Bombshell Reports: "German Weapons Not Made for War"
Spiegel published a quite eye-opening piece yesterday, which reveals the long-kept truth about the performance of German weapons systems in real wartime conditions:
Before we delve into it, here is a summary of what the article found:
A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine.
The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front.
Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts.
This information was revealed in a transcript of a lecture given by the deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev. The summary of the paper is very clear: “Hardly any large German piece of equipment is fully suitable for war.”
The report cites “an internal paper of the Bundeswehr” about the real practicality of Germany’s top weapons. We can assume that the very same results extend to the entire constellation of NATO weaponry in general, since they are virtually all constructed with the same design philosophies, often even with interoperable systems—like the 120mm Rheinmetall tank barrels shared between the Abrams and Leopard series.
Also, for the sake of thoroughness and to establish context, Spiegel explains that the ‘report’ was taken from a lecture given to junior officers of the Bundeswehr by a ‘deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev’:
The paper, which is available to SPIEGEL, is a transcript of a lecture given to around 200 junior officers of the German Armed Forces in Delitzsch, Saxony. The speaker was the deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kyiv, who spoke at the end of January about the experiences of the Ukrainian armed forces in the fight against the Russian war of aggression. He spoke in clear terms about the problems the Ukrainians had with German weapons in combat. An army officer eagerly took notes in order to use the findings for training in the Bundeswehr.
Spiegel minces no words when they declare that the attaché’s report is in large part “devastating”.
The clearest example is Germany’s very advanced—but over-designed—PhZ 2000 self-propelled artillery gun.
For example, although the Panzerhaubitze 2000 is an “outstanding weapon system”, it is “so technically vulnerable that its suitability for war is highly questionable”. Although the Leopard 1A5 main battle tank has proven to be “reliable” at the front, the Ukrainians “often only use it as makeshift artillery due to its weak armor”. And with the newer Leopard 2A6, the cost of maintenance is so high that repairs at the front are often not possible.
To witness it in action is to behold a marvel of engineering:
Well, here’s a Ukrainian one jamming in action:
But just as many in the Russian sphere had long suspected, such ‘dazzling’ workmanship and technology usually leads to high maintenance and reliability costs, as anyone who’s owned a BMW can probably attest.
There have even been claims that one of the PhZ 2000’s most vaunted capabilities, that of the Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact (MRSI), remains unused in the war because firing so many rounds in such quick succession quickly wears out the ‘delicate’ barrel.
Recall that last year, I fielded a similar report about the French Caesar which stated that due to the massive unit cost of the system, it was relegated to being used only sparingly in a ‘sniper’ style scoot-and-shoot role, lowering its effectiveness. There’s even been a growing sentiment around the fact that towed artillery guns have made a comeback, and are now ‘preferable’ to self-propelled guns in the modern style of warfare, given their ability to remain concealed, lower heat signature—owing to having no engine—smaller profile, etc. Some have even gone on to proclaim that ‘scoot-and-shoot’ tactics are dead given that the preponderance of drones now makes it safer to stay concealed in one place rather than attempt moving, which only immediately exposes you to drone ISR.
One Russian analyst’s take:
Thus, the technologically advanced Panzerhaubitze-2000 self-propelled gun and the Leopard-2A6 tank are extremely capricious, and any technical malfunction often cannot be corrected in the field. As a result, for the AFU is more popular on the battlefield simple early "Leopard-1A5" and the same old American self-propelled gun M-109A3, which was tested in battles.
Due to the weaker dynamics at the front, towed artillery has a number of advantages over self-propelled guns, including camouflage and survivability. We have a similar picture. The high-tech Msta-S self-propelled gun appears less and less frequently in reports and on the front line. The towed "Hyacinth-B" becomes the main howitzer at the front. For the same reason, we will never see "Armata" on the battlefield. Well, except only for PR.
The Spiegel report goes on to touch on other systems, including IRIS-T and Patriot air defense, which it calls “unfit for war” due to the carrier vehicles being “too old” and lacking spare parts. There’s a reason many Russian systems have interoperable vehicles; for instance, seen here is an MZKT-7930 which can hoist everything from Bal coastal defense missiles, 96L6E radar for the S-400, Uragan MLRS, and even Iskander missile launcher—as well as many other things:
With this type of modular design concept, there are plenty of spare parts to go around.
The most damning concluding statement from the article:
In summary, the paper is very clear: "Hardly any large German device is fully suitable for war".
Ouch.
And this, by the way, comes only days after Bloomberg published its own devastating report about a German drone project for Ukraine.
The essential rundown is that a “high tech” kamikaze drone that was meant to be the German ‘Lancet’ turned out to be a total fraud, as Ukrainian commanders found it to have subpar electronics, warheads, etc., after taking it apart.
The following summary is a must-read:
Bloomberg has published a critical article about the German startup Helsing, which produces kamikaze drones HX-2 and HF-1 for Ukraine.
The company started with a plan to create AI-powered software that could process and integrate data from military sensors into a single network. The company grew quickly and raised much of its initial funding from Spotify’s Daniel Ek, who invested €100 million. In its first year, the company opened offices in France and the UK.
Helsing soon began to strike deals with defense contractors and bid for military contracts, mostly in Germany. That’s where it had its strongest connections: co-founder and co-CEO Gunnbert Scherf had spent two years working for the defense ministry under Ursula von der Leyen.
In 2022, when the German government created a special €100 billion defense fund and significant funds began to flow into the sector, Helsing merged with Rheinmetall. However, at the end of 2024, the agreement was terminated because “the partnership did not progress to the stage of technical cooperation.”
Investors, military experts and former employees are concerned about whether the startup can justify its €5 billion valuation. The company has been described as overly secretive about its product development and overly confident in public statements about its technology.
Last November, Helsing struck a deal with Ukrainian startup Terminal Autonomy to outfit 4,000 low-cost drones with Helsing's new Altra software. The drone was named the AQ 100 Bayonet (HF-1).
Ukrainian military personnel who received the HF-1 complain about a weak warhead, unreliable and complex software, and inflated cost.
"We are talking about a product that is made of cheap components and sold as cutting-edge technology," said a serviceman with the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces, whose unit received 120 HF-1s in February. "I can assure you because I took them apart." He said "a product like that costs no more than 100,000 hryvnia (€2,200). And it costs €16,700, which is prohibitively expensive."
On March 21, a post was published on the Facebook page of Ukrainian military man Oleksandr Karpyuk, in which the HF-1 drone was described as having a “shitty” warhead and a “very primitive guidance system.”
The company charges an unusually high premium for its software, adding thousands of euros to each device. Officials at one of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have also raised concerns about the price, but the company is not under investigation. Helsing’s Simon Bruynjes declined to provide details on the HF-1’s pricing, but rejected Karpyuk’s claims that each drone costs 18,000 euros as inaccurate and exaggerated.
In February, the company announced that it could produce 1,000 HX-2 drones per month and planned to send 6,000 of them to Ukraine as part of an order from the German government. However, the German Defense Ministry said it had not yet made any financial commitment to the order.
Military Informant
Well, what else is new when it comes to NATO toys?
That being said, like some of my more extreme colleagues, I don’t take the view that all NATO equipment is a priori junk. For instance, earlier in the week the Russian 38th Research Institute published their frank results for tests of the captured M2 Bradley. The Ministry of Defense institute found the Bradley to be superior to the BMP-3 in a number of areas, in their opinion. Namely they found its accuracy and armor to be better—things long known to most, particularly given the Bradley’s much heavier weight, in regard to the armor.
However most pro-UA rejoicers glossed over the report’s statement that the BMP-3’s overall firepower was greater than the Bradley’s, given its additional 100mm cannon and ability to fire ATGM missiles on the move, which the Bradley cannot do.
Furthermore, the BMP-3’s maneuverability is much greater. Coincidentally a new video appeared of a Ukrainian Bradley being badly beaten by the Swedish CV90 in a drag race, demonstrating the Bradley’s sluggish performance:
And of course, few bothered to post the much more damning second part of the report from the same institute, comparing the Russian flagship T-90M to the captured Leopard 2A5—which some said was actually the 2A6:
The report found the T-90M superior in virtually every category, including—most shockingly—the T-90M’s fire-control and detection capabilities, i.e. the quality of its optics.
Comparative analysis showed that the T-90M tank outperforms the Leopard 2A5 in key TTCs, primarily due to the following technical solutions:
In Terms of Firepower:
Increased detection and identification range of targets by the tank commander and gunner-operator in night and challenging conditions up to 3,300 meters due to the T-90M’s modern fire control system, surpassing the Leopard 2A5’s effective night firing range;
The T-90M is equipped with a guided weapon system, enabling engagement of targets at ranges up to 5,000 meters;
Enhanced area of effect and personnel damage capability due to the T-90M’s remote detonation system for high-explosive fragmentation shells, absent on the Leopard 2A5;
The T-90M ensures shorter preparation and firing time for the first shot and a higher rate of fire due to the use of an automatic loader and target tracking system.
In Terms of Protection:
Protection of the frontal projection against tandem-warhead ATGMs due to the T-90M’s “Relikt” dynamic protection system;
The T-90M offers the option to install an active protection system for all-around defense against anti-tank threats.
Read the full tank report to see other comparisons the institute did, such as T-72B3M vs. Ukrainian T-72AG and T-64BV. Also, here is the full original Russian report.
The author of the above translation of the report is a known pro-Ukrainian Russophobe who condemned the Russian institute for glossing over many nuances. To an extent I would agree; for instance, in the T-90M vs. Leopard comparison, there are many more interesting and critical systems that could have been compared, such as the tanks’ communications and integrated battle management systems, which give the tanks networked battlefield ‘awareness’ of blue and red forces. Also, other passive defensive systems like the T-90M’s Shtora-1 laser detector (yes, the T-90M still has the Shtora, they took out the dazzlers from the T-90A but retained the laser detectors), which autonomously detects illuminators like those used in ATGMs and then fires off countermeasures like smoke grenades in automatic mode, as well as rotating the turret in the direction of the threat, etc.—none of which the Leopard has.
Ultimately, today’s findings merely reinforce what I’ve been writing about since the beginning. Not that Russian weapons are magically “better” than those of the West—in fact, in many, if not most, circumstances they are slightly subpar on a purely one-to-one basis. But they are generally made with a design philosophy which reflects actual total war, rather than some combination of MIC corporate profit maximizing with the shift toward ‘counter insurgency’, which mostly privileges high-cost, high-precision weaponry.
But as I explained in the below article, this does not mean Russia merely makes “cheaper” weapons, but rather the entire design philosophy revolves around weaponry which can be picked up and used effectively by ‘relatively untrained’ conscripts, given that a total or ‘people’s war’ scenario presupposes that high casualties will attrit much of the initial highly trained ‘professional’ corps, leaving farmers and miners to handle weaponry meant for taking out tanks and planes. The same goes for the ability to repair these weapons on the fly, in DIY fashion, once your logistics rear has been badly ravaged by war. NATO weaponry, for the most part, would be incapable of being serviced once the logistics rear is even slightly degraded.
In The Spirit Of Russian 'Total War'
An important distinction has been long overdue in the making, as pertains to a topic of much confusion and misinterpretation to a great many people.
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As a last timely last corollary to all the above, we have today’s news that an F-16 “game changer” was shot down by Russian missiles:
It was confirmed by both the BBC above, and Ukraine’s own official Air Force command account:
BBC claims the following:
According to Air Force sources, Ivanov's plane was allegedly shot down by a Russian missile.
"In total, the Russians fired three missiles at the plane. It was either a guided anti-aircraft missile from the S-400 ground-based system, or an R-37 air-to-air missile,"the source said.
The R-37 is typically carried by the Su-35s.
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A new report from Uralvagonzavod:
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Lastly, speaking of expensive NATO weaponry, it was just announced that another of the much-vaunted American hypersonic missile projects has now been cancelled:
Just a week ago Popular Mechanics declared Russia as ahead in the hypersonic race:
The subheading correctly notes:
I recall a time when the Western press world was a jamboree of jeering about Russian hypersonics not “actually” being hypersonic, for a laundry list of arbitrary reasons.
Don’t worry, Trump’s tariffs will surely fix that. Oh wait—Newsweek reports:
The fate of the project to produce the latest American F-47 fighter jets depends on supplies of rare earth metals from China, which Beijing has already imposed restrictions on, writes Newsweek.
"Beijing is in a position of strength, controlling materials critical to the U.S. defense industry. China... has imposed export restrictions on rare earth metals that are key to the fighter jet that will be the backbone of the U.S. Air Force's next-generation fleet. Trump has touted the F-47 as a successor to the F-22 Raptor. But the viability of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program to build the fighter jets depends heavily on materials that China produces," the publication writes.
As the newspaper notes, we are talking about such light and heavy rare earth metals as samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium.
Well, there’s always Greenland.
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Would never have guessed that!
Whenever self-claimed expert write in the media about weaponsystems that are invincible, me and my colleagues start to discuss the topic from perspective of usability. We often find the ridiculed Soviet or, nowadays, the Russian solutions much more suitable for long duty and real harsh conditions. It is one thing to do stunts and piruetts on Grafenwöhr, another to survive on a real battlefield. People with deep knowledge of mechanics that have studied Russian T-55, 64 ,72 and 80 tell me convincingly that Russian ingenuity should be admired and taken as a guidance for building their own variants.
Who ever has seen a Kamaz truck moving through Siberia must aknowledge that Russian are masters in a number of fields. This War has proved the efficency of Russian material. It was a pity that Russia left so many Aircraft, Helicopters and Tanks to Ukraine in the 90ies.
Just a reminder that Putin softly announced Russian hypersonic missile capability in 2004--21 years ago. They are now basic front-line weapons. Soon we'll see atomic batteries powering microwave energy weapons that fry the electronics of unshielded targets. Russia already has an EW system that disrupts aircraft avionics. Imagine cruising along at Mach 1 and having all your screens go blank. At some point they'll figure out how to disable fly-by-wire. One point not emphasized enough are the production numbers--NATO cannot keep pace at all.