In terms of sheer military might, the size of Israel’s military is very substantial compared to the listed countries. Other countries would likely come to their defense if it happened, but if it came to a fight between Israel and just Norway/Ireland/Spain, it would be very hard to call Israel a small dog. Spain might be a bit of a challenge but Norway and Ireland would likely barely even register.
Obviously, all those countries have friends and are probably pretty safe because of that, but also not entirely idle threats.
I think they may be able to reach Spain with transport planes (suppose these are not shot down because it’s impolite) and drop a brigade or two.
But considering how incompetent their army has shown itself to be (basically like Russia or Ukraine in the beginning of their war), I’m not sure that’d be very scary.
In any case there’s one country in the EU which has a competent military that participates in various kinds of violent shit kinda often, thus with institutional experience. That’s France.
Spain has a far, far larger mobile military strength than Israel. Like it’s not even comparable. Israel has zero operational landing craft as far as I know. Spain has a carrier group. The degree of military capability flex that is operating even a single carrier group is insane, I wouldn’t discount Spain as being basically demilitarized lol. Only 10 countries in the world posses a carrier capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft and it’s dubious how quickly Russia could get theirs running, it is currently undergoing repairs.
Yes, let’s also assume that Spain pretends to not have any navy.
It’s a joke.
I know Israel is not a self-sufficient Spain or France or UK level nation militarily. The whole idea that it is even comparable is ridiculous, but comes up because of it being a “facade of the West”, so to say.
Also opportunities for defense-related corruption are just amazing, when a certain allied state far away receives such amounts of aid not just in money or hardware, but in various common projects, with that not conditioned by having real threats (which would raise scrutiny). Everything that makes tracing funds hard is lucrative.
That’s where Israel’s real power is too - its corruption-based ties are very expansive and far-reaching. It also has very strong relations with other such states and organizations. Like Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan. Vatican, by the way.
Efficiency is a thing and Norway might have an advantage there, but for example… the Skjold, there’s 6 of them in existence and the complement for them is listed as 15 people.
The Norwegian Navy as a whole is 25 boats of various sizes, Israel is not a lot better with 67 and skews towards smaller boats and neither side is equipped to fight anywhere they both could reach. The entire Norwegian Navy is about 4,000 personnel compared to 9,500 for the Israeli Navy. It would be the weirdest Naval battle with two sides that have no business at all having a naval battle, but if they were determined to fight and could figure out where, the advantage is on Israel.
If you just look at numbers maybe, we can see from Russia (large navy) vs Ukraine (no navy) that there are serious disadvantages when waging a war of attrition, even with relatively near distances and supply lines.
The Israeli navy has no meaningful capability control Norwegian waters and they would be insane to try.
I’ve mentioned at least a few times that this theoretical would require both sides being dedicated to the conflict and no outside interference, with that I don’t see how that matters as both sides would have that problem to overcome.
Also, Ukraine does have a Navy. When you compare the actual ships to the Russian Navy or even just the Black Sea Fleet, it is almost a rounding error, but they still have a few dozen small ships floating around out there. The Ukrainian Navy still had 15,000 personnel as of 2022, but I’d guess that things likely have not been going great for them lately, not sure where that’s at now. I haven’t heard of any successful engagements using the few boats left, but they are very outclassed and I’d imagine outnumbered. Does exist though, several naval bases, and they are still fighting.
Finland didn’t have a small military in the Winter War. In the 90s-00s “era of peace” or something many European countries have all but abolished their militaries and forgot how big they should really be.
Small compared to USSR’s, but it was enormous by measure of today’s European armies, and you still need a lot of people to control territory today, just like 100 years ago.
It’s unreal how people do not understand the difference between defending a homeland, invading a country via an easily traversable large land border, attacking a country across a geographic barrier and attacking a country in a whole different part of the world. Israel’s ability to threaten mainland Europe would not amount to anything beyond terrorism, though potentially nuclear terrorism. All of Nazi Germany, fielding the industrial capacity of most of Europe was probably not capable of successfully invading even the UK across the English Channel, even if they weren’t distracted on the Eastern Front. They simply didn’t have the naval power required.
Not wrong from a historical perspective, but Norway would be outnumbered around 10:1 in manpower in modern times. Kind of hard to measure the… ‘level of military technology’, but Israel keeps it up to date and Norway hasn’t had to make that a real priority beyond posturing for awhile. Obviously not the likeliest scenario, but if everyone else stayed out of the way and they could figure out how to fight each other, that’s a really hard fight for Norway.
It is definitely an unlikely hypothetical due to both sides having allies/etc and yeah, the logistics. It would kind of be like Russia declaring war on something like… Paraguay. The problems with logistics are mostly the same on both sides though, it’s just a matter of figuring out how they would fight. From there, and yes, there’s a lot to think about to get to that point… but, if they were determined to fight and everyone else was determined not to intervene, Israel has a pretty clear advantage in terms of military might whichever metrics you look at.
The real interesting piece is the Spanish Navy… as in Spain does have a legitimately impressive navy and even though it’s a long cruise, they could probably get to Israel with it whereas Israel does have a navy, but to my knowledge, the only area where they really excel there is with submarines. Israel would be completely outmatched in the Mediterranean if they could figure out how to fight in it.
I guess it is relative, but that should be over 2000 miles, it’s hard to call that short. I don’t know the exact speeds of the Spanish Navy, but assuming perfect conditions and let’s give them 25 knots, that’s still going to run you ~4 days at top speed for the big ships.
I can’t think of a better method for Spain, but it’s a long enough voyage that no one’s going to surprise anyone.
I don’t think anyone was suggesting anyone had the ability to surprise any country with the presence of an aircraft carrier. They kinda stand out. The location of every major aircraft carrier group in the world is public knowledge, there is literally no point in trying to conceal it.
Oh man, you all are still thinking these guys have a navy at the same level as some of the top 10, none of the countries here are big enough to worry about a real aircraft carrier. Spain kind of has a singular one with a flight deck that can hold a few harriers, but they classify it as an amphibious assault ship or use it for helicopters. It’s definitely the big ship to worry about in the fleet and Spain has a pretty significant complement of larger ships, but we’re talking frigates, this is not that kind of Navy.
Beyond some big ships from Spain, think mostly patrol boats and a few submarines.
Spain is not in the top 10 strongest navies in the world obviously but it is still one of only 9 countries in the world that has a currently operational vessel capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft of any kind. 6 if you only want countries with carrier launched fighters. (3 if you don’t count VTOL/SVOTL at all). And the Spanish carrier in question can field about 3 dozen harriers (and technically it’s capable of launching F35s but Spain has declined to buy them)
You either misread a little bit or whatever you were reading wasn’t planning on getting those harriers off the deck. I’m not sure you could physically fit 36 harriers on the deck even if you didn’t have to worry about flying them off/on.
It can hold a few dozen helicopters, but the space required for helicopters is not interchangeable with the space required for harriers. The aircraft numbers you probably saw is assuming you take up the whole flight deck, no space to take off and land at all, and that is assuming the helicopters are small. You can find details pretty easily online, but just do an image search, it will make it pretty obvious that you are not fitting that many harriers on that boat. They’d have to hang them off the sides.
This still is probably the ship to watch out for, but comparing it to a real aircraft carrier is rough. Also, if you count this as an aircraft carrier, there’s 11 countries, maybe more depending on how you look at it. Australia has two of these that are the same class but they built and classify them exclusively as helicopter docks and don’t have anything else classified as a carrier.
lol, Israel isn’t part of NATO. If they somehow got involved with Norway or Spain it would trigger Article 5. Ireland would trigger the entire EU. Israel is very much a small dog, especially at the rate they are burning their credibility in the western world. They’d have to turn to Russia for friends and that would mean the US bombing them to destroy sensitive American equipment they have and don’t want the Russians seeing no matter what.
I mean, no one said they were? What did you think we were talking about in like at least half the comment you’re replying to. I mentioned that other countries would step in several times, what did you think that meant? Like, are you just restating my comment for me? I don’t get it.
Really, the only scenario where this is more than interesting world building is kind of what you mentioned though. I.e., if NATO falls apart and the US also fucks up relations with Israel leading to them ending up on Russia’s side with others in some kind of World War 3 situation.
In terms of sheer military might, the size of Israel’s military is very substantial compared to the listed countries. Other countries would likely come to their defense if it happened, but if it came to a fight between Israel and just Norway/Ireland/Spain, it would be very hard to call Israel a small dog. Spain might be a bit of a challenge but Norway and Ireland would likely barely even register.
Obviously, all those countries have friends and are probably pretty safe because of that, but also not entirely idle threats.
Israel has zero expeditionary capability, that is not how military conflict works.
They just think that magically the countries will somehow share a border and then mighty isnotreal will win.
I think they may be able to reach Spain with transport planes (suppose these are not shot down because it’s impolite) and drop a brigade or two.
But considering how incompetent their army has shown itself to be (basically like Russia or Ukraine in the beginning of their war), I’m not sure that’d be very scary.
In any case there’s one country in the EU which has a competent military that participates in various kinds of violent shit kinda often, thus with institutional experience. That’s France.
Spain has a far, far larger mobile military strength than Israel. Like it’s not even comparable. Israel has zero operational landing craft as far as I know. Spain has a carrier group. The degree of military capability flex that is operating even a single carrier group is insane, I wouldn’t discount Spain as being basically demilitarized lol. Only 10 countries in the world posses a carrier capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft and it’s dubious how quickly Russia could get theirs running, it is currently undergoing repairs.
Yes, let’s also assume that Spain pretends to not have any navy.
It’s a joke.
I know Israel is not a self-sufficient Spain or France or UK level nation militarily. The whole idea that it is even comparable is ridiculous, but comes up because of it being a “facade of the West”, so to say.
Also opportunities for defense-related corruption are just amazing, when a certain allied state far away receives such amounts of aid not just in money or hardware, but in various common projects, with that not conditioned by having real threats (which would raise scrutiny). Everything that makes tracing funds hard is lucrative.
That’s where Israel’s real power is too - its corruption-based ties are very expansive and far-reaching. It also has very strong relations with other such states and organizations. Like Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan. Vatican, by the way.
Norway having a small military and being easy to bully sounds familiar, perhaps the Russians remember how that goes and can explain.
Yup. They’re very efficient militarily, as is Finland. See the Skjold-class as an example of their engineering style.
*Skjold (which means “shield”)
Not sure how I missed that J. Whoops.
Efficiency is a thing and Norway might have an advantage there, but for example… the Skjold, there’s 6 of them in existence and the complement for them is listed as 15 people.
The Norwegian Navy as a whole is 25 boats of various sizes, Israel is not a lot better with 67 and skews towards smaller boats and neither side is equipped to fight anywhere they both could reach. The entire Norwegian Navy is about 4,000 personnel compared to 9,500 for the Israeli Navy. It would be the weirdest Naval battle with two sides that have no business at all having a naval battle, but if they were determined to fight and could figure out where, the advantage is on Israel.
If you just look at numbers maybe, we can see from Russia (large navy) vs Ukraine (no navy) that there are serious disadvantages when waging a war of attrition, even with relatively near distances and supply lines.
The Israeli navy has no meaningful capability control Norwegian waters and they would be insane to try.
I’ve mentioned at least a few times that this theoretical would require both sides being dedicated to the conflict and no outside interference, with that I don’t see how that matters as both sides would have that problem to overcome.
Also, Ukraine does have a Navy. When you compare the actual ships to the Russian Navy or even just the Black Sea Fleet, it is almost a rounding error, but they still have a few dozen small ships floating around out there. The Ukrainian Navy still had 15,000 personnel as of 2022, but I’d guess that things likely have not been going great for them lately, not sure where that’s at now. I haven’t heard of any successful engagements using the few boats left, but they are very outclassed and I’d imagine outnumbered. Does exist though, several naval bases, and they are still fighting.
Finland didn’t have a small military in the Winter War. In the 90s-00s “era of peace” or something many European countries have all but abolished their militaries and forgot how big they should really be.
Small compared to USSR’s, but it was enormous by measure of today’s European armies, and you still need a lot of people to control territory today, just like 100 years ago.
It’s unreal how people do not understand the difference between defending a homeland, invading a country via an easily traversable large land border, attacking a country across a geographic barrier and attacking a country in a whole different part of the world. Israel’s ability to threaten mainland Europe would not amount to anything beyond terrorism, though potentially nuclear terrorism. All of Nazi Germany, fielding the industrial capacity of most of Europe was probably not capable of successfully invading even the UK across the English Channel, even if they weren’t distracted on the Eastern Front. They simply didn’t have the naval power required.
Not wrong from a historical perspective, but Norway would be outnumbered around 10:1 in manpower in modern times. Kind of hard to measure the… ‘level of military technology’, but Israel keeps it up to date and Norway hasn’t had to make that a real priority beyond posturing for awhile. Obviously not the likeliest scenario, but if everyone else stayed out of the way and they could figure out how to fight each other, that’s a really hard fight for Norway.
Does Israel have much ability to project that far outside its own border? Even ignoring all the countries inbetween that aren’t going to help.
It is definitely an unlikely hypothetical due to both sides having allies/etc and yeah, the logistics. It would kind of be like Russia declaring war on something like… Paraguay. The problems with logistics are mostly the same on both sides though, it’s just a matter of figuring out how they would fight. From there, and yes, there’s a lot to think about to get to that point… but, if they were determined to fight and everyone else was determined not to intervene, Israel has a pretty clear advantage in terms of military might whichever metrics you look at.
The real interesting piece is the Spanish Navy… as in Spain does have a legitimately impressive navy and even though it’s a long cruise, they could probably get to Israel with it whereas Israel does have a navy, but to my knowledge, the only area where they really excel there is with submarines. Israel would be completely outmatched in the Mediterranean if they could figure out how to fight in it.
The other side of the Med is not a long cruise for the Spanish Navy.
I guess it is relative, but that should be over 2000 miles, it’s hard to call that short. I don’t know the exact speeds of the Spanish Navy, but assuming perfect conditions and let’s give them 25 knots, that’s still going to run you ~4 days at top speed for the big ships.
I can’t think of a better method for Spain, but it’s a long enough voyage that no one’s going to surprise anyone.
Well yeah. Most strategic stuff in war isn’t a surprise though.
I don’t think anyone was suggesting anyone had the ability to surprise any country with the presence of an aircraft carrier. They kinda stand out. The location of every major aircraft carrier group in the world is public knowledge, there is literally no point in trying to conceal it.
Oh man, you all are still thinking these guys have a navy at the same level as some of the top 10, none of the countries here are big enough to worry about a real aircraft carrier. Spain kind of has a singular one with a flight deck that can hold a few harriers, but they classify it as an amphibious assault ship or use it for helicopters. It’s definitely the big ship to worry about in the fleet and Spain has a pretty significant complement of larger ships, but we’re talking frigates, this is not that kind of Navy.
Beyond some big ships from Spain, think mostly patrol boats and a few submarines.
Spain is not in the top 10 strongest navies in the world obviously but it is still one of only 9 countries in the world that has a currently operational vessel capable of fielding fixed wing aircraft of any kind. 6 if you only want countries with carrier launched fighters. (3 if you don’t count VTOL/SVOTL at all). And the Spanish carrier in question can field about 3 dozen harriers (and technically it’s capable of launching F35s but Spain has declined to buy them)
You either misread a little bit or whatever you were reading wasn’t planning on getting those harriers off the deck. I’m not sure you could physically fit 36 harriers on the deck even if you didn’t have to worry about flying them off/on.
It can hold a few dozen helicopters, but the space required for helicopters is not interchangeable with the space required for harriers. The aircraft numbers you probably saw is assuming you take up the whole flight deck, no space to take off and land at all, and that is assuming the helicopters are small. You can find details pretty easily online, but just do an image search, it will make it pretty obvious that you are not fitting that many harriers on that boat. They’d have to hang them off the sides.
This still is probably the ship to watch out for, but comparing it to a real aircraft carrier is rough. Also, if you count this as an aircraft carrier, there’s 11 countries, maybe more depending on how you look at it. Australia has two of these that are the same class but they built and classify them exclusively as helicopter docks and don’t have anything else classified as a carrier.
lol, Israel isn’t part of NATO. If they somehow got involved with Norway or Spain it would trigger Article 5. Ireland would trigger the entire EU. Israel is very much a small dog, especially at the rate they are burning their credibility in the western world. They’d have to turn to Russia for friends and that would mean the US bombing them to destroy sensitive American equipment they have and don’t want the Russians seeing no matter what.
I mean, no one said they were? What did you think we were talking about in like at least half the comment you’re replying to. I mentioned that other countries would step in several times, what did you think that meant? Like, are you just restating my comment for me? I don’t get it.
Really, the only scenario where this is more than interesting world building is kind of what you mentioned though. I.e., if NATO falls apart and the US also fucks up relations with Israel leading to them ending up on Russia’s side with others in some kind of World War 3 situation.
The point is it would never be just x country and Israel.
I mean yeah, that is exactly what I said in the initial comment at least twice, and then again.
I don’t understand how we’re somehow arguing and saying the same thing.
Eh, you kept leaving the door open though. There’s not even that.
And how are they going to move those soldiers to the target country? They are a pure defence force with basically no force projection capabilities.