German Army's Sudden Mass Breakdown of Their Most Modern APCs

https://apnews.com/article/nato-technology-germany-d1206cb49d36f5fab1c9848fd99e67de

by cf100clunk • 4 years ago

11 11 4 years ago

cf100clunk• 4 years ago

DW's coverage of same: ''After a training exercise involving 18 state-of-the-art Puma infantry fighting vehicles, not a single one was left operational''

https://www.dw.com/en/technical-problems-plague-germanys-pum...

roey2009• 4 years ago

Can't help but notice that no timeframe was published. How long was the exercise? A month? A week? A day?

In any-case, whether the problems plaguing the Puma are fixable by retrofitting, or if a new design all together is necessary, is a real question with some effects to note.

After all, replacing electronic parts is completely different from replacing key mechanical systems or even sections of the hull.

It all depends on test's reports.

LarsAlereon• 4 years ago

From what I can Google it wasn't like there was one thing that broke on all the vehicles, more like each vehicle experienced some sort of failure. I did see electronics seemingly being too fragile to stand up to the concussion of gunfire being mentioned. So overall it seems fixable, and not exactly shocking for a complicated new project, but definitely embarrassing.

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

Seems like sabotage. Germany can surely engineer a functioning tank.

Glawen2• 4 years ago

Indeed, like they are able to produce a diesel engine meeting CARB requirements. Truth is that Germany is riding a lot on its reputation, but fail miserably a lot of times. It doesn't surprise me

rurban• 4 years ago

Seems like German planning and engineering for government officials. Wikipedia on the Puma gives a lot of history and explanations. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puma_(Sch%C3%BCtzenpanzer)#/la...

"enormous cost increases and the long delay. A large number of change requests and high bureaucratic requirements such as a total of 117 legal provisions and regulations to be observed, but also a large number of significant quality problems delayed delivery and drove up costs"
According to Ruprecht Horst von Butler (commander of the brigade's superior 10th Panzer Division), total failures were not to be expected because the Puma armored personnel carriers were "not overly stressed" during the exercise

rsj_hn2• 4 years ago

No matter the genius of German engineering, they are easily defeated by a bureaucrat with a long list of feature changes.

rasz• 4 years ago

All PzH 2000 in Ukraine broke down when used as advertised, turns out you cant shoot 6 rounds a minute or use >50 km range.

mrguyorama• 4 years ago

FYI, the way Germany works is that it has a very high threshold for "combat ready". Does "technical malfunction" include things like a headset breaking, or a radio link failing to sync up or other things?

It's probable that in an actual conflict, Germany would be able to safely and reasonably field more vehicles than what they usually list as "Combat Ready" because maybe the tail-light doesn't really matter if you have to actually defend your land.

Glawen2• 4 years ago

Deutsche Welle mentions a cable fire and turrets not working, which is far from tail light missing. What surprises me most is that it happens during an exercise in Germany, so not in rough weather like Russia or Africa, that does not bode well for the reliability of the "Pannenpanzer".

It is the same issue with their Eurofighter fleet, just a fraction of them are combat ready

rsj_hn2• 4 years ago

Western kit is designed to have a long list of feature checkboxes and complex requirements, yet breaks down easily, is difficult to operate and service, and is produced only in small batches with high unit costs.

In other words, it's designed to win contracts by a program administrator comparing checkboxes, but it's not designed to win wars.

To win wars you need huge quantities of munitions and solid delivery platforms that can be rapidly produced, are easy to use, robust in the field, simple to service, and extremely reliable. It doesn't matter if they don't have all the features, what matters is that you can rapidly bring them to bear in superior numbers against your enemy, who is constantly trying to disrupt your supply lines and is bringing their weapons to bear against you. Think of why the Kalashnikov was successful -- it was dead simple to produce, extremely durable, with fantastic price/performance ratios. You could literally flood the world with Kalashnikovs. Even child soldiers can use them. Another example is western artillery, which simply can't handle the fire rate of Russian artillery and must be taken offline. Why? Because in order to have the best specs, we fire heavier shells at higher pressures even if it means we can only fire substantially fewer rounds per piece and have higher failure rates. Similarly our tanks are also much heavier than Russian tanks with a lot more features, but they break down often, require much more fuel per mile, take much longer to service, much harder to transport (due to added size/weight), take much longer to produce, and we have a fraction of them. Yet despite all that, they don't have any real armor advantage.

The idea of planning for sustained conflicts - meaning multi-year conflicts with hundreds of thousands or millions of well armed troops on both sides that need to be constantly resupplied and equipped with massive flows of arms -- this is something NATO doesn't do, since it assumes massive air superiority and short police actions against undeveloped opponents. I'm not sure whether this is due to a philosophy that has decided that there will be no more big wars, and so there's no need to equip for them, or whether it's just administrative drift, but right when the world is heating up, NATO is completely unprepared for a major conflict. Despite spending trillions.

German Army's Sudden Mass Breakdown of Their Most Modern APCs

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