Germany to order 105 Leopard 2 tanks to equip German brigade in Lithuania

8 comments

1. German military has places some massive orders in the past 30 days

   * 8.5 billion euros for millions of 155mm artillery shells
   * 3 billion euros for 2 frigates
   * 1515 logistic vehicles from Rheinmetall
   * 105 Leopard 2 tanks
   * 900 Fuchs armoured vehicles
   * 30 Eurofighter jets

   these are all massive even by US standards

   the procurement process reforms have born fruit. Gone are the days when it takes months for the Bundeswehr to buy radios for its military

2. Thanks to 💩 tin

3. Germany is definitely on a spending spree

4. irony of the war is that NATO usually sends outdated equipment to Ukraine,while replacing it with newer equipment, while Russia started off with sending their best equipment and progressively working down to outdated equipment

   if someone told me that in 2024 Russian army would send T-54s produced in 1950 to the front, I would have called them crazy in 2022

   the West also sends old tanks to Ukraine,but that’s because we’re saving the better equipment for ourselves

   Germany sends Leopard 1s and replaces them with Leopard 2s, Poland sends T-72 and replaces them with K2 tanks from Korea

   meanwhile, Russian still produces some T-90s ,but barely enough to cover T-90 losses, while T-72s and T-80s are going extinct and are replaced with older models pulled out from storage

5. But our defense minister placed the orders without prior backing by the budget committee. Since Germany is in a budget crisis right now all the military spending is not yet realized in the future defense budgets after the 100 Billion Euros of military debt is exhausted. Our finance minister from the Liberals and the conservative party from Merkel won’t approve for further debt as the debt brake is enshrined in the constitution. Rather they fucking want to spend all the necessary expenses solely from the budget and if necessary to cut from social expenses (pensions and such) which is not at all popular to the already high amount of low-income earners in Germany. No wonder the far right AfD party gets more and more votes but this religious adherence onto the dogma that no big debt shall be incurred and such huge costs for infrastructure and defense shall all be realized with the federal budget alone without much additional debt is very troublesome. The 100 billion debt for the Bundeswehr was a right decision but probably will not be repeated as the conservatives are unhappy that not much cutting in the federal budget specifically in the social spending has been done yet. The budget negotiations still go on for 2025 and we will all see this year if the liberals and conservatives will allow more debt or to stubbornly insist on cutting from social spending and risk social unrest.

6. Does anyone else think that Europe is headed for another war, hence all these purchases, or is Germany renewing equipment so that they are truly prepared for whatever?

   This kind of activity is reminiscent of times, well, not so peaceful.

7. Will be ready in 90 years lol

   I mean im glad they are doing somthing but this “order” is sort of like the PHZ2000 or waht ever for Ukraine where they took some from Hungry or Italy( forget which it was) and the contract for the coutnry was signed and was for 20 tanks.. in 5 years of the contract they delivered one tank lol

8. It is still insignificant compared with Russian overwhelming advantage in terms of land combat with tanks and artillery..more importantly we in Germany are sitting ducks because we have no nuclear weapons. So in any war like scenario Russia could literally wipe germany off the map in a day and there would be nothing Germany can do about it.