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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16822 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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"We will stop providing weapons and intelligence to Israel, full stop" is a much greater threat, because Israel has no strategic depth. It can make its own missile interceptors, but it can't make enough of them and sooner or later a missile will get through and hit the interceptor factory.

The other problem Israel faces is that it is a tiny country. While I have no doubt that their military tech is top notch, they simply do not have the resources to develop a cutting edge fighter jet, a portfolio of tanks, ships, spy satellites, and other weapon platforms. So far, they have a qualitative advantage over their neighbors in that the country which accounts for a third of the global military spending gives them preferential access to their tech.

Having to develop everything in-house instead would effectively cut their R&D budget (assuming it follows the total military expenditures) by a factor of 20.

And then there is the fact that currently, the US would obviously go to war to defend Israel, and indeed participates in intercepting missiles aimed at them while not intercepting any of the missiles shot by them. Most other countries do not start shit with neighbors multiple times their size. Ukraine did not regularly assassinate Russian nuclear scientists. Kuwait did invade any neighbors to drive back proxy forces lobbing missiles at them. Mongolia is not starving any ghettos full of Han Chinese.

Israel has developed their own tanks and fighter jets (some of which were used by the United States!) and they are currently building their own ships. They field their own spy satellites and have their own variant of the F-35. Based on past and current performance, the only major areas where I foresee them having trouble doing any of what you describe is potentially in jet engines and in submarines.

ETA oh, and potentially in stealth technology, but I don't think that's as important as people often think, and particularly for Israel given their lead in electronic warfare.

they simply do not have the resources to develop a cutting edge fighter jet, a portfolio of tanks, ships, spy satellites, and other weapon platforms

Out of all the tiny countries, Israel is probably the only one that has the brainpower to develop at least some of this, but they wouldn't be able to manufacture enough to make a difference.

They do make their own tanks, not just licensed copies, and have for decades. Also some cutting-edge missile defense hardware.

They also have their own variants of fighter jets, but I have no clue how much those are different from the US models, and they are still US-built.

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