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BREAKING: German government spokesperson says that there was never a moment when the delivery of Leopard tanks was "linked with the delivery of abrams tanks" - Reuters

The graphics also misses Czechia and Oesterreich.

They probably hadn't declared when he did it, I did point out it was a day or so old.

Allow me to translate.......

"We originally invented a false dependency on the US doing something difficult that would prevent us from supplying tanks. Now that everyone else has ignored us, we look incredibly stupid. We will now supply Leopard tanks and the order with the factory shall be placed in 2024. In the meantime, would you like any more helmets......... or kettles .......or golf clubs ?"

Taken from a drone and presumably not within range of UA forces. Otherwise there would already be a few bodies in that field. I suggest the picture paints a false conclusion!

That "spokesman" was the new Defence Minister - Pistorius. It is just astonishing how these two-faced lying bastards have the nerve to spin 180 in 24 hours and somehow continue to believe that their voters continue to see them as honourable representatives of the nation . Unfortunately, however, the voters know that the other side are just as twisted.

EDIT:

Nutty has given a comprehensive breakdown of new pledges for armaments, but I thought I could add a couple of interesting facts about Ramstein picked up in general reading.

There are 53 000 American personnel stationed there ( that was a hell of a surprise. I would have guessed at 10 000 )
The public ( probably not Russians :O ) can visit the airfield ( unsure what that means exactly ) Monday to Friday at no charge. That must be your tax-dollars at work -tdracer and LoneWolf50 !! Pretty surprising to me though. I have never heard about permanent public access to a military establishment of any sort and Ramstein does have some very important functions.

The problem with that is it may not be so, or at least for German tanks, and you have to listen to your electors.

https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2023/...nks-to-ukraine
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other...ur/ar-AA16vIo6

https://www.defense.gov/News/Release...e-for-ukraine/

So 109 Bradley in total.

When you add it all up it is eye watering, see

https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jan/1...EET-JAN-19.PDF

This guy makes some sensible comments on hitting the transport infrastructure and backs it up with images of key points.

https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA

From the Beeb


So why can they not simply "retain ownership" and loan them to Ukraine for an indefinite time on the agreement they will be returned when Ukraine deems they have finished with the loan?


..

In Ramstein Air Base itself ~9000 US staff are working/stationed.
It is the whole Kaiserlautern area with Kaiserslautern Army Depot,Daenner-casern, Kleber-casern, Tank casern Kaiserslautern, Sembach, Pirmasens and a few more installations where some 50.000 US troops are stationed.

The German excuse appears to be fear of Russian escalation. Russia (without direct external escalation) has continued to escalate itself. (Long range missiles targeting critical infrastructure, mobilisation, energy war against Europe, mass murder of civilians..)

What further escalation is feared?

Nuclear weapons ? Directly attacking a NATO country?

Either would be suicide for Russia, the Russian armed forces know that. Would they obey Putin's order to commit suicide?

A better explanation for Scholz's stalling would be Putinversteher:

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More than 170 Hungarian generals and senior military officers have been forced into early retirement in recent days by Hungary's MoD, led by Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky.

He is a former business partner of Transmashholding, a Russian state-owned company.

A new government decree has allowed the Minister of Defense to unilaterally terminate the service of soldiers who have reached the age of 45 and have at least 25 years of actual service, with two months' notice.

According to @Telexhu, the minister "dismissed members of the Defence Staff en masse. (...) One source said (...) that at least a hundred colonels, generals had been given unilateral dismissals, while another said that 157 (...) with immediate effect."

According to opposition MP Ágnes Vadai, "this means there is a de-NATOisation going on in the Hungarian Defence Forces at the moment", as "the 45-year-old officers and generals are soldiers with international experience, who speak languages and have been socialised in NATO".….

https://telex.hu/belfold/2023/01/20/...galati-viszony

And just watch the Germans stampede to grab sales of the new kit ...

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me…..

Its the reconstruction contracts of the country where the big money will be made.

Those who gave a lot of help will expect a large slice of that pie.

Last estimate I saw was in excess of $6 trillion to build new infrastructure etc.

My understanding is that much of the reluctance to send Abrams tanks is related to the high tech systems (targeting, communication, etc.) falling into the wrong hands. I know that in the Middle East, when an Abrams was disabled and couldn't be recovered, they made a point of destroying it so the 'bad guys' couldn't access anything valuable.
So, how does the tech of the Leopard compare to the Abrams? I'd think they'd be similar - does anyone know?

I can't say that this comes as a surprise. Hungary has been moving away from the ideals of NATO (and the EU for that matter) for a while. What puzzles me is that the views of many Hungarians (perhaps a majority) are at odds with those of Viktor Orbán, yet he remains in power and has been emulating Putin in turning Hungary into an autocracy. Seems strange for a country that suffered when under the thumb of the Soviet Union to put up with this.

A recurring military problem.
Window was subject to agonising appraisal before being used to save Bomber Command lives.
Historically best to "use it when you need it, and be one step ahead for when countermeasures are invented".

Used to be standard to have detonators rigged in anything sensitive. Goes right back to the earliest airborne radars I think. Certainly kit I worked on in the 70's and 80's had the capability to fit detonators for this purpose. No idea if modern kit has the same capability. Be surprised if it didn't, though.

At best elections in Hungary under Orban could be described as "free but not fair". Most of the population live in the country and only see Orban propaganda, rely on Orban money (paid out by EU, with great sadness), and obediently vote Orban. Budapest is an electoral minority. And that description of "free" is an at best description.

Just like Erdogan in Turkey.

And both funded by the Kremlin.

I did a walkaround once in a B17 and the guide said that's what the two red buttons on the glareshield are for. I think he said it destroyed the radios


https://c8.alamy.com/comp/WX8279/vie...ane-WX8279.jpg

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/zGQAA...-L/s-l1600.jpg

(...and sorry for the aviation content! :ouch: )




sort of reminds me of this:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/1e...a41c67257e.jpg

Near-identical to the system we had. The detonators were a bit like shotgun shells. They weren't normally installed in the kit in peacetime. Still had to do the checks to make sure anything coming in for servicing didn't have them fitted. I believe the charges were designed so that the blast was contained inside the equipment. Never actually saw one, only where they were located inside the kit.


Relax. This is the Mil Aviation section!

Enough kit fell into the wrong hands in WW2 (on all sides) to demonstrate a persons desire to survive is greater than worrying about their kit falling into the wrong hands, detonators or no detonators. That's if you are still alive to detonate it of course.

Quoting from this article.

Ramstein Air Base - Allgemeine Daten

"Als größte Einrichtung der US Air Force außerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten umfasst das Gebiet 1400 Hektar und wird von rund 53.000 amerikanischen Soldaten und Angehörigen bewohnt. Die Fläche gehört allerdings der Bundesrepublik Deutschland."

https://praxistipps.focus.de/ramstei...-gelten_145238

The countries that are armed with the Leopard-2 have agreed that they can start training courses for Ukrainian tank crews to master the Leopard-2. Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov said this in an exclusive comment to LIGA.net

https://news.liga.net/ua/politics/ne...ryv-po-leopard

https://www.acq.osd.mil/eie/Download...ort%20FY15.pdf
Page 200: Active Duty 8225 in 2014.

Smart move. It had to be done anyway and it ratchets up the pressure on Scholz. It makes it clear to him that Poland et al are very likely to ignore his veto when the time comes, yet also gives him time to change his position and avoid confirming the view that many people have of him as a dithering coward. One German headline today called him " the personification of .an evasive manoeuvre " (Der Kanzler bleibt ein Mensch gewordenes Ausweichmanöver“)

EDIT: Just how pathetic does the German government want to portray itself as being ?Today Pistorius said that they would have to do an accounting of the tanks whilst considering their position. Seriously now, after nearly a year, going to an international conference with pre-warning what will be discussed, and the Defence Minister says he doesn't have the figures on tank availability ?

I'm not disputing it, just wanting to show I didn't invent the numbers. As I also noted, the figure is far higher than I would have guessed myself.

Probably realistic advice, but why the h*ll can't we give UKR the means to erase that threat?
Interesting that the original desire by many of us for more material support to the UKR is finally getting belated traction.
Timing is such an important factor.

Are the Russians (Wagner) aiming for a Bakhmut bellybutton to tie off the final knot, a Bakhmut stitch Wall, and by so doing hoping to allow Putin some temporary respite and some face? (Oh, and his first land corridor like the Turks want in Syria.)

And are the US negotiators aware of this and working towards it? Will the new influx of weapons prove to be a seal along the new 'wall', providing equal and opposite military pressure rather than actual battlefield use?

The point of NATO is that the member states do the right thing when called upon. This does not apply in the current situation but would Germany stand up if Estonia were to be invaded ? It doesn't look like they would. Germany's membership should be on the agenda at the next meeting. I'm not advocating kicking them out as having a useless tw@t inside the tent is slightly better than having a useless tw@t outside the tent however they need to be put under the spotlight.

What's next, "we won't count our tanks until the Americans count theirs" ? I heard an excuse on Radio 4 that this is in part due to 39-45. That's almost beyond living memory FFS.

Case for Abrams vs Leopard for Ukraine.

Best digested after reading the other branch of discussion from Hertling's tweet, where actual field mechanics agree with him.

Appreciate the drive and resolve, dead serious and verbatim no joke, yet the amount of 'our side' bias has thickened recently a lot. That's from someone who's been now repeatedly moderated and rightly so for being too loud about the victim/aggressor stance (my take).

While this may be a tiny bit exaggerated towards the opposite direction I never understood this seemingly massive difference between the M1 and the Leo2. In my eyes they are very close and which one is better -if at all- will depend on the individual version. Of which there are numerous. Fuel consumption will depend also on operation condition. From a thermo- dynamics perspective Diesel Engines genereally tend to be better than gas turbines regarding SFC (due to much higher Carnot cycle pressure difference). That said in the optimum operating range there is not that much difference, it is more at partial load where gas turbines tend to really suffer (lower rpm significantly further reduce the combustion pressure thereby hurting Carnot cycle pressure difference). That is why the APU helps so much. Keeping the big turbine running close to idle just for energy supply is tremenduously inefficient. But at the end that will make no operationally really critical difference between the M1 and the Leo.

Sorry , but why ?
I realise I’ll be shouted down , but the implication in training them to use the Leopard is that they’ll be getting the tanks quite soon & I don’t see that happening.
I concur that they SHOULD get them but there’s no sign of a change in German attitude.
As I’m posting , another question : sorry if it’s already been covered & I missed it...
Are they getting all this kit for nothing or will there a massive bill for fighting tyranny along the lines of the one Blighty faced for ‘Lend lease’?
I assume we’re all giving the kit away , is that the case?

In order not to lose time?!
After a decision to send Leopards you will then have to send the future users to at least 2 months of training. Why waste these two months? To help Vlad and his cronies?
It's the right thing to do. And in parallel use the two months to put some pressure on Olaf the Slow. HE is the problem. The vast majority of the rest of the German Government would like to push ahead. Maybe NSA can find some Wirecard or Cum Ex documents in the meantime to accelerate things?!

Do all NATO countries have tanks?
If Germany is dragging it's heals couldn't a coalition tank force (including German tanks) be sent to Ukraine so that one country cannot be singled out?
My understanding is that most countries use Leopard or Russian armour anyway?

There are end user agreements in place. These stop arms designed by one country from being sent to another country without agreement. Germany owns the end user agreements made with all states that have Leopards. None of them can send Leopards to Ukraine without Germany's consent.

Same goes for almost everything else. If the UK had, for example, Abrams M1s then we couldn't send them to Ukraine without agreement from the US.