Rheinmetall has received an order from the German federal government for the supply of 20 additional Marder infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the company's press service reports.
I do hope that won’t be needed, I also don’t think the production capacity of European weapons manufacturers is at a level where we would need to move to a war economy to buy out everything they can produce (I may be wrong, in which case I’ll moderate my statement). Finally, I think that with peace-time regulations in place, manufacturers will take enough time to scale up production that we could literally buy everything they’re capable of producing without surpassing like 4% of GDP.
However, I can agree that a better, more moderated statement, would be “We’ll buy everything you can produce over the next five years, up to a limit of <insert absurdly large number here> per year”. To safeguard against accidentally agreeing to spending like 10 % of GDP on weapons.
The point is that manufacturers need an incentive to massively scaly up capacity now, because if shit hits the fan tomorrow, Europe will be suffering severe shell hunger, and other weapons deficits, for at least a couple years until we’re able to scale up production sufficiently.
I do hope that won’t be needed, I also don’t think the production capacity of European weapons manufacturers is at a level where we would need to move to a war economy to buy out everything they can produce (I may be wrong, in which case I’ll moderate my statement). Finally, I think that with peace-time regulations in place, manufacturers will take enough time to scale up production that we could literally buy everything they’re capable of producing without surpassing like 4% of GDP.
However, I can agree that a better, more moderated statement, would be “We’ll buy everything you can produce over the next five years, up to a limit of <insert absurdly large number here> per year”. To safeguard against accidentally agreeing to spending like 10 % of GDP on weapons.
The point is that manufacturers need an incentive to massively scaly up capacity now, because if shit hits the fan tomorrow, Europe will be suffering severe shell hunger, and other weapons deficits, for at least a couple years until we’re able to scale up production sufficiently.