quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Given the success of the latest generation of anti-armor weapons, how effective will an Abrahms be for the Ukrainians? Do the Rooskies have effective anti-armor stuff that will counter the Abrahms?

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
Those 31 tanks are going to be brand new and used in Ukraine as a proving ground.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
As for the infrastructure, I'm not sure heavier tanks are necessarily going to be an issue. The ground may not have frozen over much this year, but mud season is coming to an end. At the same time, if the Russians are stuck to the roads then current Ukrainian armor is at no disadvantage and heavier armor shouldn't be stuck to the roads, right?

Paging MBinky, MBinky to the white courtesy phone...

quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
This is all academic though. Keeping a tanker out of the mud is like keeping a pig out of the shit. You can't.

quote:

The Last Taboo

Germany's Leopard Tanks Are a Game Changer with Significant Risks

With the delivery of Leopard battle tanks from Germany, the Ukraine war is entering into a new and dangerous phase. Olaf Scholz must now clean up the political damage he has caused, hold his country together and find a path with his international partners to end the conflict.

By Markus Becker, Tobias Becker, Susanne Beyer, Matthias Gebauer, Konstantin von Hammerstein, Peter Maxwill, Veit Medick, René Pfister, Tobias Rapp und Steffen Winter

27.01.2023, 18.12 Uhr

There are two iterations of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz these days. One is calm, almost diffident, the Scholz the country knows best. This iteration is the one most often seen on television or in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament. A man who seems almost impervious to the political machinations going on around him. Like on Wednesday of this week: out of the car, into the Bundestag, out of the Bundestag and back into the car. Here and there a smile.

Being the chancellor isn't so tough after all.

The other Olaf Scholz, though, isn't visible to the public eye. The second iteration, say staff members and other members of his center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), shows up behind closed doors in smaller meetings and policy debates, on telephone calls and in confidential sessions. That Scholz is prone to the occasional outburst.

On some occasions, he'll go after the media, on others he'll voice his anger with political analysts, and periodically, critics from within his own governing coalition will be the focus of his wrath. All those who, from his perspective, have abandoned discretion and have been gripped by war fever. Those who, according to Scholz, shy away from nothing when it comes to sending weapons systems to Ukraine – first demanding howitzers, then tanks, now warplanes, and at some point, no doubt, troops.

"These warmongers!" he apparently roared during an internal meeting this week. "These hawks!" The pressure that had been building during the previous weeks finally erupted. His frustration with, and indeed disdain for, all those who accuse him of not being suited for the current situation.

Not up to the task? Ridiculous. He would show them all once again. That appears to be how Scholz himself views the situation.

[...]

The push for delivering German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine began in late summer 2022. It was a time when Scholz's primary focus was actually on the energy crisis, but in the background, pressure on him was growing to finally budge on the Leopards, which are widely considered to be top-of-the-line battle tanks. They could, people in several Western capitals believed, then as now, be enough to turn the tide.

In mid-September, the Americans ratcheted up the pressure on the Germans to send Leopards to Ukraine. Amy Gutmann, the U.S. ambassador in Berlin, praised Germany for all it has done for Ukraine to that point, but added: "My expectations are even higher." The message was clear: It was time to finally do something.

Scholz, though, wasn't ready. He was concerned about an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and was strictly opposed to Germany sticking its neck out further than other countries supporting Ukraine. Discussions in the Chancellery were focused at the time on how Putin might respond if Germany were to send tanks on its own. Nuclear attacks, cyber attacks that could paralyze critical infrastructure, sabotage of important pipelines through which gas flows from Norway to Germany: The scenarios presented by Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, were chilling.

And Scholz was taking them seriously. Precisely because of such threats, according to his closest advisers, he wanted to have the Americans at his side. If Germany sent tanks, it would do so only if Washington agreed to send some of its own – that was his approach, his way of spreading the risk. The Americans, though, just shook their heads. Weren't they already doing enough?

There are around 2,000 Leopard tanks in the arsenals of NATO member states in Europe, and they are far easier to maintain than the Abrams tanks from the U.S., such was the position of the U.S. Department of Defense. The Abrams run on jet fuel and turbine engines, making the logistics far too complicated, the Pentagon stressed.

But the chancellor also had other concerns at the time: public opinion. Surveys were showing that while many Germans were afraid, others wanted to see decisiveness. One group rejected the idea of heavy weapons deliveries out of hand, the other believed them to be an absolute necessity if Ukraine was going to stand up to Putin. Scholz was eager to avoid alienating anybody and his approach to the war included both toughness and precaution. From the outside, though, it looked a lot like indecision and prevarication.

Meanwhile, the Russians were busy fortifying their positions along the frontline, a development that Kyiv found alarming, leading Ukrainian leaders to intensify their calls for help. Only with battle tanks, insisted the team surrounding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as 2022 changed to 2023, would Ukraine be able to break through enemy lines.

During this period, Scholz's foreign policy advisor, Jens Plötner, was speaking by phone almost every day with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. The White House, after all, has its own set of considerations when it comes to aid for Ukraine, with the Republicans looking for any possible excuse to question Biden's approach. In principle, Plötner and Sullivan agreed that Ukraine needed battle tanks to stand its ground against Russia. But the fundamental conflict remained unresolved. Scholz would only send tanks if the Americans did as well, that was Berlin's message. And it cast a sudden cloud over trans-Atlantic relations.

Then, in early January, there was a sudden shift. Berlin finally indicated its willingness to send Marder infantry fighting vehicles if the U.S. and other allies were to do the same. The U.S. acquiesced, agreeing to send Bradleys to Kyiv from its stockpiles, and Paris also gave the green light for similar equipment. It was intended as a clear signal from the alliance, but then, French President Emmanuel Macron, who had to that point elegantly refrained from getting his hands dirty in the arms debate, ruined the moment. He pressed ahead with the announcement that Paris would be sending armored reconnaissance vehicles to Ukraine.

Biden Showed Understanding, But Stressed Military's Doubts

Again, Scholz was stuck looking like a follower rather than a leader, and he rushed out his own announcement about the Marders. In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, unrest was rapidly growing, and some in Scholz's coalition were likewise confused. What about the Leopards?

The Tuesday before last, the issue was finally kicked upstairs, with Scholz and Biden discussing it over the phone. The chancellor, according to people familiar with the conversation, told the U.S. president that he could imagine sending Leopards to Ukraine, but only in concert with the U.S. He reminded Biden of the position taken by Washington on sanctions at the beginning of the war – that the countries supporting Ukraine needed to act together. And that Biden demanded at the time that Germany support a tough course.

If the German narrative of the meeting between Biden and Scholz is true, then the U.S. president showed understanding for the chancellor's position, but also stressed the U.S. military's doubts about the expedience and technical feasibility of sending Abrams tanks. The two leaders adjourned and set advisers to work on the discrete search for a solution.

Scholz's team, according to Chancellery sources, then began applying pressure wherever they could in recent days. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, in Washington, in Berlin: Every contact was deployed in the effort. And Biden found himself in an awkward position: His own military leaders were advising him to refrain from sending Abrams tanks, but he had little choice if he wanted to protect the alliance.

Suddenly, though, a wrench was thrown into the works. On the day after the discussion between Scholz and Biden, German media reported that the Chancellor presented the U.S. president with an ultimatum: namely that Leopard tanks would only be sent to Ukraine if the Americans sent Abrams as well. In Washington, the leak was seen as an affront. The impression that other countries could blackmail the White House was a dangerous one. And at the Pentagon, the incident reinforced their concerns. Many at the Department of Defense had come to believe that, by attaching conditions to German tank deliveries, Scholz was primarily interested in precluding tank deliveries altogether, or at least significantly slowing things down. But the important meeting of Ukraine backers scheduled to take place at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany was quickly approaching. Many hoped that progress would be made there.

Again, though, Scholz's office got in the way. Shortly before the Ramstein meeting, the head of the Chancellery, Wolfgang Schmidt, told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Berlin that only a joint tank deal was possible. Scholz, he said, would never agree to Germany going it alone. This discussion, too, was leaked to the press, this time by U.S. sources. The Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Austin had left the meeting in frustration and that voices had been raised. The German version, though, was quite a bit different. According to that account, Austin had listened calmly to the arguments from the Scholz team and had emphasized that he respected the German position. Then, he reportedly said that he had to discuss things with Biden.

In the public eye, meanwhile, Scholz had suddenly started looking like someone who wasn't just standing in the way of tank deliveries, but was also inflicting damage on the trans-Atlantic relationship. Scholz's junior government coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) criticized the chancellor's inaction as a "catastrophe." Poland announced that it was planning to officially request permission from Berlin to send 14 Leopard tanks to Ukraine and that it was considering ignoring a possible German veto. British historian Timothy Garton Ash, meanwhile, turned to Twitter to make fun of the chancellor, coining the term "scholzing" and including a definition: "communicating good intentions, only to use/find/invent any reason imaginable to delay these and/or prevent them from happening."

It suddenly looked as though Scholz had been caught in an avalanche of criticism – to the public eye, at least. In the background, though, things were looking up. Biden was coming around.

The breakthrough was finally achieved at the beginning of this week. Jake Sullivan again called Berlin, this time with good news. He reported that the White House was planning on overriding the Pentagon's concerns and delivering enough Abrams tanks for a Ukrainian battalion. That would translate to 31 tanks, not a huge amount, and they wouldn't be sent immediately. They might not even be available until the end of the year. But for Scholz, Biden's concession was the key to greenlighting the delivery of the Leopards. The U.S. president had clearly shown that the alliance is more important to him than the interests of his own military.

For Scholz, the compromise was a success, but for Biden, it came at a significant political price. When the president presented his decision in the White House on Wednesday, one reporter asked: "Did Germany force you to change your mind on sending tanks?" Biden laughed and said no, he hadn't been forced.

Either way, Scholz dragged his feet, which isn't exactly a testament to his leadership qualities. He desperately wanted U.S. protection, which makes it look as though he doesn't have too much faith in Europe's self-reliance. On the other hand, the public verdict regarding the chancellor's alleged indecision may have been a bit premature – because he got what he wanted from Biden. It may be that the tanks will arrive in Ukraine too late because of Scholz, it may be that this deal was ultimately more of a friendly gesture from the U.S. president than part of a well-executed plan. But the danger that Putin can now divide the West, that he might single out Germany as an adversary because of the delivery of Leopard tanks, has grown smaller. That is on the plus side of the ledger for Scholz. The flip side is that egos have been dented, with everyone fighting for him or herself. And that's not good for the evolution of the war.

[...]

It has been an exhausting few weeks for Scholz, but what lies ahead is unlikely to be any less draining. Because now this is also Scholz's war – with its battle tanks, Germany is now at the apex of the anti-Putin alliance. Germany's relationship with the U.S. is too important, so Scholz will also have to make concessions to the Americans in the coming months.

At home, Scholz will also need to demonstrate a different kind of leadership. One that is more open and less secretive. The fact that for several weeks, he hardly made any attempt to explain his course, for which there are certainly good reasons, made him appear weak, inscrutable. At a meeting this week with SPD lawmakers, Scholz said, according to participants, that it has to be possible for him to speak to other heads of government without half the world listening in.

Fair enough. But the war is now entering a new phase, and the chancellor must finally find a language to bring his country along with him. He should be explaining why the tanks are needed and what Germany's and the West's larger strategic goals are. How far do you go in helping Ukraine? Where should the country's future borders lie? Should Crimea be part of future Ukraine or not? And does anyone have any idea how this war will end?

"Trust me," Scholz said on Wednesday in parliament. It didn't sound as though he was trying to change his style. Once again, it sounded like: I have a master plan and you will hear about it eventually. The question is whether such an approach can ever be successful.

[...]

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I read that the train tracks in Ukraine are only rated for 40 ton loads and these Abrams are pushing 60 tons each. Going to be interesting to see how they pull this off.