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Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

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Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#21

Post by drob518 »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Germany is producing weapons to fight the last war. WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this. Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the…

It’s rare for military technology to completely “move on” to other things. Typically, the new just gets added to the old. So, yea, drones are new, but drones don’t cause artillery to become completely obsolete, in the same way that aerial bombs didn’t cause artillery to become obsolete. You’ll end up spending on both.

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#22

Post by [deleted] »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #16
tristanj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany (currently) isn't even in the top 5 for military drone manufacturing. The ranking of number of military drones produced per year goes Ukraine (millions), China (millions), Russia (hundreds of thousands), Iran (hundreds of thousands), then the US (tens of thousands), followed by Turkey and Israel (mid-thousands). German manufacturing is in the low thousands per year. This is a major national security issue, Ge…

Attack Germany, see what happens.

[deleted]

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#23

Post by heyheyhouhou »

German industry is changing a lot loosing against China, so they have been moving to war related stuff for the past years. Personally, I know a bunch of people who were offered get transferred from VW to a military drone company.

On one side I understand that manufacturing a lot of weapons could be somehow a protection for the future, but also Germany provides a lot of ammunition to Israel that is killing thousands of innocents in Gaza and Lebanon. Germany is friend of Israel despite many people disliking it in Germany (they are still waving Israeli flags in many official places).

Also, weapons will lead to more weapons, more violence and more war, specially if you have investors behind willing to see their shares going up...

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#24

Post by [deleted] »

heyheyhouhou wrote: post #23

German industry is changing a lot loosing against China, so they have been moving to war related stuff for the past years. Personally, I know a bunch of people who were offered get transferred from VW to a military drone company. On one side I understand that manufacturing a lot of weapons could be somehow a protection for the future, but also Germany provides a lot of ammunition to Israel that is killing thousands o…

[deleted]

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#25

Post by LarsDu88 »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Germany is producing weapons to fight the last war. WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this. Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the…

You haven't seen the drone videos where they drop artillery shells from drones? Or the vast webs of fiber optic cables strewn across crater filled Ukrainian farmland from the necessitated by the massive amount of drone jamming and crowding of RF channels?

Artillery is still queen of the battlefield regardless of what highlight reels from r/CombatFootage would have you believe.

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#27

Post by cjbgkagh »

Havoc wrote: post #19
tristanj wrote: post #3

Germany is producing weapons to fight the last war. WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this. Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the…

You need both. See Ukraine needing mountains of artillery despite the pre war consensus being that the artillery era is over The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring

The same pre war consensus also thought that war with Russia was unthinkable, it is Russia that focused on artillery tactics so the two assumptions went hand in hand.

It’s my opinion that artillery is out of date and by the end of the Ukraine war they will be even more out of date. It’s hard to make artillery more cost effective than it already is yet still many more opportunities to increase drone effectiveness.

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#28

Post by bee_rider »

arjie wrote: post #17

I always wonder about these production numbers in the military. The US has a large military complex and Germany is an industrial power and North Korea is a small military autocracy suffering from raw material shortages, but Googling around I see[0]: > The expert also said that the North’s annual production estimate of 2 million 152-millimeter artillery shells is premised on peacetime manufacturing rates. But here Ger…

Maybe the article is counting the “medium-caliber ammunition” as well; Germany seems to have boosted that quite significantly.

> medium-caliber ammunition from 800,000 to 4,000,000, and artillery shells from 70,000 to 1,100,000

Of course it isn’t really obvious that this would be an apples-to-apples comparison (I suspect it isn’t). Then again it isn’t obvious that a NK artillery shell is an apples-to-apples comparison to a German one (I’d hope the German ones are a bit more modern).

Context is needed but I suspect the full context is complicated—the US doesn’t shoot as many artillery shells just because of the way we do war, so it isn’t obvious that in-context this is a meaningful metric anyway.

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#29

Post by tristanj »

Havoc wrote: post #19
tristanj wrote: post #3

Germany is producing weapons to fight the last war. WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this. Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the…

You need both. See Ukraine needing mountains of artillery despite the pre war consensus being that the artillery era is over The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring

This is more of a doctrine issue. Ukraine was given mountains of artillery by western nations, so naturally they were going to use it. But artillery has lower RoI than drones, drones are cheaper, more accurate, more versatile, and have longer range. It makes the most sense to heavily invest in the better technology drones, not artillery. If we look at what Ukraine spends its military budget on, >50% of its military spending goes towards drones. Only 15% is going towards artillery & ammunition.

We can also look at present wars to view where the trend is going. I'd estimate that during the latest conflict between Israel/Iran/US + gulf states, approximately zero artillery shells were fired*.

During a hypothetical US/China/Taiwan + Korean/Japan conflict, I'd expect this number to be similar.

*excluding rocket artillery such as HIMARS

Re: Germany has become the largest ammunition producer in the world

#30

Post by [deleted] »

tristanj wrote: post #3

Germany is producing weapons to fight the last war. WWIII will be fought with drones, not artillery. They should invest part of this money into becoming the leader in drone manufacturing, not this. Since it's Germany, the money for this manufacturing ramp-up was probably allocated around 2023-2024, when older artillery was needed and before drone superiority was obvious. So maybe this is the expected outcome. If the…

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