Summary
A European Parliament member claimed that the U.S. gave Europe three weeks to agree on Ukraine’s “surrender” terms or risk an American withdrawal from Europe.
Mika Aaltola made the claim on X, but provided no evidence. NBC News reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested a U.S. troop reduction in Europe.
Trump reportedly plans to cut 20,000 troops and demand greater NATO contributions. He has pushed for higher NATO defense spending.
Trump may meet with Putin soon, believing Russia holds the upper hand in negotiations.
To go a bit deeper on the role of armor - on the background of drone warfare - I would explain like this: armor reduces casualties when moving people and supplies forward.
In these days, armor no longer controls the battlefield, it more likely delivers people and ammo.
If one moves soldiers and equipment forward with armor, it can move under machine gun fire, protect its occupants from one antitank mine, and somewhat protect them against one FPV hit.
If one moves them forward in a 4 wheel drive minivan or lorry, there will be ugly casualties when a mine is found, FPV arrives or a machine gunner opens fire. These vehicles also tend to get stuck easier. So, lack of armor tends to result in higher personnel losses and lower arrival rates of supplies.
From what I gather, the paradigm is also shifting on that front. MRAP’s and such are big, slow, noisy, easily detectable, and most often get immobilized regardless of armor, and all it takes to take one out is just a more powerful charge (in a mine or strapped to a drone). So both sides are increasingly leaning towards more lightweight vehicles, like enduro bikes, ebikes, and even EUC’s. Yes, if one blows up on a mine or by drone, there’s absolutely zero hope for them, but it limits the casualties to just that one poor sob (and possibly his passenger) rather than a whole dozen in mrap, but the big the pro is that they’re a lot harder to detect and chase with drones, while being economically unreasonable to be fought with conventional military weaponry, and have much less footprint allowing them to weave through narrower paths and right through the minefields. The big downside is that it’s not feasible to supply tanks and artillery this way, which is why I mentioned that some consider them obsolete already. On the other hand, drones, bullets and food are perfectly deliver-able by other drones. Not humans yet, though, so some will have to make the runs for rotations still, which us where most casualties happen and will continue happening unless something entirely new pops up all of the sudden