Evgenia Sokolenko05:25, 01/05/23
The head of the defense committee said that now “the ball is on the side of Berlin.”
The head of the defense committee of the Bundestag, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, commented on France’s decision to transfer Bastion light tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine .
She reached out to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saying that “now the ball is in the side of Berlin.” As you know, Shtrak-Zimmerman has repeatedly advocated the transfer of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
“Other partner countries are leading again. Now we can finally start in the spirit of Franco-German friendship, right Olaf Scholz? The ball is now in the side of Berlin. Now we just have to score it,” wrote Strack-Zimmerman.
Transfer of Leopard tanks to Ukraine
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said earlier that Berlin is not sending Leopard II tanks to Ukraine in order to “prevent the expansion of the war.” In Germany, they said that they did not plan to independently deal with the issue of transferring Leopard tanks to Ukraine. This will be done in coordination with NATO partners .
Military expert Oleg Zhdanov said that Germany may not supply Ukraine with Leopard tanks because of their quality and may fear reputational losses . It is worth adding that this theory may be true. Spiegel wrote that the Puma infantry fighting vehicles adopted in Germany do not withstand combat use .
(C)UNIAN 2023
I do not necessarily think that the Leopard, PHZ 2000 and the PUMA are crap.
I think it is mostly about maintenance and that was exactly what the German army did not have money for.
I beg to differ. Much of their stuff is simply not up to the task. Period.
I doubt that, as for example second hand Leopards have been exported to Finland and I couldn’t find any evidence of problems keeping them in working order.
And I do not think the Fins wouldn’t take action if they would be in a poor shape considering their neighbour.
I do think the PHZ is not great, but I think it is just an extremely complex machine but it is extremely accurate.
I do not necessarily think German weapons are inherently bad, as there are also reports of half of the air force being unairworthy by a lack of maintenance and spare parts, while their aircraft are in service in other nations without any major problems.
I think it is the combination of complicated, high tech weaponry and decades of underfunding and mismanagement that have created the mess the German army is currently in.
Also I imagine the Armed Force not having the best engineers, as in Germany there always is a shortage of engineers. Why would you work for an average salary in the Armed Forces while you can get rich working for Volkswagen or Bosch?
I think German weapons aren’t bad, but bad for Germany. If you cannot maintain complicated weaponry, you must choose weapons that are simple and reliable. They may be less accurate, but they at least work.
I guess that Israel and the U.S. have weapons that are even more fragile, which is fine as they have excellent non-commissioned officers that know how to work with them.
For example South-Korean weapons are often affordable, less advanced but good enough. That is the kind of stuff you need if you have a maintenance backlog.
Germany cannot even keep their Typhoon’s and Tornado’s in working order, and now they have ordered F-35’s that are probably a million times more advanced than what they are used to.
I would say: go for F-16’s or the Saab Gripen and only when the maintenance and funding issues are resolved, go for the tricky stuff.
Soon they will have shiny but broken stealth fighters rusting away in some hangar while they could have had an F-16 that is more than capable for 99% of all missions.
As for the PH 2000, the Germans themselves have said that they aren’t made to fire more than around 100 rounds a day. This is unrealistic in a war like this one. And, this has nothing to do with maintenance, it is a design flaw. The US M-777 have hard-chromed barrels that fire many more rounds without undue trouble.
Ditto for the Puma APC. This vehicle is simply too complex, and its recent failures have nothing to do with maintenance issues, it’s a design issue.
Ditto the G-36. There isn’t anything you can do wrong with a firearm, in terms of maintenance, to cause it to fail when it gets hot. Firearms by nature heat up and this rather quickly. It’s simply unacceptable to have it not shoot straight when it does. This would be catastrophic in the heat of any battle. This is a design flaw.
As for the Leopards, we’d have to wait and see how they perform with competent crews and in a real war, as now being fought in Ukraine. I know that they performed badly for the Turks in Syria, but this was mainly due to poor tactics. Until they do get used in Ukraine and the first reports start rolling in, I will simply remain being skeptical about their super-duper superiority to other good MBTs.
At any rate, it seems that the Germans have totally lost any and all concepts learned from WWII. They’ve fought the largest tank battle in history (Kursk in 1943) and not to mention hundreds more, both against the Red Army and Western Allies, in all sorts of climatic conditions. They should know that it’s best to refrain from creating overly complex machinery, as they will not work very well for a reasonable length of time in a war like the one being fought in Ukraine.
Having said that, I’m sure that countless politicians, company CEOs from the major weapons manufacturers and weapons engineers are closely studying this war and are learning new lessons and revising countless old concepts.
Yes, but for example the M777 is a weapon for a different role.
The PZH 2000 is designed for long range precision strikes like HIMARS and I highly doubt they will be shooting more than a 100 times a day.
The M777 can fire long range Excalibur missiles, but it is not what it is primarily designed for.
Another problem is that the Germans and the Dutch sent inadequate numbers (12) of them, so they are being used like 24/7 while the Germans can often swap them for maintenance and have some spare parts available.
The same goes for the M777: Ukraine has over 120 of them, so they probably have a few to swap if they require maintenance.
Also: the howitzers the Germans and Dutch gave were those in reserve, which is Dutch/German for “we need them but we don’t have money for an overhaul” as they may have barrels that are already used near its maximum.
The PHZ is used by many armies, such as the Italian, Greek and Lithuanian, and only the Dutch and the Germans have issues with them.
Also note that the comment about using them too much and shooting too far comes from the German army itself, which of course prefer to put the blame on Rheinmetall instead of themselves.
Of course I have never touched the machine myself, but 9 countries have them in service and not one of them ever complained.
I can’t know for sure, but nothing the German army has works as intended, they manage to ruin equipment that other countries use as their work horses, so I would bet 1 dollar on the German army having screwed up and having sent the most worn-out howitzers they had and 0.25 dollar on Rheinmetall producing garbage.
I don’t know about the PUMA, that thing could be garbage. Only Germany uses it, so comparisons cannot be made.
Still I do blame them, as they have them in service for more than 10 years and kept ordering more. And now they suddenly say that they suck.
“Also: the howitzers the Germans and Dutch gave were those in reserve, which is Dutch/German for “we need them but we don’t have money for an overhaul” as they may have barrels that are already used near its maximum.”
Maybe this is so, Bert, but I doubt it. The Germans, at least, hardly had any money to fire so many times to wear out the barrels. I recall that they even sent troops out to train with broomsticks, for Christ’s sake! I also doubt that any other country who has the PH2000 use them extensively enough to reveal their weaknesses. No one fired so many rounds per day, and so no one knew how delicate these howitzers really are. And, if they were indeed designed to fire only a few, well-placed rounds, this would be a gross concept failure. In war, the most important feature for any weapon is reliability. I’m quite confident that it’s possible to build accurate and, concurrently, robust howitzers, in particular when a possible opponent (mafia land) has masses of tanks and artillery, which must be combated. One person thought that not many rounds are needed to be fired because NATO would have air superiority anyway. True, but to rely on another service arm to bring heavy strikes on all front sectors at all times would also be a gross failure in strategy. To me, counting on such a coadjuvancy between armed services in a war against a large, well-armed enemy is much too incongruous.
As I’ve said before, this war has moved many people in governments, militaries and defense industries to re-think their old approaches to future warfare. One concept that will be thrown overboard, I’m sure, is not to produce weapon systems that are too flimsy, too complex and too maintenance intensive. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Btw the barrels of the Pzh are also chromelined.
Must be poorly made or too thin.
The Germans are outraged because now even France is showing everyone that they have more spine than the krauts have. It’s really not a hard task to do.