Do French planes automatically drop all the ordnance (unarmed) shortly after take off so they don't have to go into combat?
Of course not, they only drop all ordinance when someone starts shooting at them. They are not afraid to shoot at undefended targets.
I think they were running out of bombs within two weeks of bombing Libya. All sorts of logistical trouble, didn't they have to rely on US logistical support?
Not just France. All of the european nations involved in ground strikes. combination flight time (I think only up to 50 aircraft were deployed europe). Munitions was mentioned as a problem with flight time. Not enough planes to hit targets. It sounds like the munitions part is more they simply didn't have the numbers stockpiled to. So a combination of manufacturing/storage and logistics (because their planes can't use the U.S. bombs). I see something about france dropping concrete on tanks not because of bomb shortage but because less collateral damage. I think it's the laser guided bombs they were having trouble with. Sounds like they didn't have enough guidance packages. Stockpiles can be used up far faster than they can be built/replenished.
Maybe Turkey wants in on the Olive Oil industry. I honestly can't think of any reason they would want to invade Greece. I don't think Greece has alot of natural resources. Or any of the normal reasons for invading another country. Only thing I can think of is maybe some cultural/ancient rivalry/hatred thing between the Greeks and the Turks that I'm not even sure if it exists. I know Turkey is mostly islamic that is the only other thing I can think of. If they intend on invading and annexing Greece that's just no benefit and alot of expense. I guess there is alot of Territorial dispute from that patch of water between the two countries. And airspace. But I imagine the airspace thing is all of Europe. The only countries that would have a good amount of airspace would be Russia, France and Spain. Well Norway, Sweden and Finland are long if not wide. probably mostly stuff in here (territorial dispute stuff) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_dispute
Well Turkey just suddenly invaded Cyprus and Turkey has been invading as far into Europe as they can reach for who long now? That's a long stretch. Their empire became corrupt and inefficient and they lost so much and just answering the "they don't like us" with letting loose tribes that prided themselves on how savage they were didn't really help. Hell, even people from as far as Finland marched to Balkans to take part in Russian Empire's intervention in the genocide of Christians in those parts. That's why we still have a Guard Jaeger Regiment that fought in 1877-1878, they fought as sharpshooters and stormed the fortress of Plevna. With the Islamic faction having now eliminated the secular section in both political and military echelons of Turkey they are currently a highly unpredictable and volatile country that no longer fits in with NATO and is more and more falling in with Russia and was kicked out from many joint tech partnerships. At one point they apparently had the US air base in Turkey under low level siege. Therefore Greece indeed needs to very actively predict and prepare for any Turkish aggression. Last time with Turkey's invasion of Cyprus the Turks performed also a violent ethnic cleansing of the areas they conquered and NATO and everyone else just left Greeks and Cyprus on their own.
Most of Europe no longer has viable militaries. FAF general called them "flight clubs" etc. - they have a few planes and they do some casual flying and maybe if someone else is fighting an actual war they send in 5 planes to do recon and maybe test if the bomb releases haven't completely rusted shut. Meanwhile Finnish Army is still firing the old WW2 artillery stockpiles at war games - while also building new stock of modern munitions. The reason why it's so hard in Europe to replace used bombs etc. is because they military industry is in such a feeble state due to the de facto demilitarization of Europe west of Finland and Poland.
and since they are not really involved in armed conflicts they probably have pretty small inventories of air to ground weapons. I would think they focus more on air to air capability and even that is probably small for most countries. Russia obviously has the largest military in Europe but the only other country with more than 1 million for for military personel is Ukraine. Everyone else is under 1 million but Ukraine is followed by Turkey than Belarus. France has a much smaller military than I thought they would at 375,100. Finland makes the top 10 largest. Larger than the U.K., Germany and Spain (individually, not put together). https://rlist.io/l/largest-militaries-in-europe That link does say Finland doesn't have a fleet but I'm pretty sure it is counting destroyers and up. or deep water ships which I guess Finland doesn't really have a need for. But I thought they had a destroyer or 2. Finland is building 4 "corvettes".That actually the size of frigates but due to mission being termed corvettes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pohjanmaa-class_corvette
We have the rifles and equipment for 500,000 troops but we have 900,000 trained reservists. Choosing 500,000 best if we want to max out allows us to drop off 40% of the worst fit. Though current doctrine calls for ~280,000 troops, the focus is not on the amount of riflemen but that each man has mobility and firepower. In fact we jägers don't even engage with the enemy - our job is to call in artillery and only pin them down until the rounds start dropping on them by which time we are to disengage. Thus we've sort of made a full circle back to a role similar to the original role of jägers except that we carry a ton of gear now. Dropping the number of men to 25% of what's available allows 4x the amount of gear budget per man during peace time - and if shit hits the fan it's not that expensive to just buy a few hundred thousand rifles, machine guns and so. We already have thousands of AT weapons and a nice amount of AA while Russia doesn't have the kind of stealth strike capability the NATO has and it's actually difficult to hit mobile SAM launchers with cruise missiles. Speaking of AA, a Finnish Stinger team has two people and a buggy as the main launcher element. The other buggy has two launchers and the other one has a crane unit. In the first picture the crane is on open area for safety reasons but the primary deployment would be in dense forest to utilize cover from the trees with the platform raised at suitable height near the tree tops to provide a good line of sight and firing zones while enjoying full concealment. The firing positions also utilize IR masking as a standard practice. While this is mainly a low level defense it is a nice addition to the heavily overlapping air defense system that we have. Another unit type with similar ranges and altitudes is the Marksman which is also super effective against drones, including drone swarm attacks.
