Two Hungarian Gripen fighter jets were scrambled on September 25 from Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania as part of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission, NATO Air Command reported on September 25.
The jets intercepted a formation of Russian aircraft—including a Su-30, a Su-35, and three MiG-31s—flying near Latvian airspace.
Nice to see Hungary doing a solid for once. 👍
Seems like these planes were under NATO command, so while Hungary gets credit for participating in NATO, their national government played no role in this specific action
Still they are honoring their NATO commitment, despite they have behaved very pro Russian for years.
Compared to USA that is very good on Hungary. USA even promised to protect Ukraine when Ukraine gave up their nukes, and Trump has completely abandoned that promise.
Has he? I’m clearly not a Trump fan, but the US remains the largest NATO contributor by a very significant margin, and the US is still supporting Ukraine, despite all Trump’s bluster. Again I’m in no way defending Trump, but I don’t understand how you can praise Hungary and condemn the US in this situation where the US has committed so much more toward the defense of Europe
Edit: Ukraine is beside the point. Trump has definitely fucked that up. We’re talking about NATO here.
the US remains the largest NATO contributor
Nope, there are no NATO contributors. USA spend more on military for their own purposes.
And they are far behind Europe as a contributor to Ukraine if that’s what you meant. What they gave was under Biden. And even then USA held back a lot, with strict limitations on how the weapons could be used, which made it impossible for Ukraine to win.
Ukraine is actually doing better now without aid from USA, because the limitations are irrelevant now. If USA had helped like Europe does, the war would probably be over now.the US is still supporting Ukraine
Only with things that doesn’t cost any money.
On the contrary USA is charging allies 10% EXTRA for weapons we buy for Ukraine.Again I’m in no way defending Trump
Yes you are and it’s outright sickening that people have that opinion that is directly contrary to reality.
I praised Hungary for an actual act of solidarity, something we aren’t seeing from USA since Trump became president.
Trump even illegally stopped shipments of weapons to Ukraine that were approved by congress, which is not legal for the president to do, and he did it to help Putin!!!
Most people in Europe despise Trump and Americans for electing him, and with good reason.Wait, why are we talking about Ukraine? Yes, Trump fucked a lot of things up there, but this is about NATO.
Nope, there are no NATO contributors
Uhhh…yeah there are. That’s the entire reason NATO exists, because NATO member states contribute military resources to NATO, which has its own command structure. That the US is the largest contributor to NATO is not arguable.
Well, NATO contributions are typically measured to include individual defence spending. In that case, as a percentage of GDP, the US is third. When PPP is taken into consideration though they’re further down.
Of course the US spends more than any individual European country. That much is certain. It just doesn’t mean others aren’t pulling their weight.
I think we’re all friends here. Yes the US spends more but they’re also the largest NATO member so that makes sense.
Not sure how Ukraine got dragged in but yeah Europe is ahead there, appropriately, especially when you discount the value of the extorted minerals deal from US contributions.
100% agree with everything you said here. I just took issue with the other gent’s sentiment, “At least Hungary upholds its NATO commitments, unlike the US.” That statement couldn’t be more false, even under the Trump Admin
Countries don’t “contribute” to NATO, They contribute to their own military. NATO is basically a defense pact.
I’m curious how you think NATO conducts operations if none of the member states contribute assets
… Are you fucking serious? You know I was gonna start typing but reading this and your other replies, you have serious learning to do.
Europe has contributed overall more than the US.
https://www.kielinstitut.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
This website tracks who and what has contributed.
Definitely the case, I was talking about NATO though, not Ukraine. Trump has totally bungled the Ukraine response, even if the US line remains in support of them
is Gripen even a match for a MiG-31?
Not sure of the reliability, but this article gives some good indicators about just how capable the Gripen is. In close-range dogfighting I’m not sure anyone really knows who’d come out on top, but in controlled environments the Gripen seems to perform impressively well.
The word “scrambled” really irritates me in the context of dispatching jets to intercept something. Always makes it seem like the jets were “scrambled” in an unorganised way or something.
It’s a military term from long before you were born, I think you might just need to get used to it 😁
That’s exactly what it means but in reference to the crew not the planes.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/scramble
1580s (intransitive), “make one’s way by clambering, etc., struggle or wriggle along,” also “strive with others or jostle and grasp rudely for a share or for mastery;” a word of obscure origin, perhaps a nasalized variant of scrabble (v.) “to struggle; to scrape quickly.” OED points to dialectal scramb “pull together with the hands,” a variant of scramp, which is probably a nasalized form of scrape.
I think it works something like this:
Calm down now, no need for control, everything is under panic.But anyways, AFAIK the term describes an unplanned very quick deployment.
Well relative to how organized militaries typically are, just the sheer beaucracy of it all, it is somewhat unorganized.
I thought it was some sort of electronic hacking at first. Where the jets electronic systems are being attacked.
I only have experience of eggs getting scrambled. The verb seems weird when applied to planes.
So, are these reported incursions by Russia real and not normal? Or is this being spun to justify an escalation by trump to distract from his kiddie diddling?
not everything is about trumps perversion. And yes, those incursions are real, and Russia has a long time habit of fucking around in airspace it should not be in - that’s a thing they’ve already been doing back when they were the USSR IIRC; in those times it was mainly testing response times.
