So...#FreeTheLeopards is a thing...
(twitter.com)
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You're making me want to root for Putin just because of how head up their ass the other side is.
Plus you're bringing in the fashion industry? We still haven't rooted out all the pedos yet..
What does Ukraine want for free this time?
German tanks. "Leopards"
Based on the leopard furs, flag, and hashtag I could only assume they want zoos in the west to free all their captive leopards and release them in the Ukraine.
Here's the hashtag itself if you need to cringe more.
Weird meme account.
And here's some selected cringe:
Government cringe, and more government cringe.
Protest cringe, and protest mega cringe
Spice Girls cringe?!
I don't even know.
Warmongering cringe:
"Tanks save lives."
"62 tons Freedom. For 120mm defensible Democracy. For 1.500 Horse Power for the victory."
Who?
Unrelated cringe
100% of the people who thought typing "Bu$h" was insanely witty 20 years ago now fully support Ukraine.
While they yell that you're not patriotic, and a traitor to your country.
Even though they were only accidentally partially right about opposing the Iraq war (they opposed it because they hate America and reflexively want the opposite of what people who appear to like America want, not out of any principled stance against war).
Potential peak moment for some thing named leopardsatemyface if it had any decent readers.
The Germans have, what, 100 of those things serviceable at any given time? They can't afford to send any to Ukraine for them to just get blown up or break down because they don't have the infrastructure to actually maintain them.
Well it's not like the Germans have any use for them. The only thing the Germans might need tanks for is fending off Russia.
Even if I thought it was a good idea to ship more weapons to Ukraine, it wouldn't be tanks.
Tanks require very specific training, advanced maintenance, and even more specific tactics in deploying them. The truth is, Ukraine would do far better with infantry anti-tank guns/rockets and some kind of guided munitions (or semi-guided) munitions for counter-artillery weaponry. Ukraine's strength (one of the few that it has) is in the quantity of it's infantry. So that's what you gotta magnify.
Put it like this. Look what happened when we shipped Abrams tanks that had some anti-armor capabilities removed from them and gave it to the Iraqis: they got absolutely lit the fuck up. Now, that's no skin off our back because we have a bajillion tanks, and literally can't even store them because we have too many. But Germany doesn't have that many tanks. If you send them to Ukraine, they are getting knocked out because the Ukranians won't be able to use them properly, nor maintain them.
Unless you are trying to drag Germany into the war by forcing them to deploy troops and technicians into Ukraine to repair the tanks for Ukranians.
For further proof of issues with non-trained armies using Western tanks: Germany sold some Leopards to Turkey, and then Turkey deployed them to fight the Kurds. They got absolutely fubbernucked. It wasnt just that the Kurds had well entrenched AT-missile positions, it was also that the Turks were not following the required combat doctrine of the Leopard. Specifically, they had some of the ammo racks loaded that are supposed to be left unloaded in a combat scenario because they are both in exposed positions and have limited safety features. So they were getting their tanks ammo-racked and then cussing the Germans out for giving them "defective" tanks. And this is before we get into the issue of the Turks sending their tanks in alone without infantry support.
I will give Ukraine some credit in that they have had their own tanks, so they would probably be able to maintain them, but I do agree with you that they dont have the tactical knowledge. From all of the video I have seen, Ukrainian tanks have been operating more like jackals, just picking off targets of opportunity and then getting the fuck out before they suffer significant return fire.
Ironically, the AMX-10RC's the French are talking about sending may be more up Ukraine's alley. Because while the Ukrainian tank forces have been opportunity hunters, Ukrainian light vehicles (like the Humvee's they have been using) have been possessed by the spirit of 19th Century cavalry officers. Where they will charge across an open field into enemy fire and somehow not only not die, but also utterly rout the enemy. So a high speed armored car with a tank-grade gun is probably exactly what they need.
This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. Tanks aren't just tanks. They are, in and of themselves, built into a pre-existing fighting doctrine and combined arms manual. You buy a tank? Cool, but it wasn't built for you. You're going to have to figure out how to make it work in your doctrine, or you have to take the Israeli route and "modify" the tank into something entirely different.
They have thier tanks. Or should I say: Soviet tanks. Same problem.
I'm not surprised. It reminds me of the "Toyota War" in Chad. You strap a few Mark 19's to those sumbitches and it will do exactly the same thing a 19th century heavy cavalry charge would do: immediately route all nearyby infantry.
I don't care how advanced your army is. Two things are always true in every time period:
When they make you root for the devil.
I expected some weird tranny shit lol
It is not so much that they would be sending Abrams to Ukraine that is peeving the Germans. It is the fact that a lot of NATO countries are looking to send their Leopards to Ukraine and then replace them with Abrams (like Poland is already doing). Because as it turns out, everyone wants American-made weapons now since their shit has been kicking all of the ass in Ukraine.
While I would too, I am afraid that it would be rather anti-climactic. After all, T-90's have been getting domed by Carl Gustaf's. The hell do you expect them to do against an actual tank (although like I said in my other post, I dont think tanks would fit Ukraine's doctrine as much as rapid forces).