Berlin plans to provide Ukraine with additional IRIS-T air defense systems and more than 80 Leopard-1A5 main battle tanks in 2024, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced on Jan. 24.
A message on the ministry’s website outlined the 2024 Ukraine military aid program as follows:
- IRIS-T air defense systems;
- Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns;
- Over 80 Leopard-1A5 main battle tanks;
- Additional artillery systems with more than 230,000 shells;
- Armored personnel carriers;
- Armored bridging vehicles;
- 450 reinforced vehicles;
- Demining systems;
- UAVs;
- Radars and reconnaissance systems.
They asked for fighter jets 💀
They asked for everything, including tanks and jets. And the jets will come from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-16_training_coalition
Germany has Eurofighters and Tornados, the Eurofighters are complex as fuck and available only in very limited numbers hence why everyone agreed on the F16. Gripen would’ve been even better given Ukraine’s situation (actually designed for dispersed operations) but there’s even fewer available. Wouldn’t surprise me if Ukraine starts building them once all this is over, though.
The Tornados are barely hanging in the air as-is it would be cruel to give them to Ukraine.
Regarding Taurus: Britain, it seems, is turning up the heat they’ve offered to take some and in exchange deliver more Storm Shadow to Ukraine, and the government seems to like the general idea. Both coalition and opposition parties are not exactly fan of the idea: Taurus is quite a bit more capable than Storm Shadow and they want Ukraine to have Taurus, not an Ersatz Taurus. In any case there’s pressure on the government and delivering Taurus would be the opportune move when it comes to internal politics, dunno about external considerations. There’s still the idea that Germany is holding back to pressure the US into providing ATACMS (as happened with tanks) but frankly speaking at this point noone should count on the US any more, just bloody deliver the bulls.
They are currently in training to get fighter jets from Denmark, there us no such excuse for the German cruise missile system Taurus they specifically asked for.