Nicolas Overloop @noverloop

@JorenVermeersc1 “Het budget moet op” probleem bestaat in elke laag van de samenleving. In de bedrijfswereld compenseren we dat door bonussen te geven als er budget overschiet.

Not so sure about that. EU leaders are deeply frustrated by Ukrainian governments frequent desires to skip the copenhagen criteria before accession. The Copenhagen criteria are effectively the implementation of the rule of law where the law is the same for an oligarch as an unknown local villager. It’s clear that there is a group of oligarchs intend to enjoy all the benefits of EU access without the democratic accountability that comes with it. Start demanding the full implementation of the copenhagen criteria and many EU leaders will gladly join the pressure campaign.

European naivite about how the real world works is how we get programmes like Global Gateway that is the equivalent of directly donating billions to the corrupt elite. Same for UN organizations and many charity organizations. It’s why every 3th generation loses the generational wealth of its grandparents. There’s no greater disservice to your kids than shielding them from reality.

This episode in Ukraine reminds me a lot of some management changes in my previous company when one manager viciously attacked another one to preserve his own position only to get discredited and kicked out anyway as more and more people spoke up.

@petite_michelle @FedorovMykhailo Maybe not soviet-minded but we definitely have old Generals that don't get it and who are more interested to retire at a defense prime than transforming into a modern force. European armies are far from meritocracies that are required for a technology war

A lot of leaders are unable to distinguish discussing problems happening under their domain with a personal attack on their authority. Somebody like Syrski will very quickly be starved of real information as he reacts badly to bad news and according to Federov is now spinning conspiracy theories rather than discussing the identified problems first-hand. The hardest part about this method is that you have to build a culture of trust first to even clearly identify the problem and avoid subordinates start a blame game rather than focus on the actual issues. The AFU is clearly mismanaged and the complaining about that has been going on for years. If it weren't for military units outside the AFU, it's questionable if the front would have held for so long.

Ah yes, and nothing is better for mobilization than crushing morale of the entire army. Who wouldn’t want to join a war where high command doesn’t care the slightest about the lives of its service members and ignores the needs at the front in favour of making money with their friends. Truly the great leadership to lay down your life for.

@SpaghettiKozak If that would be the case, Zelensky could save face by calling it out but I suspect it's a more older tradition. In Ukraine, the good people die first.

Must read - Real reason why Fedorov was fired is that he worked with huge procurement reform

Майор @sinicynr

3 days ago

Менше двох тижнів тому я з побратимом були остатончо переведені з бойового ударно-розвідувального підрозділу в Міністерство Оборони. Робити реформу якості. Державного гарантування якості. В травні заступник міністра оборони @mstyslavbanik почав хантити мене очолити цю реформу.

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Can't think of a clearer sign that a fast-track access to the EU is a bad idea than the removal of @FedorovMykhailo EU should suspend access negotiations and slowball funding until this stupidity is reversed. I'm looking forward to hear the explanation of Zelensky to his allies why the first openly anti-corruption Defense Minister of Ukraine is fired after finding 6.6 billion usd of corrupt defense procurement. cc: @Bart_DeWever @bundeskanzler @vonderleyen

With Fedorov being kicked out for no good reason, it also puts the European defense integration at risk of favoritism and corruption. EU should probably intervene to stop this madness @KubiliusA

@PopovaProf If Ukrainians want EU support they should start to protest, I am not sure EU will comment without clear public outrage

It's all fun and games until your competitor is much cheaper and you lose all your business. Pursuing autharky is not desirable and probably not even achievable with the type of institutions we have and that's even ignoring the madness that is ETS. The Ukraine war has given Europeans a much better understanding of what it means to operate under a persistently surveilled battlefield and the value of unmanned standoff strikes. We must just draw the logical conclusion and make sure it's European systems that persistently surveil and are able to strike while being able to deny this advantage to an adversary. For now this ability is restrained but there's no technical reason it can't be global other than that it takes a lot of money to develop these capabilities. Even the hanseatic league used blockades to enforce its will and that was arguably a successful coalition of middle powers. A standoff drone blockade is being enacted in the sea of Azov and Strait of Hormuz as we speak.

@Felix_Nuno @vtchakarova Disagree, dependencies are global (cfr. Semiconductors) so your power projection needs to match in order to avoid coercion of suppliers. What we should do is leapfrog sea power with space and drone power imo but it will still take two decades to come to fruition.

Mixing democracies and autocracies in international institutions was never a good idea anyway. It’s an overshoot of boomer naiveté just like the UN. What I do miss though are international institutions for just democracies.

Department of State @StateDept

5 days ago

Op-Ed from @SecRubio: Why We’re Dismantling the ICC wsj.com/opinion/why-we…

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@mr_james_c Argentinian fleet is pretty small though, just airlift a few dozen Ukrainian sea drones. At the end, this dispute is about the start of oil exploitation in the falklands.

Not quite. To really eliminate distance, you need orbital bombardment. Good luck refueling strategic bombers in less than an hour it takes to deorbit a bomb from LEO. With reusable launch costs, the interceptors are orders of magnitude more expensive than putting the bomb in space. Ukraine is in a good spot here because it can leverage its antonov fuselages and remnant MAKS space project to develop a fully dispersed launch system that can operate on any large airbase.

@TheresaAFallon This is the Brussels capital region that is responsible for this, not the EU. In fact, eurocrats are not eligible to vote for the brussels capital region which is why that layer of government is dominated by far left parties as better off Belgians refuse to live in Brussels.

@WarMonitor3 This is ok actually, the future is not sea lift but air lift and long range strike enabled by sat and uav comms.