Being the only Balt poster here, I just want to post news about the EDF without bothering other threads.
Can serve as a hub for Baltic defence and such in general.
If you want to catch up on the major things that have happened past 4 years in the EDF, I suggest reading the EDF thread on The Mess.
themess.net
Other urls found in this thread:
pildid.mil.ee
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news.postimees.ee
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delfi(dot)lv
youtube.com
apnews.com
milremrobotics.com
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twitter.com
If you want fresh EDF pics they're all posted here. pildid.mil.ee
Click on an album, then click on the play button on the top right to get full size pics. Otherwise you get shit thumbnails. Baffling decision.
Past month have had some interesting things about our acquirement programs. They are almost all falling apart now.
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MBDA made a complaint to some ministry about how Spike missiles are outdated and how the Jews themselves are replacing them, which to my knowledge has no credibility at all. They made some sort of offer for their own ATGMs. Just trying to block shit, I guess. Probably nothing will happen here.
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Government had a competition for a package of new rifles, short and standard service length 5.56 rifles and a 7.62 DMR with accessories and optics by 2021. Basically all our old stocks of Swedish AK4s and Israeli Galils are falling apart by now although they have served us well.
We are are buying 16,000 rifles with potential orders for more for some years after the initial order. The rules were that a company had to have a gun adopted by NATO and sell 25,000 rifles within 5 years.
The three companies that made an offer were Lewis Machine and Tool, Sig Sauer and H&K. The offers cost €22m, €27m and €45,5m respectively, with LMT having the best warranties.
Sig made a complaint on how the guns supposedly aren't up to snuff, their complaints were on how the stock of the 7.62 DMR had some bits fall off on a drop test (the stock is a standard M4 stock), the optics apparently aren't good enough (2 different optics, one RDS made by Holosun and some magnifying scope made by Vortex) and called into question if they have sold 25,000 rifles in the last 5 years. They did sell 9000 rifles to the Kiwis and some unspecified amount of 7.62 DMRs to the Brits, plus civilian sales.
A "concerned citizen" wrote a letter about how they too, were totally not a Sig employee and were concerned about how these exact same things Sig complained about were big issues. Eesti Ekspress wrote an article just putting forth the question if they were a lobbyist or not.
Personally, I think LMT isn't trying to fuck us here. Optics are fine from what I gather and their sale of rifles to the Kiwis went over really well. I haven't heard any complaints of the 7.62 rifles for the Brits either.
An Estonian military forum called Militaar.net is pretty divided on the issue.
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So BAE Systems, the original manufacturer of the CV90 and two Estonian companies both have offers to do repairs. Issue is, the BAE offer is too expensive, but the Estonian offers don't comply since the paperwork said that the parts must all be original. BAE doesn't sell parts like that, and now our options are to either rewrite the paperwork to allow third party parts or just not do the repairs since again, BAE's offer was too expensive. The difference was €21m vs €39m, basically twice as much.
Dunno how I feel about this myself.
I regretted buying it.
15 companies made an offer to take part of it, 5 of them didn't qualified. 4 of the qualified companies made an offer and had all the correct paperwork. 3 of the 4 passed the requirements.
The problem with the Baltic militaries is they're currently heavily bought into the 'specialise and let our allies do everything else' meme no tanks, no aircraft, essential no naval forces and that makes them pretty much totally reliant on NATO for everything but infantry. If push comes to shove that's bad, the West has reliably sold out on Eastern European nations and honestly if push comes to shove probably would do so again depending on the circumstances. Germany is a paper tiger so they're not much use either.
On the positive side I'm pretty sure the balts have one of the higher ratings in europe for 'would fight/die for my country' which never hurts.
France is friendlier with Russia than almost any other European nation particularly when it comes to the military.
Latvia is currently searching for a new infantry transport. We had made a competition, Finnish company Sisu won with a weird prototype, and now the whole thing has come to a complete stop because every manufacturer has filed complaints about something other manufactures have done or did not do in the competition. Also took a week for someone to notice that the Finns won with a prototype, not a production ready vehicle. It looks good though. I just could not resist posting, eh? Latanon always here, always lurking.
Gotta give you that. Also that's why russians call us ebil naceez. Planning to join Zemessardze this year, gotta only get my truck license first. There is a program for specialist training there too, and it's even for free, but then you gotta sign a contract for basically selling your soul to whichever local unit you belong to, with no options to quit for a set period of time, and you have to attend every single training for next 4 years, because you are now supposedly a specialist. It's literally just a truck driving license for vehicles up to 12 tons.
Mind telling us if there is something like that in the States? If the state trains to yo do something, are you legally required to pay back with four times your weight in sweat and blood? Holy shit i no longer appear as from Germany
Do you mind giving a quick rundown of civilian gun laws in the Baltic states? Are they totally cucked?
I thought about maybe trying to get Lithuanian citizenship but wouldn’t want to give up my guns I have here in burgerland so it’s tough.
Did they take a Humvee and give it some bodywork?