Morawiecki said last month he was seeking Berlin’s approval to send some of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine but warned he would send a total of 14 of them even without the okay because of Kyiv’s great need for them.
14 will be shredded in a matter of days.
German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall would not be able to deliver battle-ready Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine until 2024, the company’s chief executive said.
Repair and refurbishment requirements mean it would take until the beginning of next year to deliver the tanks
Not good news for Ukraine. The war may be over by then.
The EU & US out produce Russia if they ramp up. But there seems to be little evidence that they are ramping up.
President Duda said, a few days ago, the Poles were having a great deal of difficulty getting spare parts out of Germany for the Leopards. Whether this is due to an inability of the Germans to produce the parts, or intentional foot-dragging, is unknown.
Poland already sent some 300 T-72s to Ukraine. The Leopards they shipped to Ukraine this week were probably freed up by receipt by Poland of the first shipments of new tanks from South Korea, which arrived in December.
The issue will be decided by winter of 2023. By then the US objective of a throughly degraded Russian military will have been achieved regardless if Russia keeps eastern Ukraine & Crimea or not.
The Russian offensive has already started. And it is anticipated that the Ukrainians will begin their counter offensive soon. These offensives will chew through tens of thousands casualties perhaps more likely 6 figure casualties as the involved parties seem locked into an attrition war. On a different thread I linked a US estimates of 100,000 Ukraine dead & 180,000 Russian dead figures so far. Then add on the strain of munitions supplies. We know about the problems in the West. I assume Russia has similar if not worse supply line problems. And further damage to Ukrainian infrastructure will continue. I believe that by winter of 2023 if the Ukrainians haven’t broken the Russians they will break as Russia then concentrates on Ukrainian utilities that supply heat to their civilian population to break the Ukrainian will. Now the war might sputter along for a while more; but like the South after Gettysburg or the Germans after Stalingrad, but any further action will be wasted effort, lives & money.
Then after a pause of a few years to rebuild defense stocks of weapons & munitions the US can focus to enticing China to invade Taiwan so that the China Red Menace can be brought down.
The impact on Russia from its aggression in Ukraine has included a measurable cost of financial decoupling, and for China it serves as a reminder that Beijing must manage bilateral ties and prepare for the worst, according to analysts.
It also sent shock waves through Beijing’s policy circles, as fears grew that China could also find itself in the cross hairs for being diplomatically close to Russia, or that escalated bilateral conflicts could follow.
Many policy advisers, including Yu Yongding of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, have openly expressed worries over the safety of China’s massive overseas assets.
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The US seized Afghanistan assets leading to starvation in that country. The US hoped to use that money to pay off surviving 9/11 families but were stymied in court.
The bad press finally forced the US to relent.
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“What if we are targeted as a rival?” he asked.
The authorities need to strengthen their capability to strike back, such as by considering options like dumping US debt holdings under extreme conditions, Ding suggested.
Ukraine War has brought down Germany military readiness.
Mais, caused a stir last year when he criticized what he described as years of neglect in the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr, “the army that I have the duty to lead, is more or less bare,” he said at the time.
Wüstner added the German military, or Bundeswehr, is carrying out its assigned missions, “but that is nothing compared to what we will have to contribute to NATO in the future.”
He warned that none of the military hardware supplied to Ukraine had been replaced and that means the operational readiness of parts of the military, such as it artillery, “continues to decline.”
The Germans are deciding how fast to round the corner into supply side econ. The hold up is the US. In this round of the European long wave the supply side policies will ride with an industrial policy. Unlike American supply side econ where the long wave lags Europe by three decades. The Germans and French need to see how the US leaves them a better route to an industrial policy. Without an industrial policy the two major nations of the EU can not finance a war effort all that well. All of this is true for the UK as well which rides with Japan and the US on the long wave.
“Ukraine War has brought down Germany military readiness.”
The German military had no readiness to bring down.
During international exercises in Lithuania, their equipment routinely made the German units “the weakest link in the chain,” soldiers reported to the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces on their return from tours in Rukla.
Some in Lithuania joke that they would like some “real soldiers” protecting them. In neighboring Poland, Latvia and Estonia, the NATO battlegroups are led by Americans, Canadians and Britons, respectively.
“The German military is great; we’re so grateful to have them here,” said Laurynas Kasciunas, chairman of the national security and defense Committee in Lithuania. “But we’d also like some American troops, please, combat-ready and ideally permanently.”
The M1s will be delivering less of an offensive punch than hope to win (added bonus: the prolonged delivery might also induce Ukraine to negotiate).
“The M1 is a complex weapon system that is challenging to maintain,” Pentagon Briefer #1 Pat Ryder said. “We just don’t have these tanks available in excess in our U.S. stocks, which is why it is going to take months to transfer these M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine,” Pentagon Briefer #2 Sabrina Singh added.
In technical terms, that’s plainly Pentagon procurement poppycock. If the U.S. wanted to speed things up, it could send Ukraine some of the 87 U.S. M1s already in Europe
It would be a miracle if the situation resolved itself before then. Officially, Germany didn’t want to be the only one to supply tanks (apparently Britain supplying Challengers and the US supplying Soviet-era tanks didn’t count) so the US agreed to send tanks, which gave the Germans the cover they wanted.
The question though, is why not provide tanks out of inventory and simply replace them with new orders? It is abundantly clear at this point that Ukraine must adopt maneuver warfare in order to win (this is also true for the Russians but they don’t have the capability). That means the sooner Ukraine receives tanks, the sooner the war will be over.
This war only ends one of two ways. Either Putin dies (or is thrown from office, preferably from a 3rd story window, but that seems unlikely) or Ukraine gets pushed into such a bad position that they feel no option but to negotiate and cede territory.
Most wars do not end like WWII, with an absolute victory and a defeated enemy, most end with some sort of muddle. Clearly Putin isn’t going to get the entire country as he originally intended, but it’s conceivable to me that he ends up with some slivers of land so he can shout “Victory” back on Fox News, I’m sorry, Pravda (easy thing to confuse). If that happens I hope Ukraine followed a scorched earth policy and leaves absolutely nothing behind: no rail lines, no factories, no people, poisoned rivers, and dead Russians.
If they lose a couple hundred square miles, well, it’s a big country and they can wait until they are part of NATO which should stop further Russian aggression, and perhaps lead to a later negotiation in which things get back to status quo.
“We have no armed forces that are capable of defending [Germany] that is, capable of defending [it] against an offensive, brutally waged aggressive war,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said during a meeting with fellow members of the Social Democratic Party. The minister claimed that the German army is understaffed and does not have adequate equipment as it has been neglected by the federal government for decades…
Pistorius’ remark came within hours after chairman of German Armed Forces Association, Colonel Andre Wustner, in an interview to Bild claimed that only 30% of approximately 300 Leopard 2 tanks in Germany’s stock are currently operational.
That’s Germany though. I’m talking about the U.S. delivery of Abrams. The US army has been saying for years–actually decades–they don’t want or need more Abrams. Yet Congress keeps buying them anyway.
I’m no expert, but it stands to reason that the US must have stocks of Abrams that are viewed as surplus to our defense needs. Especially if you include the 450 Abrams the Marines recently gave up.
I’ve heard the arguments that the Abrams is expensive to operate and require a big logistics tail, and therefore not well suited to Ukraine. That makes sense, but they won’t be any cheaper to operate or require a shorter tail a year from now when the new tanks arrive.
Again, not an expert, but it seems to me that the thing to do is deliver a substantial number of Abrams out of inventory right now. Train up the crews and build out the logistical tail, and have then ready to deploy on the battlefield in numbers by say, late summer. One thing military history tells us again and again is that it is a mistake to use half measures. Providing Abrams a year from now when they are needed by spring at the latest is a mistake. I think it will wind up costing us more money, not less when this is all said and done.
There is a third way. Ukraine beats Russia back to the 2014 borders and they declare a ceasefire like in Korea.
I would agree. In addition, US tanks run on jet fuel (to simplify US logistics). European tanks such as the German Leopard and the Ukrainian tanks use diesel.
I do not follow the reincarnations of the Abrams tanks but this Abrams tank is not your dad’s Abrams tank.
In fact the Pentagon has said the ones to be shipped to Ukraine have to have a prior armor. The Pentagon I guess does not want the latest armor getting into enemy hands.
I’ve heard that too, but the US has been, and currently is, exporting Abrams to our partners, including Australia and Poland–both of whom have provided a lot of support to Ukraine. It isn’t too much of a stretch to cut a deal to swap out their old inventory for new deliveries.
True but part of the entire war effort is the US insulting Russia so that others may follow.
The cannon on a tank is not needed for defense and obliteration within hours.
I read an article on the battle for Bakhmut, the longevity of life on the front line is 4 hours. Russia clearly is depleting herself. Having tanks in a battle of depletion is different than having tanks in a war effort of strong clear advancement against a greatly reduced Russian forces.
