and also today, Russia is losing, missile stocks are emptied and Putin is unwell…On the other side, Ukrainian are freezing to death and have 2 hours of electricity per day. Nice winning…
MedEwok wrote:
Don’t draw too many conclusions from a single set of polls with a huge margin of error. I also read polls today which had 46% in favour for delivery vs 43% against, and others with 52% in favour.
Still odd IMO. In Norway it’s more like “95%” is all for giving them all we got, and then some. Don’t know if there are any real numbers, but that’s mainly because there is no argument, not anywhere. It’s the same in Finland, and not to mention Poland and the Baltic states.
Peter wrote:
There has to be a lesson for everybody in the world here: don’t buy any military equipment whose export somebody might block for domestic politial reasons. Which countries these are, is very obvious. Easy peace in Europe is over, finished, gone. The impact on jobs in the military sectors of CH and DE is going to be huge.
Yes, definitely. But you have to remember, it’s a similar reason why the preferred supplier is the US, and not the UK or France. There are strings attached to all weapons export/import. Germany has traditionally been unproblematic, just like the US. UK and France have definitely not. It’s really only this “Leopard situation” that is a problem right now, and there is no good reason for it as far as I can see. They are simply dragging their feet, being “important” like some teenage girl who hasn’t realized she already is in here mid 50s 
Switzerland on the other hand is dead and buried by now. In the mean time Kongsberg and NAMMO are producing NASAMS and all kinds of ammunitions, missiles and rockets like there were no tomorrow 
Then there is South Korea. Poland has already replaced their old fleet of main battle tanks with K2 Black Panthers (why these cat names? ) Norway replaced the old US made 155 mm self propelled howitzers with the new K9 from South Korea (as did a whole lot of other European nations). All the old ones were sent to Ukraine. The decision of purchasing Leopard or Black Panther should have been taken a few months ago, but the main problem is, the Military itself don’t want any of them Also a stupid problem. The politicians want main battle tanks, the military don’t The military wants helicopters and long distance artillery (HIMARS type) along with more lighter tanks, drones and missiles. I would think the military knows better than politicians here.
Anyway, South Korea is already increasingly becoming the new “Germany” regarding heavy military gun stuff. Which makes the “Leopard problem” even harder to understand. Germany is shooting themselves in the foot.
LeSving wrote:
Germany is shooting themselves in the foot.
Agreement from this German. The politics of Scholz are not understandable. International prestige of Germany, and by extension the political and economic clout of the country, are reduced by giving a bad impression. This is all the more depressing since Germany has actually contributed a whole lot to Ukrainian war and relief efforts, more so than basically any other country in Europe. The full list has been posted by @Peter before and was last updated two days ago . And Germany is housing 1,5 million Ukrainian refugees to boot.
So were are doing a whole lot to help Ukraine, but the media and international community seem to focus on the dithering and feet dragging of Scholz, which is understandable but portrays Germany in a certain way which does not give the full picture.
Is there somewhere a concise summary of
1) the total number of main battle tanks that are being considered for sending to Ukraine?
2) the production capacity for new ones?
Regarding 1) I see a dozen here, two dozens there, totaling maybe 100 or so, some of those yet to be produced. I must be missing something.
Regarding 2) I think I have seen a quote of 100 Leopards2 per year. Does anybody have a good figure?
There is plenty of protracted drama about those Leopards, but it seems way out of proportion to their potential impact on the battlefield. Considering Ukrainians said they need at least 300 or so for an offensive (and given the Russia’s mobilization and buildup of static defenses, that might be a low-ball estimate), where are they going to come from? The math just does not seem to add up, neither short-term nor longer term.
Is there ongoing ramp-up of serious production? (500 tanks/year does not seem to cover the attrition) Or are we just hoping Russia will collapse very soon™ and there is no plan B?
Peter wrote:
Tongue in cheek, obviously…
Not if you quote the whole sentence: Along with the other concerns the Nazis had. They did need a neutral country over which to do their talking with the enemy with and they needed a place to do trading without violating their own prejudices. Also they saw that taking the Alps would cost them and simply conceeded that all in all, it was not worth it at the time and once they had the rest of Europe, Switzerland could be taken or assimilated on the home stretch. It did buy us time, fortunately enough time to avoid having a ground war on our soil.
What is more important is that the “belief” in this is anchored deeply in the population. Giving up neutrality is something no government would survive, particularly in a society like today, which is split 50/50 along “belief” lines.
esteban wrote:
Is there somewhere a concise summary of
1) the total number of main battle tanks that are being considered for sending to Ukraine?
2) the production capacity for new ones?
I haven’t seen a concise summary of either figure. Poland, Finland and Spain have been mentioned considering sending tanks, each about a dozen. The UK is going to send 14 (?) Challenger 2 MBTs, the first nation for which a concrete number exists. The German numbers are the big unknown, anywhere between 0 and 50 seems plausible.
The production capacity is not known to me, but they (KMW) built 3500 Leopard 2 since 1978, so in 45 years. That works out to about 78 per year on average. It does tell us nothing about the maximum capacity, but 100/year seems reasonable. There are several articles online from 2022 that they plan to ramp up production, e.g. via a new factory in – interestingly – Greece.
14 tanks is of little use and everybody acknowledges that, but usually they add that if I give them 14 then somebody else might give them another 20 or 100. It’s kind of emotional blackmail where the target is fairly obvious
On any half good day Ukraine would capture 10 working or repairable tanks in a day. They got a few hundred that way, IIRC. But most/all of those did not have a stabilised gun which means they can’t shoot when moving. And no IR so they can’t see in the dark and can’t see another thank etc behind some foliage.
Sure Ukraine is getting mostly obsolete old junk from the West.
There are good explanations here why normal peacetime manufacturing cannot keep up with wartime attrition
https://www.youtube.com/@PerunAU
Europe has relied on the US military umbrella for 70 years so there isn’t much around…
Not if you quote the whole sentence: Along with the other concerns the Nazis had. They did need a neutral country over which to do their talking with the enemy with and they needed a place to do trading without violating their own prejudices. Also they saw that taking the Alps would cost them
I don’t agree. They were not interested in talking to the enemy. Anyway, they could (and did) do all the required clubbing and whorehouse activities in Cairo. They liked a civilised country in Europe with confidential banking and safe deposit box facilities, with not too strong a military so they could bully it into supplying them with whatever they needed, while providing a pleasant playground (with suitable “entertainment”) for off duty officers. Unlike Russia, Germany didn’t want to smash up the whole place. That is what “neutrality” meant in WW2. For most of WW2, nobody in mainland Europe could have withstood Germany militarily.
In the 20th century, neutrality was an exercise in cynicism, and post Hiroshima it was easy to continue the pretence because the doctrine said that no “proper war” was ever possible again.
Just heard from Ukraine that at Ramstein Germany said they won’t supply tanks (the excuses are extremely thin now but must presumably be due to the divided domestic opinion on whether Ukraine is worth cheap gas or not) but they don’t mind if Poland supplies German tanks. So that’s good news.
Peter wrote:
I don’t agree. They were not interested in talking to the enemy.
Oh they had quite some exchanges on Swiss soil. In Bern in particular, where both Germany and the US for starters had embassies. It’s a relatively new thing that countries at war don’t talk to each other. To this day for instance, Switzerland, due to it’s neutrality, is the agreed point of contact between Iran and the US. And that is just the ones we know about.
Sure, but that isn’t a reason to not invade some country.
One can set up comms channels directly e.g. the original US to USSR hotline.
Neutrality is a purely romantic concept for the past 100+ years, and countries which want to be “neutral” have to purchase neutrality by providing high value services to the local bully. Of course those services aren’t supposed to be talked about openly.
Anyway, Russia couldn’t care less about romantic ideas. If they want something, they go and get it – if they think they can get away with it.
MedEwok wrote:
So were are doing a whole lot to help Ukraine, but the media and international community seem to focus on the dithering and feet dragging of Scholz, which is understandable but portrays Germany in a certain way which does not give the full picture.
I don’t know. I was really surprised to see those polls, much more so than feet dragging by politicians. It’s like nothing has been learned from WWII. It’s not the use of military force by itself that was scary about WWII, but rather the deviant opinions of the German population as a whole, especially the cynicism.
Peter wrote:
Neutrality is a purely romantic concept for the past 100+ years, and countries which want to be “neutral” have to purchase neutrality by providing high value services to the local bully. Of course those services aren’t supposed to be talked about openly.
It’s more to it than that. To simplify a bit, Europe had 4 dominant powers. England, France, Germany and Russia (+ one or two others like Austria/Hungary for instance). All of them had shown themselves to be the bully whose interests were either to hold their dominance or extend their dominance. They were all equally bad to put it that way, and none were trustworthy ally material. Smaller powers had no other choice than to try to do business with all of them at once and trust no one. What changed during WWII was:
France has never accepted the USA. They even went out of NATO when they got their nukes working. Germany has also never truly accepted the USA, and see EU as a kind of substitute for something “better”, and as a force to hold back American influence. Russia hasn’t changed one gram. And England has quietly sort of shrunk down to become, at least in it’s own eyes, some kind of little brother to the USA while withdrawing from the EU.
In western Europe, the US influence has kept things fairly quiet. Neutrality or not made no real difference. In eastern Europe, Russia was ruling with an iron fist. Then Russia had a “bad moment in time” and lost most of its satellite states. These satellites then sought west and most of them reinvented themselves in the name of freedom and democracy, usually successfully so. Russia itself on the other hand, became a rats nest full of crime and bad times. Then came Putin and promised to fix that, which he essentially did, but he wanted to fix much more than just Russia, he wanted to restore the “greater Russia”.
Then what happened? The “neutral” countries of Sweden and Finland seeking NATO membership. This is not to become closer friends with the EU (they are already member states). It’s not to become closer friend with the UK. There is only one reason for this: USA as a trustworthy ally and the stability that brings.
I read an article earlier today. An interview with the supreme commander of the Norwegian Air Force. An initiative is already taken to unite the air forces of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. All the Nordic countries in fact, including Island etc which have none. The military practicalities will start as soon as Sweden and Finland are NATO members, if not sooner, the political formalities will probably take forever though, IMO It will be interesting to watch.
The point is that during the cold war, neutrality or not didn’t matter. It was completely overshadowed by NATO and USA on one side, and USSR on the other. After USSR went to pieces, it didn’t really matter either, because Soviet threat was gone (or so we thought). The invasion of Ukraine changed it all. This is not only the aggression from Putin, but also a possible destabilization of the entire European continent. France acting on its own behalf only as always. The UK doing the same, withdrawing from the EU, and who knows what’s going on in Germany ATM? There is only one stabilizing element here, and that is the USA/NATO.
