La Danimarca aumenta enormemente il bilancio militare quest’anno dopo anni di taglio: ora spenderà il 3,2% del suo PIL in difesa nel 2025.

> COPENHAGEN, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Denmark will increase its military budget by a combined 50 billion crowns ($6.99 billion) this year and next to address acute shortcomings, most notably in surface-to-air missile defence systems, the prime minister said on Wednesday.

> After decades of drastic cuts in defence spending, Denmark last year allocated an extra 190 billion crowns for its military over a 10-year span, but has now concluded that more is needed and that it must come quickly.

> “Does the world look uneasy? Yes. Is there reason to believe it will be over soon? No,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference. “There is one message for the chief of defence: Buy, buy, buy.”

> She said procurement would be made without going through the normal lengthy tender procedures.
“If we can’t get the best equipment, buy the next best. There’s only one thing that counts now and that is speed,” Frederiksen said.
> Frederiksen on Monday said Russia had become a threat to all of Europe and called on each country to ramp up defence spending to protect themselves while also increasing their support for Ukraine.

> Denmark and most other NATO members have also come under increased pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to ramp up military capabilities further.

> Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Denmark’s increase will lift overall military spending to 3.2% in 2025 from 1.37% in 2022, the year that Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

> The investments will weaken Denmark’s public sector fiscal balance, going from a sizeable surplus in recent years to a potential deficit in 2026 of 0.8% of GDP, a government forecast showed.

> While Denmark is among the biggest contributors of military aid and equipment to Ukraine relative to the size of its economy, the aid has depleted its own ground forces which lack hardware, ammunition and staff.

> The long period of downsizing of domestic forces means Denmark has no air defences and significant shortcomings in its naval capabilities, military experts and government officials have said.

Reminder: this “GDP on defense” is also an accounting exercise. There is no requirement on *where* you spend it, just that you spend it. Denmark just upgraded its fighter jets to F35 so I imagine that the costs that incur in 2025 due to that aren’t probably annual but something that comes only because you need to alter infrastructure etc. You won’t have to do that every year.

Another creative accounting move was done by USA with its Bradley tanks they gave to Ukraine. No doubt capable machines, but before they were given away they were due to be scrapped with a few being altered into armoured MPVs. They had warehoused them, and for all intents and purposes their value were close to scrap metal BUT when they sent them to Ukraine they claimed that their monetary value was about $2M per tank, substantially more than you would get from them as scrap metal. Was it a fair price? Maybe… but the value on the balance sheet would been a lot different without them being all of a sudden in demand in Ukraine.

Well done. Hope Portugal follows the lead

It doesn’t matter if they create a military budget of 70 billion dollars. The welfare and security service provided by the USA to Europe after 1950 has come to an end. Even if each European country has the most advanced weapons, they need manpower to use those weapons and qualified officers to coordinate those people. In order to solve this problem, they must either put aside their voting concerns and introduce compulsory military service, or give concessions to migrants and recruit them, or cooperate with independent powers such as Turkey.

I am highly suspicious about the effectiveness of this individual increases. It seems to me like if every country spends the money separately the money would go mainly to ammunition, rifle guns, bombs etc. However if EU countries collect the money in the same pool (3% of EU GDP makes almost 600 billion euros(4x Russian Budget)) this can be spent on high-tech effective weapons like 6th gen stealth combat aircraft, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, shortly, creating a proper and EU wide military-industrial complex. Hope I could express myself.

Keep going guys

A whooping 50 € !!!!

GOOD

I find it pretty funny how the USA has floated NATO for the last 4 decades and now how dare trump comment on increased funding and spending from all NATO members.

Ha! All we had to do to finally convince the Euros to pony up on defense spending was to convince them it would be against the U.S. instead of Russia!