NATO return to Cold War force structure

[Sardaukar]

FDF is very happy with K9 Thunder, thus ordered those 38 more. 

I have no idea how good K1/K2 are, but seems they might be pretty good. 

[Huba]

1 hour ago, Martineleca said:

And yet the Abrams based South Korean K1 tank was still powered by a German V8 engine, by the way is it known if the V12 for the K2PL will be the Doosan DV27K or some iteration of an MTU unit found in the Leopard?

It will be the Dosan. For the first batch of 180 it will be mated to Renk transmission. The contract also includes an option for up to 800 additional units, in case Korean transmission project fails, though the latter is preferred due to politics.Also, reportedly the plan is to produce the complete power pack locally under license, though it's hard to say if this plan will materialize, as the technology transfer contract is not yet signed.

45 minutes ago, Sardaukar said:

FDF is very happy with K9 Thunder, thus ordered those 38 more. 

I have no idea how good K1/K2 are, but seems they might be pretty good. 

K9 is rapidly becoming a new NATO standard SPG, who would have believed that say 5 years ago? 
As for K2, if Norway follows with it instead of Leo, it very well might repeat K9s success, reportedly Romania also eyes it as it's new MBT. It is a rather sad turn of event for the European armor industry though...

Edited November 25, 2022 by Huba

[Sardaukar]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

It will be the Dosan. For the first batch of 180 it will be mated to Renk transmission. The contract also includes an option for up to 800 additional units, in case Korean transmission project fails, though the latter is preferred due to politics.Also, reportedly the plan is to produce the complete power pack locally under license, though it's hard to say if this plan will materialize, as the technology transfer contract is not yet signed.

K9 is rapidly becoming a new NATO standard SPG, who would have believed that say 5 years ago? 
As for K2, if Norway follows with it instead of Leo, it very well might repeat K9s success, reportedly Romania also eyes it as it's new MBT. It is a rather sad turn of event for the European armor industry though...

KMW need to come up with more Leo 2A7s etc.

We'll see how KF51 Panther comes out.

[Martineleca]

7 hours ago, Huba said:

It is a rather sad turn of event for the European armor industry though...

Well KMW has shut down so much capacity that it can barely supply a few hundred Leopard 2s to new and existing customers, let alone over a thousand needed to re-equip other NATO countries in Eastern Europe. Their own government did them in when they released all the stored tanks for sale at rock bottom prices and temporarily destroyed demand for new ones, the Polish production surge is actually great news for the European armor industry, it will be interesting to see if Italy decides to procure the K2 as well.

[Huba]

Ha, that's a much more optimistic way to look at it!

Reportedly in the upcoming week PGZ and Hyundai will sign an agreement to form a consortium that will be producing K2 in Poland. Aquisition of new facilities in PL is also underway. The devil is in the details though - there's a lot of worry regarding the scale of the technology transfer, degree to which the components will be produced in PL, right to do improvents etc. Having just a final assembly plant build is hardly an interesting deal. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

11 hours ago, Martineleca said:

Well KMW has shut down so much capacity that it can barely supply a few hundred Leopard 2s to new and existing customers, let alone over a thousand needed to re-equip other NATO countries in Eastern Europe. Their own government did them in when they released all the stored tanks for sale at rock bottom prices and temporarily destroyed demand for new ones, the Polish production surge is actually great news for the European armor industry, it will be interesting to see if Italy decides to procure the K2 as well.

Yeah, and I keep getting told im utterly wrong that dumping all those shiny Leopard 2s on the international Arms market had absolutely nothing whatever to do with Challenger 2  failing to get any orders....

Ultimately Europe really should start creating arms industries that enfranchise all the nations of Europe, and not just a few businesses in France, Germany or Britain. Then maybe we would have some kind of interesting maintaining production capacity here, rather than pretending Europe will never be at war again and we can just let it all die away and buy it from South Korea.

I dont know, its a crazy idea I guess...

[Huba]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I dont know, its a crazy idea I guess...

There's the MGCS project, that progresses rather slowly, plus new Leo2/ Panther. Anything else? Didn't UK have some plans for a Challenger 3? I guess that is it.
In case of Poland the deal seems to be sealed, and the few countries that want the new tanks urgently might soon follow suit with K2 or perhaps older M1s. After that, IMO the biggest question will be if the war in Ukraine will create an increased demand for tanks in the Old Europe, or will the biggest countries there be happy with 200 - 300 vehicle strong fleets. If it is the latter, between existing fleets still having a considerable modernization potential, and no increase in demand I don't see the pace of production picking up.
Assuming Ukraine manages to pick itself up after the war, it might be the biggest demand generator for armor in the next decade - but I don't think that they would be interested in just getting stuff off the shelf (unless it's free or heavily subsidized).

Edited November 26, 2022 by Huba

[Martineleca]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Then maybe we would have some kind of interesting maintaining production capacity here, rather than pretending Europe will never be at war again and we can just let it all die away and buy it from South Korea.

I think the MGCS and Challenger 3 will be a worthy competitors to the K2 on the export market, but native demand will have to be the driving force behind both programs. If in the near future Poland and Ukraine maintain 10+ armored brigades each, do you see the UK, Germany, France and Italy surging to at least equal the Greek land forces at five?

[Ssnake]

I don't, to be perfectly honest. Starts with the question where you'd want to get additional tanks if you were Germany, or France, or the UK right now. Unless you order a completely different system, ordering fresh builds of Leopard 2, Leclerc, or Challenger 2 is at least very costly if not downright impossible because the production lines and necessary workforce simply no longer exist. The even bigger challenge, I think, is finding the warm bodies with which you want to fill these additional brigades. Bring back conscription, maybe.

So, if at all we'd see an expansion of the tank forces by the time that the next generation MBT is ready for production, and the question is, do we still remember 2022 by then, will Russia be a bigger threat or a smaller one by then, are we willing to pay not only twice the money per tank but also for twice the number of them. Call me a cynic, but I just don't see it.

[Huba]

I agree, I don't see most of the European countries increasing their land forces by much in the foreseeable future, and there hardly seems to be a need for that. It would be great though if everyone could commit to at least NATO standard 2% GDP for defence, but this money in most cases will be better spent on airforces and fleets.
The implications of that to the armor industries of these countries will IMO be rather dire. French for example are already talking about keeping Leclerc till 2050 in case MGCS fails. Leo2 also has a lot of modernization potential. Meanwhile the countries that intend to field large land components are wisely turning towards as indigenous capability as possible - Turkey is a prime example, hopefully Poland too with K2PL, and so will Ukraine.The latter IMO won't field the Leo2 during the current conflict (unless it drags on to 2024? ) but after that will take similar route to Poland, adapting the M1 to supplant it's fleet of T-types, and perhaps gradually replacing them with something locally produced in the future.
Not sending the Leo2 to UA is IMO the biggest lost opportunity for the Europen armor industry. If von der Leyn's concept of Leopard consortium have materialized,with operators sending parts of their fleets to Ukraine, there would be a huge surge in demand, and KMW could be already pouring concrete for the new plant.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Huba

[DB]

I don't see any prospect of Challenger 3 being anything other than a dead end with at most all remaining CR2s being upgraded. What's the point - it offers nothing over whatever could be put into an existing Leo 2.

This is painful to say, but unless the UK does something spectacular, there is no prospect for a future British tank in this class. At best the Rheinmetall-led joint company would make UK MoD specification variants of whatever they intend to sell to Germany and the world for the iteration after the coming one.

[Martineleca]

5 hours ago, Ssnake said:

The even bigger challenge, I think, is finding the warm bodies with which you want to fill these additional brigades. Bring back conscription, maybe.

Well at 62 000 servicemen the Heer is still one of the largest land components in Europe, almost as large as the Polish Army while operating around half the equipment, which will fall to just a third if things remain unchanged. The Italian, French and British armies are even larger is regards to personnel, there appears a lot of slack in non-active units, maybe get some of those guys off their desks and into tanks?

Edited November 27, 2022 by Martineleca

[seahawk]

7 hours ago, Huba said:

Not sending the Leo2 to UA is IMO the biggest lost opportunity for the Europen armor industry. If von der Leyn's concept of Leopard consortium have materialized,with operators sending parts of their fleets to Ukraine, there would be a huge surge in demand, and KMW could be already pouring concrete for the new plant.

Germany has no interest in creating more jobs in the weapons industry. It is not a sustainable green industry.

[Stuart Galbraith]

14 hours ago, Martineleca said:

I think the MGCS and Challenger 3 will be a worthy competitors to the K2 on the export market, but native demand will have to be the driving force behind both programs. If in the near future Poland and Ukraine maintain 10+ armored brigades each, do you see the UK, Germany, France and Italy surging to at least equal the Greek land forces at five?

If we can convince the UK Government to create a production line to make new hulls, which being tighter than a ducks ass, they probably wont. They are going to scavange the Challenger 2 run to make hulls, with all the cost saving (and probable problems) that implies.

Its not just the military anorak in me that believes the UK which created tanks should still make them (although yes, it is a good part of that too). Ive long though it unreasonable that Germany should be the sole nation in Europe with a production capacity for tanks, which would kick us in the ass should a sudden flare up in tensions with Russia arise.

Which unfortunately it has. We need all the major industrial nations in Europe to start developing production capacity for AFV's. It doesnt need to be big lines, even a dozen tanks a year would be something. Because if Ukraine has proven anything, in a major war we will piss through AFV's like water. Its even proving beyond NATO nations capacity to prove enough tubes for Ukraines artillery, something few saw as a problem for decades.

I think there is more than enough room for all of us to have productive capacity, as you righly point out, everyone in Europe want some. But I think it really is about time Europe stopped pissing about and started developing a tank we can all build. A liberty tank for the 21st century in other words. With British suspension and armour, German guns and engines, French optics (im sure polish industry could contribute something completely off the wall and useful too) we could make something world class.

But we wont, because Arms industry is still stuck in the 18th century mindset of competition rather than cooperation.

 

[Huba]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I think there is more than enough room for all of us to have productive capacity, as you righly point out, everyone in Europe want some. But I think it really is about time Europe stopped pissing about and started developing a tank we can all build. A liberty tank for the 21st century in other words. With British suspension and armour, German guns and engines, French optics (im sure polish industry could contribute something completely off the wall and useful too) we could make something world class.

But we wont, because Arms industry is still stuck in the 18th century mindset of competition rather than cooperation.

Poland produces excellent communication equipment and other electronics/ software like BMSes.
IMO for the liberty tank to work though, we'd have to somehow split the jobs/ revenue of the consortium to more or less reflect the numbers ordered by particular countries - good luck with that. Another issue is industrial control over exports, as we see recently this causes a bit of a headache. There are strong rumors in PL that before the war DE blocked export of Krab (that uses MTU engine) to an unknown country for example, you don't want that. On the other hand, allowing Hungary to sell it's new tank to Russia is also not an option.

One crazy, warmongering, wasteful idea for national tank industries would be to continuously produce the vehicles and (gasp...) put them in storage.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Huba

[Martineleca]

3 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I think there is more than enough room for all of us to have productive capacity, as you righly point out, everyone in Europe want some. But I think it really is about time Europe stopped pissing about and started developing a tank we can all build. A liberty tank for the 21st century in other words.

 

Well the MBT 70 was partly supposed to be just that, a standard product for the two largest AFV manufacturers in the West, it failed in that but the resulting Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks continue to have many similarities and capability of joint operations. The issue is more that post-Cold War the US was able to somewhat limit extreme budget cuts and maintain most of its standing forces through engagements abroad, whereas in Western Europe an uncontrollable process of demilitarization occured that NATO command was not able or willing to halt until the annexation of Crimea snapped the continent somewhat back to reality.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Martineleca

[kokovi]

10 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

If we can convince the UK Government to create a production line to make new hulls, which being tighter than a ducks ass, they probably wont. They are going to scavange the Challenger 2 run to make hulls, with all the cost saving (and probable problems) that implies.

Its not just the military anorak in me that believes the UK which created tanks should still make them (although yes, it is a good part of that too). Ive long though it unreasonable that Germany should be the sole nation in Europe with a production capacity for tanks, which would kick us in the ass should a sudden flare up in tensions with Russia arise.

Which unfortunately it has. We need all the major industrial nations in Europe to start developing production capacity for AFV's. It doesnt need to be big lines, even a dozen tanks a year would be something. Because if Ukraine has proven anything, in a major war we will piss through AFV's like water. Its even proving beyond NATO nations capacity to prove enough tubes for Ukraines artillery, something few saw as a problem for decades.

I think there is more than enough room for all of us to have productive capacity, as you righly point out, everyone in Europe want some. But I think it really is about time Europe stopped pissing about and started developing a tank we can all build. A liberty tank for the 21st century in other words. With British suspension and armour, German guns and engines, French optics (im sure polish industry could contribute something completely off the wall and useful too) we could make something world class.

But we wont, because Arms industry is still stuck in the 18th century mindset of competition rather than cooperation.

 

Makes no sense at all. First, Germany has the complete tank system knowledge on her own, it is very sad indeed that our government has decided to sell it out to France. Second, production of a handful of tanks per year will lead to a manufacturing process like in WW2 Germany. But in a war, you need the US mass production strategy from WW2.

[Ssnake]

Arguably, we need more artillery, more air defense, more ammo. Not necessarily a lot more tanks.

[Huba]

I'd add more aircraft, first and foremost, and perhaps more ships. Having overwhelming air superiority against the russkies should really do the job, ground forces are there just to hold the line. And all other potential threats still tend to be located overseas.

[Josh]

I think NATO already will have those things. Finland, Poland, and Norway will have ~150 F35s right up against the Russian border by the end of the decade and USAF by itself can field a combat coded 5th gen fighter for every Su-30,Su-34,Su-35, and MiG-31BM in Russian inventory right now.

 

As someone else noted, is seems likely NATO needs to invest more in sustainment of what it has. To that I would also add a much increased anti UAV/missile air defense with high mobility, with an effort to defend infrastructure on top of military nodes.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Josh

[Martineleca]

17 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Arguably, we need more artillery, more air defense, more ammo. Not necessarily a lot more tanks.

Artillery is crucial to the conduct of warfare of course, but it has been demonstrated that without a powerful armored reserve to strike any breakthrough of the main battle line into the rear can result in huge lossses for the artillery forces, as happened at Kharkiv recently.

[PCallahan]

I think the key lesson from the Ukraine war so far from the West is that its conception of the necessary reserve quantities of disposable munitions is completely wrong.  Basically, the focus has been on the development (and mostly) limited production of highly effective weapons systems, but backed by a far too limited quantity of munitions that they are expected to use in wartime.  We need to, first and foremost, focus on mass production of all disposable munitions, from the expensive (air-launched guided weapons) to the pedestrian (155mm unitary rounds).  

In a sense, the current war has served as a clear wakeup call on this issue -- frankly, we're going to run out of AIM-120s long before we round out of platforms to fire them.  Similarly, why have brigades-worth of MLRS/HIMARS launchers, but seriously limited numbers of rounds for them?  I strongly suspect that we haven't delivered hundreds of MLRS and HIMARS to Ukraine not because of training issues or concerns about escalation, but because there would be no real way to provide them with sufficient rounds to function to their full effect.

Now, all that said, it is quite likely that the necessary expansion of munitions production (and production capacity) is already underway... we see comments in the media on the subject, but I strongly suspect that we are not getting the full story.

[Ssnake]

Well, from what I'm hearing from the German defense industry - and I'm not very widely connected, so it's just "one" data point - we're nine months into the war and there are still no orders for more 155mm rounds. A few days ago even the press, late to the show as ever, ran the story that we're down to two days of ammo in German stocks. It's absolutely insane.

I'm having a hard time believing that this is still incompetence rather than malice, knowing the "pacifist at any cost" predisposition of people like Rolf Mützenich, the puppetmaster behind our fabulously blonde defense mistress (center).

[seahawk]

Afaik I know the only things definitely ordered are uniforms and other personal equipment. Not one weapons system or ammo afaik.

[Ssnake]

We need, first and foremost, consumables and spare parts. And the industry needs a signal that this is a demand that isn't just a small flare-up, that we're serious about readiness, so that there's a commercial incentive to expand production capacity. So far the signals are all indicating business as usual, as if there was no war going on.

 

5 hours ago, PCallahan said:

Now, all that said, it is quite likely that the necessary expansion of munitions production (and production capacity) is already underway... we see comments in the media on the subject, but I strongly suspect that we are not getting the full story.

Well, all procurement is made public in budget laws. Occasionally some items are a bit obscured, but you can't order a million 155mm rounds in secret.