Posted on 04/02/2023 4:35:27 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
“if Russia is ever stupid enough to attack Poland, you can be sure the Poles will have a hot welcome awaiting ...”
Every time I hear or see a comment like that I think of the gallant WWII Polish army fighting Nazi tanks with their horseback army. It’s amazing how brave they were and the fight they put up.
So from a historical perspective, I can see why they would want the most advanced tank around. However with today’s precision guided munitions coming from miles off, these new fangled tanks will be cluttering the battle field as destroyed hulks much the same as the M47/48’s they replaced.
There are two death traps I never wanted anything to do with, one being a tank, the other a ship.
Poland has one of the toughest armies in Europe today ... they would chew up Russia quite nicely
but to reach Poland, Russia would have to get more than 100 miles into Ukraine, and they can’t seem to do even that ...
This is not what the corrupt DC Military Industrial Complex oligarchs had in mind when their administration lackeys started Cold War II last year. General Dynamics might have to reroute some of the graft they are spreading around the Uniparty. If we are going push WWIII for profits, let’s ensure that some of that cash trickles down to Lima, Ohio workers. The big guy needs quash this deal.
Tanks are beautiful pieces of equipment (especially the K9), but I’d never be caught in one.
This is the NATO build-up that President Trump and conservatives had called for.
Poland is approaching double the spending that is recommended.
I love that they are sporting Ma Deuces, a weapon which is over 100 years old now.
Ping
Trump just asked them to pay their dues for being in NATO. He also sent Ukraine defensive weapons.
You are full of it.
XFINITY has just announced they will come out with a 10g tank.
It wasn’t about dues, it was about spending 2% of GDP on military defense.
We are getting results as NATO nations are increasing their budgets and weapons manufacturing.
Why the anger and hostility?
Poland is fast becoming the hub of the NATO defensive alliance in Europe and that is pretty much the worst case scenario for the Kremlin and it’s fellow travelers. Poland doesn’t need the 1000 tanks they have on order so no doubt hundreds of them will end up in Ukraine sooner or later. Putin just can’t stop losing.
It was about dues.
Poland’s gotten a lot of investment since the fall of the Iron Curtain and they have been desperately modernizing over that time period. Russia didn’t.
Poland’s got an interesting and rapidly growing tech sector and is making a lot of advanced electronics for Euro cars and aircraft.
That said, something to keep in mind is that *we* can’t make a 4th generation tank either and we just keep tacking stuff on the increasingly aged Abrams design.
The counter to that: Active Protection Systems - which the K2 absolutely does have, and it does work.
This Poland-South Korea tank deal was announced about September, 2022. The first K2 tank shipment arrived in Poland a month or three ago. The initial order of about 180 tanks will probably be delivered by the end of 2023. Purchase options if exercised expand the acquisition to about 500 tanks total.
A memorandum of understanding was agreed to also in 2022 to establish a joint venture to manufacture about 1000 additional K2s at an existing tank factory in Poland. I have not read elsewhere that this elevated from a memorandum to a signed agreement.
Left out of the OP article is that Poland is also purchasing from South Korea FA-50 light attack planes and self propelled artillery. Poland is heading to be the largest Western Europe military and 3rd largest in NATO.
My opinions…
A good deal for both countries and it gives notice to the Pentagon’s corrupt and totally political domestic arms industrial complex.
My apologies, dues were mentioned and adjusted, my focus has always been on the fighting capability of NATO and I was focused on the more important defense spending that each NATO nation does rather than the administration costs of the headquarters.
That was also the focus of President Trump as he tried to get every member to meet their 2% of GDP defense spending goal. Trump of course started by pushing for 4% an amount that even America doesn’t meet with our military needs that are far more than just Europe.
“BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told NATO leaders on Wednesday they should increase their defense spending to 4 percent of their country’s economic output, double the group’s current goal of two percent.
NATO allies shrugged off the demand as part and parcel of Trump’s brash push for allies to spend more on their own defense at a summit in Brussels, with a quip from the alliance’s chief that it should aim to meet its goal before reaching further.
“We should first get to 2 pct,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, adding that eight of the 29 allies were meeting that target, while others had a plan to do - turning a leaf on years of defense budget cuts.
Striking a strident tone at the summit, Trump’s aspirational target of 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) was above the United States own spending on defense.
The United States, the world’s biggest military power, spent some 3.57 percent on defense last year, according to NATO figures.”
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