DOPPELADLER.COM

Der Vorstandschef von Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, geht selbst nach einer möglichen Friedenslösung in der Ukraine nicht von einem Einbruch im lukrativen Munitionsgeschäft aus. Das Land werde sich „bei einem Frieden bereits auf eine nächste mögliche Invasion vorbereiten“ sagte Papperger im Gespräch mit WELT AM SONNTAG. „Das Land ist nicht so naiv, wie wir hier in Deutschland es lange Zeit waren.“

Die Ukraine lebe bei der Munition derzeit „von der Hand in den Mund“. Benötigt würden etwa vier Millionen Schuss Artilleriemunition zum Auffüllen der Lager.

Der Angriffskrieg Russlands in der Ukraine beschert dem Düsseldorfer Konzern Milliardenaufträge für Waffen und Munition. Zudem errichtet Rheinmetall vor Ort Produktionswerke. Geliefert werden auch Marder-Schützenpanzer sowie das neue Modell Lynx.

Nach Angaben Pappergers umfasst die erste Lynx-Lieferung fast zehn Stück. „Eigentlich würde die Ukraine 3000 Lynx-Schützenpanzer benötigen, aber es gibt kein Budget dafür“, so der Rheinmetall-Chef.

On Oct. 17, Australia pledged to gift 49 second-hand M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks to Ukraine. This came just weeks after a first batch of new M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams replacements arrived in Australia from the U.S.

Australia never utilized its 59 M1A1 Abrams in combat, but they will soon be used in anger against Russian invaders in Ukraine.

The tank donation to Kyiv, worth approximately A$245 million (US$164 million), will “bolster the armed forces of Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion,” Canberra said.

theoderich hat geschrieben: ↑Do 26. Sep 2024, 23:30 Latest Security Assistance for Ukraine Announced, White House Directs DOD to Allocate Remaining Appropriations

For weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has pushed Western leaders to support his so-called victory plan, which he claims will end the country’s war with Russia next year. But Mr. Zelensky has received only lukewarm rhetorical support.

No country has agreed to allow Ukraine to fire Western long-range missiles at military targets deep inside Russia. Nor has any major power publicly endorsed inviting Ukraine into NATO while the war is raging.

By those measures, Mr. Zelensky’s lobbying tour of the United States and Europe over the past six weeks could be seen as a failure.

But the real audience for the plan might be at home, some military analysts and diplomats say. Mr. Zelensky can use his hard sell — including a recent address to Parliament — to show Ukrainians that he has done all he can, prepare them for the possibility that Ukraine might have to make a deal and give Ukrainians a convenient scapegoat: the West.

The Ukrainian president is using the arrival of North Korean troops to fight alongside the Russians in Kursk — confirmed by the head of NATO on Monday — to try to build some momentum for his plan.

In an interview session with reporters last week, Mr. Zelensky said that there was no evident Plan B if the West didn’t support his plan.

“I’m not insisting that they do it exactly this way,” Mr. Zelensky said. “I said it will work. If you have an alternative, then please, go ahead.”

He reiterated that he was still against ceding territory. But he also talked about diplomatic steps to resolve issues like protecting energy infrastructure and establishing a safe shipping corridor out of Ukraine on the Black Sea.

And he hinted at one approach that might allow Ukraine to save face if it does not reclaim all the land Russia has captured. “No one will legally recognize the occupied territories as belonging to other states,” he said.

U.S. officials have privately expressed some exasperation with Mr. Zelensky’s victory plan, calling it unrealistic and dependent almost entirely on Western aid. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military information.

Case in point: In one part not made public, Mr. Zelensky proposed a “nonnuclear deterrence package” in which Ukraine would get Tomahawk missiles, a totally unfeasible request, a senior U.S. official said. A Tomahawk has a range of 1,500 miles, more than seven times the range of the long-range missile systems called ATACMS that Ukraine got this year. And the United States sent only a limited number of those, senior U.S. officials said.

Ukraine also hadn’t made a convincing case to Washington on how it would use the long-range weapons, the U.S. officials said. The target list inside Russia far exceeded the number of missiles that the United States or any other ally could supply without jeopardizing missiles earmarked for potential problems in the Middle East and Asia, they added.

Four U.S. officials told The New York Times recently that Mr. Zelensky was stunned that President Biden didn’t grant him permission to use U.S. long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia when they met in Washington in September. In the past, Mr. Biden had usually relented after initially refusing Ukraine’s requests for weapons like Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and ATACMS.

Mr. Zelensky’s office confirmed that he had been stunned. Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said Ukraine had explained repeatedly why it needed to use long-range missiles. “All the details, the list of targets and the arguments are with the Americans,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is still no political decision to proceed.”

theoderich hat geschrieben: ↑Mo 30. Sep 2024, 22:40

President Biden has authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said.

The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said.

Mr. Biden’s decision is a major change in U.S. policy. The choice has divided his advisers, and his shift comes two months before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine.

Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine did not confirm the permission to strike but suggested on Sunday that more important than lifting the restrictions would be the number of missiles used to strike the Russians.

“Today, many in the media are talking about the fact that we have received permission to take appropriate actions,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address. “But blows are not inflicted with words. Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves.”

While the officials said they do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war, one of the goals of the policy change, they said, is to send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them.

The officials said that while the Ukrainians were likely to use the missiles first against Russian and North Korean troops that threaten Ukrainian forces in Kursk, Mr. Biden could authorize them to use the weapons elsewhere.

Some U.S. officials said they feared that Ukraine’s use of the missiles across the border could prompt President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners.

But other U.S. officials said they thought those fears were overblown.

On Sunday, some Republican lawmakers praised the move but said it had come too late.

“For months I have called on President Biden to remove these restrictions,” Representative Michael R. Turner of Ohio, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. ”President Biden should have listened to President Zelensky’s pleas much earlier.”

Some of Mr. Biden’s advisers had seized on a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that warned that Mr. Putin could respond to the use of long-range ATACMS on Russian soil by directing the Russian military or its spy agencies to retaliate, potentially with lethal force, against the United States and its European allies.

The assessment warned of several possible Russian responses that included stepped-up acts of arson and sabotage targeting facilities in Europe, as well as potentially lethal attacks on U.S. and European military bases.

Officials said Mr. Biden was persuaded to make the change in part by the sheer audacity of Russia’s decision to throw North Korean troops at Ukrainian lines.

He was also swayed, they said, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.

U.S. officials said they do not believe that the decision will change the course of the war.

But they said Mr. Biden determined that the potential benefits — Ukraine will be able to reach certain high-value targets that it would not otherwise be able to, and the United States will be able to send a message to North Korea that it will pay a significant price for its involvement — outweighed the escalation risks.

U.S. Intelligence Stresses Risks in Allowing Long-Range Strikes by Ukraine

Intelligence agencies concluded that granting Ukraine’s request to use Western missiles against targets deep in Russia could prompt forceful retaliation while not fundamentally changing the course of the war.

By Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington.

Sept. 26, 2024

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force against the United States and its coalition partners, possibly with lethal attacks, if they agree to give the Ukrainians permission to employ U.S., British and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, U.S. officials said.

The intelligence assessment, which has not been previously reported, also plays down the effect that the long-range missiles will have on the course of the conflict because the Ukrainians currently have limited numbers of the weapons and it is unclear how many more, if any, the Western allies might provide.

The assessment highlights what intelligence analysts see as the potential risk and uncertain rewards of a high-stakes decision that now rests with President Biden, who met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House on Thursday.

The findings may help explain in part why the decision has been so difficult for Mr. Biden to make, and show the internal pressures on him to say no to Mr. Zelensky’s request. U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters and internal deliberations, said it remained unclear what Mr. Biden would decide to do.

Mr. Zelensky has publicly and privately lobbied for the authority to use the missiles to bring the war farther into Russia.

Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has frequently employed threats to deter the United States and its coalition partners from providing more advanced weapons systems to the Ukrainians.

Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative reporter focused on national security and intelligence matters.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.

Aus Sicht der Bundesregierung gibt es in der Taurus-Frage keine neue Lage. Auch nachdem der scheidende US-Präsident Joe Biden entschieden hat, der Ukraine den Einsatz sogenannter ATACMS-Raketen mit großer Reichweite gegen Ziele in Russland zu erlauben, bleibt Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz bei seinem Nein zur Lieferung der deutschen Langstreckenwaffe Taurus.

Der Kanzler habe sich festgelegt, erklärte der stellvertretende Regierungssprecher Wolfgang Büchner nun und er ergänzte: "Diese Haltung wird sich auch nicht mehr ändern." Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius erklärte, er habe die Entscheidung der US-Regierung nicht zu bewerten. Sie ändere nichts an der Einschätzung der deutschen Regierung so Pistorius.

Die Freigabe weitreichender Waffen gegen Ziele in Russland durch die USA erhöht aus Sicht des CSU-Bundestagsabgeordneten und Verteidigungspolitikers Florian Hahn den Druck auf Deutschland. Er rief im Interview mit BR24 die Bundesregierung auf, nachzuziehen und Taurus-Marschflugkörper zu liefern. Mit Blick auf die angespannte militärische Lage sagte Hahn, dieser Winter werde entscheidend sein. Auch deshalb ist er dafür, den Taurus schnell zu liefern. Das sieht auch die ehemalige Regierungspartei FDP so. Der Abgeordnete Marcus Faber ist Vorsitzender des Bundestags-Verteidigungsausschusses und befürwortet schon lange die Lieferung von Taurus. Sie ist aus Sicht von Faber längst überfällig, wie er nun bekräftigte.

Verteidigungsminister Pistorius verwies zuletzt in der ARD-Sendung "Bericht aus Berlin" auf "Fragen der nationalen Sicherheit" über die man nicht spreche.

Geliefert werden sollen nun rund 4.000 bewaffnete Drohnen der Münchner Firma Helsing. Die mithilfe künstlicher Intelligenz gesteuerten Drohnen hätten eine Reichweite von 30 bis 40 Kilometern und könnten russische Abwehrsysteme umfliegen, erklärte Verteidigungsminister Pistorius. Die Lieferung soll schnell erfolgen. Pistorius sprach von einem "Riesenschritt für die Ukrainer." Mit den Drohnen könnten russische Gefechtsstände und Logistikzentren bekämpft werden.

theoderich hat geschrieben: ↑Do 21. Mär 2024, 19:22ASAP Results Factsheet (15. März 2024)

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europ ... n_en#files

On Ukraine, this is a serious moment to come before the Committee. Defence intelligence will reveal today that the frontline is now less stable than at any time since the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. We have seen in recent weeks a clear escalation from Putin and his forces: they have stepped up attacks on the energy system in Ukraine ahead of winter and stepped up attacks on civilian centres, killing children; they have deployed at least 10,000 North Korean troops to the battle frontline; and there are unconfirmed media reports today of Russia firing into Ukraine a new ballistic missile, which we know they have been preparing for months.

In response to the deployment of American and British long-range weapons, on November 21, the Russian Armed Forces delivered a combined strike on a facility within Ukraine’s defence industrial complex. In field conditions, we also carried out tests of one of Russia’s latest medium-range missile systems – in this case, carrying a non-nuclear hypersonic ballistic missile that our engineers named Oreshnik. The tests were successful, achieving the intended objective of the launch. In the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, one of the largest and most famous industrial complexes from the Soviet Union era, which continues to produce missiles and other armaments, was hit.