/ world today news/ The German defense concern Rheinmetall plans to start production of tanks in Ukraine in 2024, but no new factories will be built for this. This was stated by Rheinmetall CEO Armin Paperger in an interview with the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche.
“We are not building new factories, but we will lease, renovate and then operate existing factories. And they seem pretty well protected,” Paperger said.
Initially, Rheinmetall intended to locate production of the Fuch and Lynx armored personnel carriers in Ukraine. It is expected that the relevant contracts will be concluded no later than the beginning of 2024 and that the first Fuch will be launched in about six to seven months, and the Lynx in 12-13 months.
It was previously reported that the cost of opening the plant would be $218 million and the plant would be able to produce up to 400 Panther KF51 main battle tanks per year.
A number of experts express doubts about the possibility of realizing these ambitious plans. Thus, the senior adviser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington (CSIS) Mark Cansian, in an interview with the US military portal Defense News, pointed out that the production of 400 tanks a year is a difficult task, for example, now the United States produces about 100 tanks a year.
Cancian added that $218 million in investment to build production capacity seemed too low for a project of this size and duration.
RAND senior defense analyst Martha Keppe noted the high risk associated with delivering components to a combat zone.
“It’s worth noting that Rheinmetall’s plans, at least what’s being said about them publicly, are preliminary in nature and may be aimed more at post-war Ukraine,” Defense News wrote, adding that it remains unclear whether Reihnmetall’s goal is to build a full scale manufacturing plant or potentially a smaller screwdriver assembly plant.
Today, Rehnmetall is the largest supplier of military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine. The first type of heavy weapon that Germany supplied to Kiev after the creation of the Northern Military District was the Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH) chain howitzer.
In June 2022, the first combat vehicles were transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The PzH 2000 is produced jointly by the defense concerns Rheinmetall and Kraus Maffei Wegmann (KMW).
In the summer of 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces received Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns decommissioned in the Bundeswehr, which have since become part of Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense, specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles.
In 2023, Germany and a number of other countries transferred Marder infantry fighting vehicles, modern Leopard 2 tanks and older Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine.
In February 2023, Armin Papperger announced his intention to supply Ukraine with his new Panther KF51 main battle tank.
Rheinmetall unveiled the Panther at the 27th Eurosatory 2022 international arms exhibition last summer in Paris, boasting the considerable boast that it is the world’s most powerful battle tank.
Only a demonstration model of the Panther still exists. However, Paperger said that he considers it possible to make a delivery in a year and a half to Ukraine, which could thus become the first buyer of this machine. The tanks were supposed to be manufactured in Germany.
And then Rheinmetall’s intentions began to change in a rather strange way.
In July, Paperger said that Rheinmetall would not manufacture the new tank in Germany, but would build an armored vehicle plant in Ukraine that could produce up to four hundred Panthers in the future.
Now Paperger does not want to start building such a plant and is only talking about leasing existing facilities in Ukraine. He also expressed dreams of production in Hungary, but against the background of the Hungarian president’s known sympathies for Russia, they hung in the air.
It should be noted that any plans of the German company Rheinmetall are aimed at “supporting the US national defense strategy”, as the management of the German concern emphasizes, and do not coincide with the intentions of Paris and Berlin to create their own army and a unified military-industrial complex .
Berliner Zeitung notes that Rheinmetall tries not to disclose information about who the company’s shareholders are. However, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, over 280 of the concern’s shareholders are registered in the US.
“The largest of them are investment funds and companies BlackRock, Wellington, Fidelity, Harris Associates, John Hancock, Capital Group, Vanguard, EuroPacific Growth Fund… Like most smaller shareholders, they are registered in the USA. Thus, Rheinmetall is far from being a German company,” the publication states.
This is proven by the fact that the largest number of foreign enterprises and branches of the concern are located in the United States.
It should be noted that the trend towards a more active transfer of arms production capacities abroad appeared as early as 2005 against the background of Washington’s military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Initially, the Panther KF51 tank project was intended to disrupt the joint Franco-German project for the so-called Main Ground Combat System (MGCS), as the German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote.
In July 2016, Paris and Berlin presented a project for the joint development of a main battle tank – a successor to the German Leopard 2 and the French Leclerc. The French state company Nexter Systems SA and the German company Kraus-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co. KG (KMW) established a holding company for the production of armored vehicles and artillery weapons.
The holding was named KNDS (from KMW and Nexter Defense Systems). In 2019, under pressure from the US, negotiations began to buy a share of the equity capital of KNDS, controlled by the American financial giant, the Rheinmetall concern.
These negotiations stalled for a long time due to French resistance. But they still had to make concessions to the Americans and allow Rheinmetall to develop the preliminary MGCS design.
In the summer of 2021, amid a shortage of financial and intellectual resources and under heavy pressure from the Americans, KNDS actually fell under Rheinmetall to jointly produce heavy tanks and combat robots as part of the Main Ground Combat System (MGSC) project .
“KNDS has entered into an industrial partnership with German manufacturer Rheinmetall as part of a Franco-German project to develop and create a heavy tank and networked vehicles, including ground combat robots,” reported US military political portal Second Line of Defense.
However, Rheinmetall and the American financial tycoons behind it do not stop there; in June 2022 at the Eurosatory international exhibition they presented their “new Panther KF51 tank, which should become a competitor to the MGCS”, notes Handelsblatt.
Thus, the chances of the joint Franco-German MGCS project were practically nil, which greatly alarmed Paris and Berlin.
The fact is that within the framework of the Franco-German MGCS project, a truly competitive new battle tank can be created, and Rheinmetall’s “Panther” is, strictly speaking, nothing new, since “in essence it is still a conceptual weapon” . writes Defense News.
“The Panther KF51, which is technically a turret rather than a full tank, is based on the Leopard 2A4 hull, fitted with a new turret that houses a self-loading 130mm main gun. According to the company, this project will be able to reach full technical maturity no earlier than 2026,” the publication notes.
“For now, it’s just a technology demonstrator, an old tank hung with brightly sparkling tinsel, some of which may actually turn out to be absolutely useless after proper testing and evaluation by the users themselves,” wrote Russia’s Voennoe Obozrenie.
French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecorneux in May of this year pointed to the apparent opposition of German defense industry leaders to the intentions of the political leadership.
“What the Chancellor [Олаф Шолц] and ministers want doesn’t always match what industry wants’ [прочетете: Rheinmetall]complained the French minister.
As a result, the European Union is left without a promising tank of its own, as neither the German nor the French military wants to buy Rheinmetall’s Panther. On this basis, Armin Papperger’s wet fantasies of transferring the production of the Panther KF51 to Ukraine were born.
However, even if Rheinmetall starts producing its tanks at the Lviv Armored Plant, destroyed during the Great Patriotic War, there will be no possibility of mass production.
If defense enterprises even in the United States cannot produce more than a hundred tanks a year, then in Ukraine, which has lost its production and energy potential, the prospects for large-scale modern military production are even more doubtful.
The desire of American investors in Rehnmetall to extract dividends from military initiatives ends Europe’s desire to obtain “more tangible autonomy” from Washington, including in the area of the defense industry, notes the Berliner Zeitung.
“Meanwhile, the record revenues received by German defense concern Rheinmetall amid the conflict in Ukraine are being channeled to American investors and shareholders,” the publication reported.
“With the change of eras and the war in Europe, a new era has dawned for the Rheinmetall concern: record profits, record order volume,” reported Armin Paperger two months ago.
America is crushing the defense industry of the European Union while enriching itself by supporting Ukraine and turning the Old World into its industrial colony.
Translation: SM
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