Posted on 04/15/2014 5:04:38 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Germany’s weapons industry is booming, and even the vice chancellor’s attempt to stop selling tanks to the Saudis is a minor concession for the world’s third biggest arms exporter. But the trade is destabilizing security. […]
Henrik Heidenkamp, German defense industry expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Local the economic value was not the point, but about nurturing Germany’s defense industry so that it will be able to supply arms to the German army and its allies.
“Only a commercially viable defense industry can deliver needed equipment to the armed forces in order to sustain the national defense effort,” he said. In other words, Germany needs to sell guns so it can make guns for its own soldiers. But what if those soldiers then end up facing enemies with the same German-made weapons? …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
I did a quick search and couldn’t find foreign weapons sales by country, but the top two are the US and Russia. The articles on German sales, which only listed individual sales, give the impression Germany’s sales are WAY lower than those of the US and Russia.
(The taxpayer finances most of US sales by giving away credit vouchers called foreign military sales or FMS. Foreign governments have to buy from the US, so it’s free money, sort of. It’s an employment package and keeps US purchase prices lower.)
No worse than the U.S. Russia, China, Sweden, Israel and most every country that is capable of building military hardware...
So what else are they to do...The people have to eat and most of the worlds decent manufacturing jobs have gone to the now ultra-wealthy China...
We gave China our jobs and we now send our money to China to buy the things we used to make...So the World now has to borrow its money back from China just to stay afloat without any real way to pay it back...
Well, if you have to buy military gear the Germans build some pretty good stuff including arguably the currently best main battle tank. German gear might be the best bang for the buck when you consider maintainability and longevity.
Leopard is good armor but what about Abrams and Challenger?
They could start turning out MG 42s again assuming there isn’t some modern version.
M-60?
Germany should continue arming allies of the West.
Pardon my historical rip off lapse of memory on that one.
A few years ago I was at one of those re-enactment things and there were some WW II German actors and there was an MG 42.
The leader who also owned it told me that the bolts were too complicated to make by computer. I found that hard to believe but kept a straight face just in case it was true.
Here is a photo of it opened up.
http://tysonneil.smugmug.com/Military-Life/Older-military-equipment/i-xfSbLkP/A
It was quite a piece of work and the arguably best SAW of the war. Tremendous rate of fire for the time.
Our guys got hammered with them on the beaches.
M-60 was based on it. Looks like it is being phased out for the 240 Bravo (FN) with only a few units still using it like the SEALs with a shortened version.
I picked up a saw once at my first guard drill weekend. Never got anywhere else with it. Was an armor jockey, in name mostly.
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