Succes schreef op 4 juli 2023 19:39:
Blitz Build: How Germany's Rheinmetall Is Cranking Up 24/7 Production To Arm Ukraine
Marder infantry fighting vehicles, Leopard 2 tanks, thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition: the armament company Rheinmetall is running flat-out, around-the-clock to supply Ukrainian forces. For the first time, Die Welt was granted access to the production floor at the Rheinmetall factory, which is churning out arms as quickly as it did during the depths of the Cold War
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Mass production of tank and artillery ammunition
A longhaired factory employee fastens detonators with the aid of an industrial robot, arming the ammunition in the process. The projectiles are then carefully placed into wooden crates and assembled onto palettes, dozens of which are awaiting their collection.
According to a manifest, 3431 units of this specific ammunition are to be assembled. For whom this order is meant is not listed, but Ukraine needs these projectiles for the Western tanks which NATO states have delivered to them over the past months.
Hundreds of 155-mm barrel grenade casings hang from an assembly line belt on the ceiling, resembling so many oversized raindrops, waiting to be polished, painted and filled with explosives, one hangar further on. Shift production is at its maximum capacity of three shifts per day.
In an internal presentation, Rheinmetall declared that “the re-stocking of inventory is the vital question of our time” and will probably prove to be also the vital question for their share prices. The company's planners estimate that Germany will have to recover ammunition worth €40 million by 2031.
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated just how much is needed in the worst case scenario: each day, Ukrainian forces fire about 18,000 155-mm shells. As a result, Rheinmetall has decided to increase its production levels to levels not seen since the1980s, and is planning to manufacture 600,000 shells annually by hiring hundreds of new employees for its site in Lower Saxony.
In addition to that, Rheinmetall is planning to take over Spanish ammunitions manufacturer Expal-Systems, for €1.2 billion, to be able to produce enough grenades. Old defense manufacturing technologies are still ready to produce brand-new weapons.
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It seems that, here in Unterlüss at least, nothing is left of the once palpable hesitancy of the German people, so clearly felt during the early months of the war.
The company´s message seems clear: armament production in Germany may have long been in a peaceful slumber, but its old capabilities are still here and can be woken up and put to work more easily than critics thought. The war in Ukraine has awoken a slumbering giant.
worldcrunch.com/focus/germany-weapons...