End user certificates and all that for arms trading, yeah, I get that. Why Germany would have agreed to such a restriction is another question. I suppose at the time the agreements were made, no one conceived of a case where Germany would transfer stuff to another nation (though unless the agreement exempted NATO nations one would think Germany would have been stupid to agree to not being able to send ammo to say Belgium or something).
Timex
19900
They got the US military to get into it if shit really hits the fan, so they can afford to have these kinds of massive limitations.
JonRowe
19902
Yes, the NAMMO ammo from NAMMO
ShivaX
19903
Everything I’ve seen says it has Oerlikon GDFs, which were used in a lot of NATO stuff and use standard NATO ammunition.
Now they might have specialized rounds that are more effective. But as near as I can tell the main ammo is High-Explosive Incendiary, which is pretty basic as far as ammo goes.
I think Turkey still uses a variant of it for that matter.
Maybe WHAMMO would contract to do it!
RichVR
19905
As long as it goes BLAMMO.
JonRowe
19906
Yeah, but triple-A is something that basically never gets used outside of a full on peer-peer conflict, and there have not been a ton of those, so I got to imagine nobody is holding on to tons of reserves. And Ukraine is using the specialized non-AP version of the rounds.
It isn’t an impossible problem to solve though, if it is NATO standard, there are probably plenty of places to spool up production if needed.
It is important that AMMO only goes BLAMMO when it is supposed to.
schurem
19909
And being Anti Aircraft Artillery ammo, it needs to go BLAMMO only when they are in the close vincinity of their targets. They don’t need to hit it, but the sweetest variants will sense the proximity of their targets and go BLAMMO at just the right time. Very neat. Timed fuses also work, but not as snazzy as proximity fuses.
RichVR
19910
Very much like the ex when I would come home smelling like weed and alcohol.
Grifman
19911
The point wasn’t how many there are but how effective they are.
So they did in fact go ahead with this, if the US intel community has the right info.
The challenge is that even when we know what is going on, and have the technical means to interdict it, we really can’t because of the consequences. Which is understandable but very frustrating.
The hints that Ukraine is able to send saboteurs deep into Russia though does point perhaps to some opportunities.
ddtibbs
19914
They’re already in the ordnance business.
KevinC
19916
Their tanks and armored vehicles have been decimated as well but I don’t think the era of those is over either.
Turns out if you chuck CAS or tanks in alone and unsupported they tend to not fare well. Combined arms is a thing the Russians apparently haven’t developed.
OMG this again? Something something if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
JonRowe
19918
It isn’t combined arms being the problem, it is the fact that the Ukraine army is absolutely bristling with modern manpads.
Whatever combined arms program you are running is not going to protect you from manpads when performing cas.
In CAS you are supporting ground troops, who are fighting other ground troops. Troops that can carry manpads.
With the increase in technology and prevalence of powerful manpads, the Era of the CAS airplane may be over, and tactics will have to evolve.
The A-10 earned its keep in a conflict where the enemy had ancient manpads (if any) and allowed them to prowl the skies freely.
It appears this just cannot work in a modern conflict anymore.
