It took German industry an eyebrow-raising 19 months to refurbish and deliver the first 58 of at least 155 Leopard 1A5 tanks a German-led consortium has pledged to Ukraine. But the three-country consortium—Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium—has apparently resolved parts shortages and is finally picking up the pace.
Since those first 58 Leopard 1A5s arrived through early September, an additional 45 of the 1980s-vintage tanks have shipped.
Obviously thank you to Germany Belgium and Netherlands.
But it seems to me kind of embarrassing that Europe isn’t able to deliver more tanks in 3 years than Russia spend in less than a month!It’s not about not able but not willing. And not in the “we don’t want to help Ukraine” sense, but in the “we don’t want to switch to a war economy, not even in part” one.
Lessons should definitely be learned about capacity to scale up, though. E.g. in future peace times we might regularly order shell casings from 1000 machine shops, each doing a couple, to make sure that each of them has experience doing it. The penny-pinchers won’t like that, low-volume production is expensive, military logisticians will love it.
And we can definitely produce more tank/artillery barrels than Russia, btw. They only have two suitable rotary forges, both of them Austrian models. That company could, push come to shove and with some help from other companies delivering parts, probably build forges faster than the Russians can make barrels. And at that point you seriously have to worry about whether we still have enough steel production to justify making cutlery.
we don’t want to switch to a war economy, not even in part
I don’t think we even need to do that, 3% GDP would do it, and surpass the 9% GDP Russia allegedly is spending. ( about a third their government budget)
We can do it while maintaining a normal and sustainable economy, and Russia would crack like twig.Lessons should definitely be learned about capacity to scale up, though.
Absolutely.
The difference is that Russia takes them out of storage, and if they can drive, they’re going to the front. Europe completely refurbished the tanks and sent fully operational (if old) main battle tanks to Ukraine.
Yes I know these are supposed to be better. But essentially these were taken out of storage too. And only being able to supply about 2-3% of what Russia is throwing at Ukraine remains unimpressive IMO even if the quality is higher.
Maybe this is not the top priority compared to other weapons, it just seems like we could do a lot more. After almost 3 years of war we should have been able to build better capacity to help Ukraine.I’m fucking tired of Europe not showing Russia that what they are doing is way beyond unacceptable. We must consider ourselves at war with Russia at this point, with massive Russian hybrid warfare. Countries that can’t get into their heads that the easy way is to supply Ukraine with everything they need, are not paying anything remotely close to due diligence.
This complaint is insane to me.
Russia is a huge country with massive amounts of natural resources that acts as a single political entity.
Europe is not a single political entity. It is made up of a bunch of different nations that all have to provide for their own militaries first and don’t have the same access to natural resources
The only entity this complaint would be valid for is the US.
TL;DR scaling matters, even for countries.
Bullshit, it’s the smaller countries that have given the most relatively, which is completely contradictory to your claim. For instance all the countries that donated F-16 are small countries.
Also this problem is way closer to Europe than to USA. We can’t keep acting like children who can’t do anything ourselves, and always wait for USA to handle our problems. We freaking did that with Yugoslavia too, it’s embarrassing.
It’s great that USA is helping, they are our ally after all, and they have an interest in maintaining stability in Europe, but Europe definitely needs to be the leader and driving force on this issue.
There are many initiatives from EU but not enough, and regarding scale EU is way more powerful than Russia.None of this about ‘should’.
Take a look at a map sometime. Preferably an equal area projection map.
If Europe was all a single united country with a strong federal system, it still wouldn’t come close to the amount of resources that the US or Russia or China has access too. And if Africa as a continent were to unify into a single country, it would dwarf those three (which is one of the reasons it is the colonial playground of, well, basically everyone.)
And that isn’t what Europe is, is it?
Every political border in Europe is an additional layer of inefficiency. Not that there is anything wrong with that. That is what it means to be your own country and have sovereignty.
I swear, most of the stupid opinions about war, any war, would not be held if the person just looked at a topographical map from time to time.
Land area does not equate to useful resources.
Huh, I guess empires were pointless.
The additions appear to be helping. Of the 58 Leopard 1s the Ukrainians received between July 2023 and early September, just six have been confirmed destroyed. At the same time, it’s apparent the Ukrainians have been reluctant to send the Leopard 1s to the most dangerous sectors of the front.
Seems like Ukraine is taking a very sensible approach with these tanks. Pretty insane when you compare these losses to the comparable T-72s of the RuAF (1000+).
The Leo 1A5 is really good tank too. It has a modified fire control system, it’s based on the one from the Leo 2 but a bit downgraded. Also, if I read that correctly it could be upgunned to the 120mm.
Sadly most of them have been decommissioned and destroyed as per contract, at least in Germany.
Do they blow up faces?
Their 105mm cannon does more than that
They certainly can.
haha meine großväter machen facepalm in der hölle.
