Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

Ryuu96 said:

crissindahouse said:

France really has to step up their military help for Ukraine (Italy as well). Just checked their equipment and they have a lot. Some hundred Leclerc in storage. Thousands of kinda modern IFVs and APCs and so on. And how big is their military support for Ukraine since the war began? 400 million..

Every country could help more but considering how the Eastern European countries already gave like everything away they could, especially France and Italy really need to step up their game looking at the amount of vehicles which Ukraine loses now. Countries like Poland just don't have hundreds of Soviet tanks anymore which they gave Ukraine the first year of the war

Russia's industry is in full war mode now and our politicians are still scared of spending more than the minimum. You see Macron everywhere but in the end it's almost no difference with or without France.

Agreed...You can say stuff about Germany at least having a...not so prepared military, but France is on paper the strongest EU military power and I feel like they could be doing a lot more than they are doing. Like...France should be leading the charge, not UK, Lol. France shouldn't need UK to move first before they send LeClerc's (which they still haven't) and where is SCALP.

Every Western country should do more because they live in the luxury of having the Eastern European countries sitting between them and Russia, who is going to take the blunt of Russia's force should they ever attack? Eastern Europe.

And France shows very little desire to help America with Taiwan too, at the same time, France keeps saying about how EU should remove its dependency on America and increase their military investment but France isn't showing they can be a leader in that respect.

Macron frustrates me.

The last Leclerc tanks were built 15 years ago and the production line has been scrapped by now, so they can't be replaced. There was supposed to be a joint tank development between Germany and France, but with Germany moving forward with the Leopard 2A8 and the appearance of the Panther KF51 will certainly not have been beneficial to the MGCS program. And even if everything were going as planned, it would still have taken until 2035 before a replacement for the Leclerc would be in production.

Since there's no new French tank on the horizon due to the above and stored tanks are being used for parts, France really doesn't have much Leclerc that they can donate to Ukraine, at least not in running order. But since there are almost as many in storage as there are in active service, they should absolutely be able to restore some of them to working order and send them to Ukraine. On the other hand, asking the UK to move first could also be just to buy time to do just that while sticking it up to the brits...

That being said, they certainly have other vehicles they could send to Ukraine, most notably more VAB. France had 2500 of them before the war started and they are currently getting replaced by the VMBR Griffon and the lighter VMBR-L Serval, of which over 530 have been produced already taken together. Another option would be to finance the continued production of some VBCI (2) and send those to Ukraine. Granted, that will take some time before those would be ready, but it could be started now and then sent in smaller batches later on. Also, they have several reconnaissance drones that have been replaced recently, and though they are in low numbers, Ukraine would certainly love having those at hand.

Finally, considering the situation in Ukraine, there's one more thing that could help a lot: France is developing and building several mine-clearing robots. Sending some of these to clear those minefields could even be considered humanitarian aid, as it would help avoid civilians being hit by them once the front moved away from where they are buried.