugged very-long-range heavy transport version of the A330/340 with some A-380 components.

The Brits should probably get a decent rifle,then worry about hi-tech.

Aside from the banana republic defense budgets, the principal problem is that it will be impossible to develop a net-centric military with so many disparate languages and cultures. The willingness of lower-level officers to demonstrate initiative will vary considerably among the British, Germans, Greeks, and Italians. America stamped its culture on the sons of immigrants, so it has uniformly interchangeable parts in its military. The granularity of the EU military would be much less, with unpredictable results.

Don't banana republics have big defense budgets?

"Don't banana republics have big defense budgets?"

No,just big parades.

That Belgium issues toy rifles kinda undermines the whole Euro SuperPower! meme,doesn't it?

Joe

"Enough to bring large chunks of these programs to fruition? For various reasons and given a number of trends, I think so."

Care to elaborate?

I always thought that the best gunmakers are in the Walloon.

This stuff is straight out of Starship Troopers. (The book, not the movie)

From my point of view the biggest problem related to the use of modern infantry from European countries is not either its equipment or transport (of a medium size force). AIRBUS has the knowledge and the facilities to design and build specialized military transport aircraft easily. All big European nations are carrying on programmes to improve their amphibious forces. The result will consist of an amphibious combined fleet (not Japanese) half the size of the American in number of ships and one third of its capacity in number of soldiers and vehicles transported, which is really big for European standards.

In my opinion the problem is that in a modern battlefield today all military units have to be tangled together with advanced information systems that in many cases are based in space. There Europe is decades away from America. Common (non-battlefield) military communications use different satelite systems for UK, France (Syracuse), Italy or even Spain, where this service is provided by a joint venture with the American company Loral.

There is another program that you're missing, namely South Africa's African Warrior soldier equipment modernisation project.

While obviously not nearly as advanced as the US's Land Warrior, it has a budget of $115 million and has apparently already incorporated a few innovative ideas and approaches.

Another one to keep an eye on is Australia's Land 125 Project Wundurra.