European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft
154 comments
·November 13, 2025jacquesm
usrnm
> The damage to our future world order
I don't think "damage" is the right word, especially outside of the US. Changes aren't necessarily bad, and, as someone living in the EU, I actually like the current trend.
kogus
As an American, I am also gratified to see the EU take steps toward independence from US foreign policy. Independence doesn't mean enmity; it just means that the EU and US should both be adults in the room, reaching decisions on equal terms.
If one takes a longer view of things, the period from WW2 to now is very much an anomaly reflecting relative European weakness in the aftermath of that war's physical and moral destruction. There is no intrinsic reason that the US should take the lead on, say, policy toward Russia. Quite the opposite.
jijijijij
As if the US influence was built on charity for poor Europe... It's been all Red Scare and geopolitical power play. The US influence was nothing but intrinsically motivated. The only reason Germany was allowed to be rebuilt was its function as east bloc barrier.
The current US government is throwing away a world power status of unimaginable costs, which literally took almost a century to build. For better or worse, but let's not spin fairy tales about the why and when.
dblangford
US has historically taken the lead in policy regarding Russia to avoid nuclear proliferation in Europe. If the US umbrella is perceived as being unreliable then I think that is what will see.
throw-the-towel
But Europe did block the rapprochement with Russia in the 1990s, which the US was trying to achieve. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-documents-...
ta20240528
Damn, are you sure you're an American? :)
jacquesm
I wouldn't say it was weakness rather than a sense of disgust about anything war related. Europe is tired of it, and precisely because of that may well end up in another major war.
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jacquesm
Talk to me in 10 years or so. Changes can be very bad if they are rapid.
poszlem
I firmly believe people are deluding themselves if they think that without US patronage, Europe wouldn't devolve into its historical norm, a state of internal warfare.
The popular narrative suggests a 'United States of Europe' is forming, but this seems like propaganda when you look at the reality, nations are already returning to the historical status quo, prioritizing their own agendas and pulling in separate directions, much as they always have.
A recent, clear example is the debate over using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. That single issue exposes the deeper divides. Belgium objects because it wants to shield its own financial sector. Germany backs the idea because it would spare it from taking on more of the financial burden. France, meanwhile, has long argued for a different approach, issuing joint EU debt, an option that many financially weaker member states would favor, but one Germany refuses to accept.
EDIT. Unfortunately HN has decided that "I am posting too fast", because I wrote 4 posts, amazing work, I love getting throttled by mods with not reason! So cannot really respond in the thread. EDIT2. As always, thank you for downvoting without addressing the argument.
I'll just update this one:
> Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual > internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I > believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its > predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) > was created - specifically to avoid another war. > Your example is very on point: the member states are talking > - not fighting - to protect their own interests.
It’s really not hard to imagine this turning into something very different. All it takes is a major political shift in Germany or France, and both are already close to that point. A lot of people are still thinking in peacetime terms, but we’re past that. The parties that are likely to come to power soon are not going to keep talking about “European solidarity,” because a core part of their message is that this solidarity has come at the expense of their own country’s strength.
barbazoo
Same here. I’m not scared of China either and am excited for them to take more responsibility on the international stage. Hopefully US warmongering will come to an end too.
Yokolos
Yes, I'm sure all the countries around China are really excited and looking forward to this. Oh, wait ...
It's the same shit with the Baltic states and other former Soviet satellite states. They're terrified of Russia, but people in Germany or further West think it's all overblown propaganda and there's nothing to fear from Russia.
You being ignorant doesn't mean there aren't real issues and real, justified fears.
maxdo
I hope EU will have a functional army before Russia will attack EU , so that US can withdraw troops from Germany. As much as Europe hate Trump, surely Americans too, he was the first president to force them treat defense seriously. Yet all military forces maybe except Poland are a joke
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Havoc
This is why the aukus thing puzzles me. Thats a huge longterm bet on the US being reliable
tick_tock_tick
It is kinda funny that to become "independent" the EU is going to become even more dependent on the USA while saying at some undetermined future point they will be able to pivot to independence (which we all know is never going to happen).
w10-1
An independent Europe is easier for China to dominate.
Now that NATO is in question, you'll start to hear about US manipulation of the SWIFT banking system, so Europe will start pushing for an international one, which China will eventually control.
WanderPanda
SWIFT is Belgian, though?
paganel
It’s just a detail, the international financial market/banking system is basically under active US control, just look at what happened to Wegelin & Co. (at that point the oldest bank in Switzerland) when they thought that that was not the case.
torginus
And weirdly enough, most of the sanctions have been softened, or rolled back - there's been little effort on the US side to build up domestic production capability outside of semiconductors - a process that began well under the Biden admin.
Another curious thing is despite how the US has been acting in this manner, their stock market still continues to outperform everybody else's
Turns out even if you have as much power as the US president with their executive orders, if you start making stupid or insufficiently well-prepared policy decisions, you have to roll them back or your country will crash into the ground.
Kind of makes me think that supposedly autocratic leaders of powerful countries have much less power than we thought - once they make a couple stupid decisions, their countries start going down the drain.
macintux
I don't disagree with your theme, but I think in this case it has less to do with the grenades Trump is randomly exploding and more to do with the E-7 simply being the wrong solution.
hshdhdhj4444
In the past it was useful for nations to opt for an American solution even if it wasn’t the most optimal precisely because of America being a dependable and trustworthy ally.
tick_tock_tick
Or more realistically because no one else actually produces enough missile or bullets to shoot. It's like France being such a joke right now suggesting that Ukraine use their missile system instead of the USA's.
Oh France sure how long until you can supply a fraction of what we are buying from the USA? What a decade!?!?! Ukraine won't exist in a decade if we wait and what's that you won't even ramp production unless you can get guarantees from multiple member nations? What a joke.
saubeidl
One could also phrase it more cynically as protection money.
Now that no more protection is offered, there's no point in spending the money.
barbazoo
That sounds like such a made up thing. Any source to back that up?
jacquesm
That may well be, but if there had been a different person in the White House (or what's left of it) they would have most likely bought it anyway. They're just not going to come out and say it but the 'strategic' element is what points to that, I doubt the US would have withdrawn in Juli if not for Trump, Hegseth and their buddies. This is just one more program they've gutted.
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/air-force-cancels-e-7-we...
wbl
How is the E-7 the wrong solution? It's worked fine for Australia.
poszlem
Instead of viewing the current world order as collapsing, it's more accurate to see this as a transitional period. The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator, the US, making change inevitable.
A significant reduction in the quality of life for many in the 'so-called West' appears to be the unfortunate price of the world returning to a more 'normal' historical pattern of international relations.
Barrin92
>The system established after WWII no longer serves the interests of its main creator
I don't think that's true. The policy of alliance building and containment of their largest peer and competitor still makes sense. It was how the US ultimately overcame the Soviet Union, and is even more vital given the size and talent in China. A US without an alliance system will not win that competition.
What's much more concerning is that the rational interests of the US as a nation aren't reflected in its policy making any more. The 20th century had its share of domestic issues but the inmates weren't running the asylum as far as foreign politics was concerned which was coherent.
dmix
European countries becoming more capable of defending themselves by scaling up their own military instead of being dependent on a foreign power will only harden containment of bad actors. That applies to my country Canada.
What's much riskier to the world is the US having to take the brunt of defending Europe, the Arctic front, and dealing with a conflict in China (which is far far more serious military threat than Russia in 2025).
It's difficult medicine to swallow but that's the realpolitiks of it.
mensetmanusman
Both parties in the US will celebrate the EU being more independent militarily.
We are in a multipolar world with the dominance of China incoming and the western nations need to spread capability.
cjrp
Presumably the alternative is the SAAB GlobalEye?
Y-bar
Seems so, but perhaps some nations like France want a bigger variant with a bit more range and larger sensors. Airbus A330 is already used by European fighters for aerial refuelling so I suppose it could also be built into an AWACS.
macintux
Sounds like the USAF decided last year that the E-7 was the wrong approach (too expensive, more interested in a distributed solution), so this isn't terribly surprising.
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petcat
> The decision follows the withdrawal of the U.S. from the joint AWACS replacement program in July 2024, which left the initiative without its strategic and financial foundation.
Is this implying that USA was paying for it previously? It sounds like they're blaming "noise polution", but also that they're not getting the planes for free anymore?
krige
No. Europeans were paying for theirs but, once US backed out of their own purchases, the cost per unit rose sharply and was no longer sustainable.
petcat
I see so this isn't really a concerted effort by EU nations to gain independence on defense technology. It's just that USA didn't want to buy the planes anymore so it became too expensive for everyone else to as well.
krige
Or perhaps pulling out of the program was too costly, political or otherwise, for EU and USA did them a huge favor by blundering away from it first, freeing them to pursue their goals.
jijijijij
Europeans were blown off, when America unexpectedly pulled out like a Boeing door.
itopaloglu83
Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs allows the participating countries to share most of the setup cost, except some high end technology that is country specific, it’s mainly divided by per airframe basis.
When you have the US Air Force in a program and they purchase a bazillion aircraft, things get relatively affordable.
Well, the US left and nobody want to spend billions of dollars into the development of this aircraft (most of the problems are the airframe not radar I heard, citation needed) and end up with just two aircraft and then deal with internal news about how they spend billions of dollars per aircraft when commercial airlines are so much cheaper.
VWWHFSfQ
It kind of sounds like the USAF did the EU countries a favor then. If they're not interested in the technology anymore then it prevented all those countries from investing billions in a fleet of lemons.
itopaloglu83
It’s only a bad news for Boeing and by association the US defense industry, though everyone knew the program was cooked when the US decided to leave.
Boing stock didn’t even fall down as much as the S&P500 so one can assume that this was already taken into account.
petesergeant
Saab liked this post
drooopy
It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year. Throughout my 40 years on this planet, Pax Americana was a constant that seemed to hold the world together (+/-). It's scary to see it vanish and with such speed and efficiency.
fransje26
> It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
The art of the deal.
MengerSponge
The world was somewhat sympathetic to the US when we elected Trump the first time: it's disappointing, but you can get tricked sometimes. When we re-elected him it casts the first time as not an error, but rather a deliberate choice.
A nation that makes that kind of choice is not a reliable ally. We're just beginning to see the repercussions of that loss of trust.
fxtentacle
The EU is worried about Trump being unpredictable, so they are pushing hard for sovereignty. See their initiatives to leave US clouds. This decision is completely in line with that strategy and, probably, also what the US military expected to happen.
eCa
> leave US clouds
The pressure to leave US controlled cloud providers actually started way back with the US Cloud Act. I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.
bediger4000
What effect does this have on Boeing, one of 3-4 major defense companies. Can the industry handle one more giant meger? Can it handle a vastly impoverished Boeing?
SilverElfin
Geopolitically this rift between the US and EU is great for adversaries like Russia and China.
barbazoo
I’m starting to question thinking of China as our adversary, what makes us think that way? Russia, sure they’re actively fighting against our allies. China?
SilverElfin
In my opinion it’s because of several things. They took over Xinjiang and Tibet, and committed large scale atrocities in both. They threaten Taiwan. They abandoned the treaties around Hong Kong. They continue to harass India - a sort of ally of NATO countries - over borders they share. Let’s also not forget crimes against Chinese people during the cultural revolution and since then.
They’ve also engaged in widespread campaigns of asymmetric warfare against other countries. Lots of cyberattacks. Theft of intellectual property - corporate espionage but also copies of designs and hacks of government agencies. Unfair protectionism in their own markets. Lots more to list.
But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech. I think there’s a lot to admire about China and Chinese citizens. But their government is ultimately a threat to the world order and the progress of liberalism.
barbazoo
A lot of that context I didn’t have, thank you, I should catch up more in that regard.
> But mostly because the CCP just can’t be trusted with their power, because they’re neither democratic nor support liberal values like free speech.
How do we square this with the US being democratically elected (let’s ignore gerrymandering and absence of one person one vote) but the actions like the upcoming war with Venezuela, bombing Iran. The people didn’t vote for that either.
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saubeidl
The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.
Which begs the question, why should the EU see China as an adversary? That's mostly an American thing, the Pacific doesn't really concern us.
Maybe alliances will reshuffle in the future?
F3nd0
Why should the EU not see an expansive authoritarian superpower as an adversary, or, at the very least, a real threat to its continued existence and sovereignty?
toomuchtodo
China needs Europe to support its export economy because there will never be enough domestic demand to prevent a deflationary spiral. Europe is a rational actor China can expect to act rationally in trade, and Europe can benefit from that.
The US has nothing to offer Europe except LNG that Europe cannot produce itself, or obtain from China at better price or quality. Canada has ~200 years of LNG reserves and can ship to Europe from LNG Canada.
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/imports/united-s...
https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
The True Cost of China's Falling Prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45876691 - November 2025
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-self-d...
> In 1995, China accounted for less than five percent of global manufacturing output. By 2010, that number had jumped to around a quarter, and today it stands at nearly a third.
bix6
You talking about China or the US here?
saubeidl
They're on the opposite end of the world, our interests do not conflict, but even overlap (i.e. they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously)
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anamax
> The US doesn't really see Russia as an adversary under Trump.
From the fall of the Berlin wall until the Ukraine invasion, the US saw Russia as more of an adversary than Europe saw Russia.
Yes, even after Russia annexed Crimea. In fact, it's only this year that Europe has started to significantly increase defense spending, three years after Russia invaded Ukraine. And, even then the most aggressive increase plans end up short of where spending was during the Cold War.
Every US president after Clinton (and maybe Clinton as well) urged European countries, especially NATO ones, to keep funding defense and they cut instead.
It turns out that the cowboys were right, that there was a bear in the woods, and that "soft power" wasn't power.
myrmidon
I 100% agree that Europe regarded Russia as a potential trade partner (and possibly more positively than the US) even after the 2014 annexation.
But I don't think that this makes EU policy necessarily incorrect: Would German military spending of 5% GDP have prevented the Crimea annexation?
We won't know, but I don't think so, and European militarism in the 2000s might have led to significantly worse outcomes than we actually got.
I also think that painting this as a clear "US stance proven right in hindsight" is an outsized claim; EU military spending only really came up under Trump, and was a very minor topic before. You could make a similar argument that "the cowboys" were all wrong with the whole middle-east interventionism thing (in Afghanistan and Iraq), but the military side of that was at least competently executed (unlike Russia in Ukraine), collateral damage lower and war crimes somewhat minimized/prosecuted.
I sadly agree that Costa-Rica-style pacifism appears a non-viable approach for the EU now despite looking somewhat workable 15 years ago.
Teever
Because democracies and authoritarian regimes are like oil and water.
Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand because authoritarian leaders view the existence of people they don't rule as a threat towards their rule and they inevitably desire to grow their control and power over more and more people.
barbazoo
> Authoritarian regimes will inevitably attempt to expand
Which is ironic that most of the annexation talk came from the US in the recent times, not from China. Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal, Mexico what else has he threatened to annex?
lawn
Democracies and authoritarian regimes naturally oppose each other, which is why the EU and China will never be true allies.
Coincidentally it's also why the US and EU are growing further apart.
generic92034
> Coincidentally it's also why the US and EU are growing further apart.
That is not a given, as there are many authoritarian political parties in European countries growing in size and influence. Possibly Europe is only the usual decade or two behind the US developments? Well, I at least hope it does not come to this.
There will be a lot more decisions like this one. For the war in Ukraine and anything immediate they will buy American stuff if there is no EU alternative (and for many things there just isn't right now, there are too many dependencies). But the tide has changed, for 'in' it is now to 'out'. It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally, and that it will use all kinds of strings attached to hobble what they sell to be able to exert political pressure. Besides the obvious problems with the political system internally to the USA I think it is the external effects that drive decisions like these.
I see the same happening with choices about other suppliers. The EU is a very large trading partner to the US and what is happening right now is unprecedented in the last 75 years or more. The damage to our future world order is incalculable and the fact that it all seems to be by design bothers me greatly.
The lyrics of Alan Parson's 'Children of the moon' have been spooking through my head lately.