BRUSSELS — United States arms-makers are being frozen out of the European Union’s massive new defense spending plan, which aims to splash the cash for EU and allied countries, according to defense spending plans released Wednesday.
Also left out — for now — is the United Kingdom.
That isn’t necessarily an issue. The US uses their own designs as well, so if you count them, you can add an additional 1 or more to every category. You have the Abrams, as well as the F-15, F-16, A-10, C-130 and AC-130, B-52, B-2, Bradley IFV, Striker IFV and variants (if we still even use those), M109, etc. Even between different branches of the military, they use totally different designs for the same role. The army, air force, and navy all use Blackhawks for their transport helicopter, but the marines use Super Hueys, a refit of the Vietnam era Huey. Even the Abrams has multiple variants, such as the short barrel one that’s been used in the forever war in the Middle East, as well as tons of armor kits and equipment packages produced by different companies. Hell, the world’s first purpose-built sniper rifle that wasn’t just the best firing of the infantry rifles they had on hand was built by 2 guys in a shed in England who made match rifles for shooting competitions, and the current US sniper rifle is a civilian hunting rifle.
You can have different planes for their different roles and functions. That’s different than each country making their version based on wanting to protect their own industry. And you can have design progression, also different than each country doing their own thing. Sorry but short barrelled is so minor, the European tanks are completely different tanks.