THE EUROPEAN LAND DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND THE RUSSIAN THREAT (II)

 

To understand the current state of the sector and where it will move in the coming years, we must analyze what results the weapons systems sent to Ukraine have given. MRLS systems like Himars, air defense systems such as the Patriot and the wide range of European missiles and UAVs, have been the differentiating elements. However, the outdated combat vehicles have hardly been effective, not producing the desired effect, the reason is that only new technologies set the course for this war as for all others. The tanks that were going to represent a qualitative change last summer, today no longer exist, they are broken down or preserved for a few operations.

    The three parameters of combat success in history remain the same: mobility, firepower and protection, the point is that in the face of changing threats, these three elements must be updated quickly to be effective.

    If we talk about battle tanks we have two opposite experiences. The tremendous Russian losses in Ukraine from drone attacks, close-range rocket launchers and improvised devices. Russia has lost more than four thousand combat vehicles, while in the same threat environment, Israel has not lost any Merkava in Gaza. The difference is undoubtedly the Trophy Active Protection System. Nowadays, the difference between having an effective tank or a target with little ability to avoid a direct attack and very vulnerable is active protection, like the Israeli Rafael, the German ADS or the Russian Arena, all of them with significant limitations when its defensive ammunition runs out. On the other side, they add very valuable additional protection. Hence, a good part of countries has embarked on processes of acquiring new cars with these systems, such as the new Leopard 2A8. For this same reason, the EuroTrophy GmbH consortium has been established among KDNS, GDELS and Rafael Advance Defense Systems, to Europeanize a critical solution for all combat vehicles.

    Seven countries have acquired or are going to acquire this expensive version, worth close to thirty million each; three times more than our Leopard 2E. The new tanks incorporate 55-caliber cannons, even Rheinmetall is working on a 130 mm cannon, but this will be joined by remote stations, greater armor on the top and anti-drone drone swarm systems. Spain should consider modernizing our cars with these types of solutions to keep them at the forefront of the state of the art. In Europe, Italy has abandoned the manufacture of its Ariete and will opt for the Leopard 2A8, while France and Germany are thinking about a tank of the future, which leaves the Leclerc as a car in need of a profound modernization and the same goes for the Challenger. 2 British.

    Battle tanks pose great limitations due to their weight, which is already around 70 tons, together with the fact that their effective fire range is still very short, requiring them to get closer to the target, which makes them vulnerable. Tracked combat vehicles have almost all the advantages of tanks, but weigh about 20 tons less, which allows them to be transported and deployed more quickly. They also have a lower signature, which increases their capacity in the battlefield. 

    Currently, the European track vehicle market is led by the ASCOD from General Dynamics and the Puma from KDNS Germany and Rheinmetall, while others such as the CV-90, the Dardo, or the Marder have been left behind by not incorporating more innovative solutions. The Polish Borsuk, derived from the Korean K-9, is also very far from the previous ones in terms of performance.

    GDELS presented at the recent arms fair in Romania, the ASCOD incorporating the Elbit Trophy system, which together with improvements that may include the armor to bring it to a level similar to tanks and a tower with a cannon of up to 120 mm, can offer very similar and more efficient capabilities than the battle tank.

    Finally in the field of combat vehicles on 8x8 wheels, the market is broader with AMV vehicles from Patria, Piraña III and V from GDELS Boxer from KDNS Germany, Centauro and Freccia from Iveco Oto Melara, Pandur from GDELS and VBCI from KDNS France. All of them, with weights greater than 30 tons, some of them exceeding 42 tons, offer capacities close to the previous ones, but in exchange they offer much more efficient transportation and mobility, equipping the same weapons systems as the previous ones.

    Today we can say that the mobility triad that all European armies must equip should include battle tanks with active protection systems, tracked vehicles with similar ones and 8x8 vehicles with a minimum level five of protection as in the case of the Romanian VBCI, to compensate for the absence of other additional protection systems.

    Taking into consideration that Russia in speeding up the pace of deliveries, Europe should´t allow this big gap it would be too dangerous.

    In recent years, the countries that have opted for new Leopard 2A8 tanks are: Germany (18 ordered + 105 option); Holland (18 ordered) Norway (54 ordered + 18 option) Lithuania (50 planned) Czech Republic (70 planned) besides these program I should add the modernization of 44 Danish tanks to version 2A7 that is in progress. The British Challenger 3 will incorporate the Trophy system. Only the Leclerc continues to put more emphasis on passive protection systems. It is to be hoped that at least the large Leopard user countries will orient themselves to the most modern versions and that those of the M-1 Abrams such as Poland can be equipped with the same solution.

    Among track vehicles, the main programs launched in recent years are: Denmark (44 CV90 from Bae Hagglunds); Norway ( 104 CV90, in 2009 and 144 CV90, in 2012) Sweden ( additional 50 CV90 in 2023), Czech Republic ( 230 CV90 in 2023) Slovakia (152 CV90 in 2022) Poland (1400 Bursuk planned) Germany ( Puma  additional 50 in 2023) United Kingdom (589 ASCOD in 2012) Spain (394 signed in 2024), Hungary (218 Lynx signed in 2020) and Greece (250 Lynx in 2023). Many of these acquisitions are continuations of previous orders.

    The countries that have already initiated preparatory actions for new vehicles of this class are Portugal to replace its 200 M-113s;  Estonia, which has already made a short list among Otokar, Hanwha and ASCOD for acquisition in 2028; and Romania, which has already launched a potential purchase of 246 vehicles plus an option of 52 for 2031 and in which the Lynx and ASCOD compete. Germany has acquired Automecanica, a truck manufacturer for local manufacturing while GDELS already has a company in production with the Piraña V. The presentation at the recent ASCOD Black Sea Aerospace & Defense in Bucharest with the Rafael Trophy, which also has a strong market position within the country places Spanish vehicle in a more favorable starting position.

    France and Italy should launch their replacement programs for the obsolete AMX-10 and Dardo, although these are undergoing a modernization that could extend their life by ten more years.

    Germany will have to address the continuity of the Puma for the next decade. It has developed the Lynx designed for the foreign market to which an active protection system could be incorporated such as the Hensoltd MUSS that the German Puma incorporates. It could be an option, but it does not seem that the vehicle currently meets the requirements of the Bunderwehr, so options for other vehicles such as the CV 90 and the ASCOD could find accommodation in a country that has been leading global armored vehicle manufacturing for almost a century. While countries that do not have modern vehicles of these characteristics, such as Belgium and Bulgaria, should consider acquiring this capacity.

    In the world of 8x8 wheeled vehicles (I exclude the 6x6, although there is now a tendency to recover their values and the Patria 6x6 platforms have been sold in several countries such as Sweden with 321 units recently) the most renewed platforms that are currently offered by the industry are the Piranha V from GDELS, the VBCI from KDNS France, the Boxer from KDNS Germany, the Freccia from Iveco Oto Melara, and the AMV from Patria. I left out the GD Co (USA) Stryker even though Bulgaria signed an FMS contract last year to acquire 183 Strykers.

    Among the most recent acquisitions are: Netherlands (38 Boxers planned for 2025); Italy (Freccia 30 in 2019, more acquisitions expected until the development of the new VCC platform is completed); Denmark (360 Piranha V in 2016); Romania (380 Piranha V between 2018 and subsequent extension) Poland (150 Rosomak-L, a longer version, in 2023, plus 150 vehicles sold to Ukraine in 2023, financed by American and European funds) Germany (Boxer 122 new order), United Kingdom (Boxer 523 in 2019) Spain (348 Piranha V local name Dragon in 2019 out of a total of 998 units in three series) Lithuania (88 Boxer in 2016). In general, all countries are updating their older versions, incorporating the recently implemented solutions in new acquisitions.

    Countries that will need to embark on wheel programs in the short term, are Greece and Norway which lack this capacity. Added to this is that both Germany and France will have to significantly increase their supply of combat vehicles since their current number seems very small for the size and relevance of their armies.

    The fourth key aspect will be the 155mm self-propelled artillery. There are still several countries that have US systems from the 70s such as the M109, as is the case of and Spain. The only operating platform of European design is the PZH 2000, although it is a rather old. Currently, wheeled platforms with the capacity to carry a 155/52 or 55 caliber howitzer will be the ones that will dominate this market in the next thirty years, since they are more versatile platforms, with less signal and weighing less than the PZH 2000. by about 15 tons, which is a very substantial difference. The new GDELS 10x10 platform with the KDNS Germany tower will allow, thanks to the distribution of the recoil over five axes, a very efficient shot in motion, which reduces its vulnerability and increases its effectiveness and will undoubtedly be a reference in the coming decades, both for howitzers and a platform for the Himars or the Puls. Taking into consideration the obsolete European fleet in main armies of M109 155mm or those coming from Soviet era of 152mm, as MRLS, the number of platforms should be replaced would be 691 ATP 155/152mm y 370 MRL systems.

    Conclusions

Europe has a great challenge ahead, very significantly increasing its units of state-of-the-art combat vehicles and artillery. However very important programs have been launched, as in Spain or Poland, the five major European armies need to increase their resources, and in an accelerated manner. The self-propelled artillery and MRLS programs are also essential, and the units in the process of incorporation are a tenth of the needs.

    Many may wonder if, given the weaknesses shown by Russian weapons and its industry, this rearmament process is necessary. There are two reasons that support this theory. Russia has preserved its combat aviation and air defense systems in Ukraine, even sacrificing a quick victory, and Russia has begun the production of its latest generation vehicles and although the rates are slow, they are already much faster than the European ones, which shows that this production is not designed for Ukraine.

    Europe needs to have a capacity to defeat Russia militarily, not just to stop it, and it is not a question of ambition or aggression, it is that only enormous conventional military superiority can counteract Russia's tactical nuclear capacity, if we are not willing to develop tactical nuclear weapons. The best way to defeat Russia and return it to the sphere of democracies and freedom is to defeat it industrially and technologically. When Russia knows that it cannot win, if it can destroy us but it will entail its self-destruction, it will be doomed to change its foreign and security policy, which is the ultimate objective, the peace and security of the continent and the world.

THE EUROPEAN LAND DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND THE RUSSIAN THREAT (I)

 

A few days before the next Euro-Satory exhibition, the most important land weapons fair in Europe, it is timely, in the light of the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat, to analyze the state of our armies in terms of the dominance of land mobility in the event of a possible war with Russia and the industrial capacity to respond to this challenge.

    Paraphrasing some war theorist, we can affirm that battles are fought by infantry, they are won by logistics, but wars are won by industries. We could see it in Germany between 1939 and 1941, thanks to the German industrial effort that began in 1934 and in the case of the Allies from 1943 onwards thanks to the industrial impulse since 1939, especially in the United States.

    Since Putin took office, he has put enormous effort into modernizing his military industry, reorganizing its structure and initiating new generation weapons programs. Today we can indicate that these two processes, although they began about twenty years ago, were far from being completed when Russia decided to invade Ukraine. Moscow's calculation at the beginning of 2022 is that enormous military pressure on weak Ukraine would be enough for it to surrender, without the need to expose the limited modern equipment it had at that time. Endemic corruption and the shortage of talent in industries to tackle new programs have greatly delayed the launch and delivery times of new programs that are only in the prototype and testing phases, generating great doubts about their real potential.

    Between 1990 and 2015, Europe prepared militarily for operations abroad, far from its borders, and with little need for firepower and for low-intensity threats. The aeronautical and naval programs absorbed an enormous part of the budgetary resources, around 70% in European countries, thinking in neoclassic terms that dominance of the air and sea would be enough to conquer territory.

    European armies, in almost all cases, today have rolling stocks that have been in service for more than forty years. Only with the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, concerns about the Russian threat began, which would materialize in an offensive action in February 2022 for the occupation of Ukrainian territory, in the purest sense of classic war. This change of scenario forced us to reconfigure all priorities and start new programs, starting with the Eastern European countries that felt the threat was closest. Even the most modern platforms such as Boxer, Centauro and VBCI have already accumulated about fifteen years of operation in their respective armies and require extensive modernization or replacement.

    In 1991, as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, a Treaty on the Reduction of Conventional Forces in Europe was signed. The aim was to reduce the number of platforms deployed in the theater of operations in Central and Northern Europe, to avoid an aggressive temptation on the Russian´s side. A maximum limit of 20,000 battle tanks and 30,000 combat vehicles was determined for each side. Today, all Europe has 3,000 battle tanks and 8,000 armored vehicles, far below the minimum-security level established when the great threat had disappeared. If we take into account the losses suffered by Russia in the Ukrainian War, some 2,000 tanks and 5,000 armored vehicles, in a minor conflict against a poorly prepared enemy, we will realize the first gap: our armies are not sufficiently equipped to deter Russia, and in the event of a war, to guarantee victory.

    Why does Russia, despite these losses, still have such an important military capacity? Why hasn't Europe been able to provide enough weapons to Ukraine in these two years? And finally, what is the status of the current and future programs and what must be modified in them to have a military capacity much superior to that of Moscow, the only way to guarantee peace and security against an enemy that has more of 1,000 tactical nuclear warheads?

    Russia is subject to a very restrictive embargo that has barely affected its military industry since China supplies it with numerous electronic equipment and materials essential to maintain the land industry. The income from oil sales to India with significant discounts, and the intermediation of companies from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, have allowed it to obtain the necessary foreign currency to finance imports and obtain critical dual-purpose material. But the most relevant thing is that Russia has submitted to a war economy. Dozens of automotive companies, hundreds of mechanizations and a huge amount of auxiliary industry have been militarized, hence the entire Russian economy is at the service of the war in Ukraine.

    It is true that during 2023, the Russian army received an average of 125 tanks per month when it was losing about sixty, to prepare for the 2024 offensive, but we must point out that 80% of these deliveries are modernized T-62 and T-55 tanks, although they continue to be tremendously vulnerable due to their gas emissions, size, poor armor, etc. Russia's strategic tank reserves estimated at about 5,000 tanks have been consumed by 50%. That is, Russia at this rate will not have the capacity to modernize more tanks by the end of the year. The same happens with combat vehicles, in which it produces twice as much as it loses, but also 70% are vehicles that are more than forty years old. The modernization focuses on communications, armor, optics and some of them have anti-drone protection, but if Ukraine resists a year at this rate of losses, Russia will be almost disarmed in the summer of 2025, hence the interest shown by Putin in a quick agreement.

The Uravalgonzavod factory, the world's largest manufacturer of combat tanks, has barely been able to deliver a hundred new Armata tanks or Terminator combat vehicles in these two years, due to the endemic problems of the Russian industry. It does not seem that this situation will change in the short term, so the failure of this Russian offensive would leave the occupying forces in a situation of extreme weakness. However, the production of 152 mm ammunition continues at an enormous pace, having multiplied by four in the last year, thanks to the concentration of ammunition manufacturing in large calibers. Furthermore, North Korea has militarized ammunition factories with almost slave labor and has already delivered one million 152 mm rounds. The Russian gap is about platforms but it does not seem that it will lose the war due to ammunition.

The production of computers, electronic and optical equipment increased by 40% in 2023, thanks to imports from China. Turkey was until February of this year when Biden signed an executive order with new restrictions on trading with Russia to 93 entities, 16 of them from Turkey, the largest after Russia, an important supplier of so-called «key equipment» for the military industry, which has caused serious restrictions from NATO.

China supplies CNC equipment, machine tools, semiconductors, chips, and numerous auxiliary equipment as well as raw materials, all essential to maintaining Russian industrial capacity. In fact, imports of sensitive material from China increased by 200% in 2023. North Korea has supplied more than a thousand containers of military material, 2.3 million 152 mm rounds and 400,000 122 mm rounds and dozens of tactical missiles used in Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, nineteen dark ships with military equipment arrived at the Russian port of Vostochni, from Korea. The West's fear is that the payment could be in nuclear and ballistic missile technology, which would seriously endanger global security.

There is one aspect that has been commented by experts in these two years of war, the absence of Russian combat aviation over Ukrainian airspace. The main reason is the tremendous delay in the development of fifth generation aircraft, SU-34, and the shortage of critical equipment for its development that had European origin. The underlying reason is that Russia wants to preserve its aviation intact in the event of a possible conflagration with another European country or with NATO. I mean, Russia keeps an operational fleet of about 2,000 combat aircraft and this is a factor to take into account to size the future threat.

Ukraine was a country with almost no army, with a military industry that had been decapitalized by the Russian embargo. European aid in these two years has also focused, as in the Russian case, on material in operation or close to retirement, although in recent months this trend has been reversed with direct purchases of new material for Ukraine that will be very relevant in the future.

The European land weapons industry was demobilized in 2020 with a supply chain greatly sized for the shortage of orders of the last twenty-five years. This demobilization has meant the inability to supply to Ukraine with sufficient ammunition, especially large caliber, essential for the development of this war. The biggest problem is not in the manufacturers but in the supply and raw materials chain that has been difficult to implement due to the large number of affected countries and the contraction in supply. Once again it is evident that the scarce self-sufficiency of European industry is its greatest handicap, with high dependence on third countries, many of them under Russian or Chinese influence.