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[CTLance]

Yeah. Seventy billion is just way, way over the top. That'd fundamentally change our entire military setup.

It's great that we are trusted enough again to have people actually try to force us to spend more on our military, a mere hundred years or so after we involved the world in two consecutive world wars... but there should be a limit to everything. We do have ample issues with our military, and some more money to throw around will definitely help, but at the proposed target we'd just be wasting money.

We are sorely lagging behind in several key areas, for example, logistics are outright pitiful right now with a transport plane (A400M) that basically falls apart if you look at it too closely. Happened due to corruption and excessive last minute meddling/spec changes, but whatever the reason, the bird mostly sits on the ground with broken motors or other faults. So, we need to fix that piece of junk. As well as several other equally embarrassing failures. Loads of machinery lying around broken and useless. This should be a priority. Plus more money for key positions and a good old fashioned corruption sting to weed out some of the more egregious troublemakers / attract actually capable people. Can't have the industry hog all the talent.

Frankly, I'd pump a bunch of money into drones as well. Heck, right now we could lend an as-of-yet imaginary big aerial or nautical model to southern EU and have them patrol the Mediterranean so we can rescue those poor devils in their tiny dinghies trying to cross over, before they capsize.

A pan-EU drone program with good funding for attached universities for civilian utilisation would be damn neat. We all know there's loads of money to be made from that, plus, it'd lead to some more concrete plans about legalisation and EU wide standardisation before everything blows up in chaos.
I mean, the Poles have quadcopters flying over their cities sniffing out people that contribute to their smog problems. There's so many civilian applications, it's not even funny, and the military could offer the perfect piggyback ride while benefitting in a big way.

I'd also earmark a bunch of money, fire every last fucker in our intelligence agencies into the sun and replace them with actually capable, well-paid and motivated people. People that know about that internet thing and who aren't necessarily either a secret Nazi or Stasi officer or sympathiser. Which would admittedly set us back for about three or more decades, but what can you do. By now I'm rather desperate, I guess.

 

[PdotMichael]

The joke is that is plain impossible to increase defense spending in a somehow meaningful way in a short time.
Even if Germany doesn't let Airbus developes a Tornado aircraft replacement for ~2035 with other European partners like France and Spain but buy the F-35 it would easily take a decade to get them.
That means being stuck for decades with a inferior foreign black box.

 

[Joni]

Those other things are necessary also. Ships need replacing, aircraft need replacing. Some stuff is decades old. So it is not always just a simple shift of budget. Sometimes you just need more money after years and years of budget cuts.

Or you need to realize that you don't need so much stuff in your army. The five biggest countries in the EU after Brexit already have an army that trumps all but the US army. We are already talking about an army that is bigger than China and Russia. The countries should ideally work on better collaboration so that they can spend less but work better together. Like how Belgium and Netherlands decided to save money by protecting each other's airspace. It costs less because you only need four instead of eight jets and it offers the same protection. European countries can easily reduce their spending while keeping up the same protection. It just means they won't all have tanks and planes and boats.

OK? Then by that logic all NATO nations are just spending money on their own military.

Yes. That is actually the idea of NATO. The listed 2% is total defense spending.