A German Leopard tank in Bratislava, Slovakia. Getting the tanks ready for battle would take months, said Rheinmetall. Photograph: Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters
The Guardian: German tank manufacturer’s warning puts pressure on Ukraine’s allies
Defence firm dampens Kyiv hopes other European allies will follow UK’s lead in supplying heavy armour
Battle tanks from German industrial reserves wanted by Ukraine will not be ready to be delivered until 2024, the arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has warned, increasing pressure on Nato allies to support Ukraine with armoured vehicles in active service instead, ahead of a key meeting this week.
“Even if the decision to send our Leopard tanks to Kyiv came tomorrow, the delivery would take until the start of next year,” Rheinmetall’s chief executive, Armin Papperger, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Rheinmetall, which manufactures the battle vehicle’s gun, has 22 Leopard 2 and 88 older Leopard 1 tanks in its stocks. Getting the Leopard tanks ready for battle, however, would take several months and cost hundreds of millions of euros the company could not put up until the order was confirmed, Papperger said.
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WNU Editor: Ukraine needs hundreds of combat tanks and the infrastructure/ammo/fuel to back such a force. And they need it now. The above Guardian post pours cold water on Germany being able to supply these tanks anytime soon.
3 comments:
Two items
Item 1. What the German manufacturer is saying.
This is laughable. So much for that imperialist Russian threat that has been menacing Europe for the last 20 years.
What BS. The UK MOD says his army cannot do much more than toddle around, Two months ago the Germans said their tanks were "kaput"
And now German tank manufactures say it will take two years to produce tanks for the Ukrainians.
If the threat was so dire why did they not expand their military manufacturing base to meet the oncoming threat? Why?
Because there is no threat. It is more cockroach poop.
But on the other hand.
Item 2. The manufacturer is doing the Government's bidding by intentionally stalling the delivery of high priced equipment.
I have postulated that I believe the Europeans and Americans are using the Ukrainians for their own geopolitical ends.
They know the Russians will counter attack and it will be devastating. The Yanks and Euros do not want to send their precious equipment to be captured or destroyed. There is no money in that.
But they make all kinds of promises of support.
Why?
Because all they have to do is wait for the Russian attack. It will be game over for the Ukrainians and therefore all the West's promises of support will not have to be fulfilled
I truly hope I am wrong. But after seeing how these people operate, I do not think I am.
Even if delivered quickly, the hodgepodge of tanks proposed will be logistically difficult to support. Challenger 2 has a rifled 120mm, Leopard 2 has a smoothbore 120 MM, and Leopard 1 a 105 MM. I will defer to more knowledgeable readers but I do not think ammo suitable for a rifled gun will necessarily work for a smoothbore gun. 105MM ammo is evidently not available from Germany, odd since the Leopard 1 is still in service in several countries and these would still need it unless they set up their own production facilities, and the European operators of the Leopard 1 gun tanks (Greece, Turkey) have in the past indicated that they would not provide any which of course may change.
I hope the non eu populations take note and remember how much talk Germany do, how many promises they make and how much they insist other countries do... but how very very little the Germans actually do themselves.
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