Hi David! Congrats to your decision to writing a substack (which I know is only an add-on to the other things you wrote and are writing currently).
Concerning the training question, I don't have an answer, only some side-comments: first, Poland, while complaining a lot and very loudly about not being able to send tanks because of the needed German permission didn't in fact formally ask for this permission until last week. I understand, that it might be a normal procedure to first talk about such things among governments, and then follow this up with formalities, but in this case putting out the formal request would have made Poland's loud claims more credible. Why didn't they do it? I can only speculate, and my first guess is that they were in fact as reluctant to be the 'only' one to send those tanks as everybody else. Or more precisely, they explicitely wanted the cover of Germany sending tanks as much as Germany wanted U.S. cover.
On the training question, one of the first things the new German minister of defense said, was 'the Ukrainians can already start to train on the Leopards' (even before the decision by the German government to send tanks).
Finally, what I gathered from expert talks, the most challenging part is not to operate the tanks, it's more to be capable - and have the logistics availabe - to repair the tanks on the spot.
The more cynical answer is that this is an election year in Poland, and Poland's ruling party - the PiS - exploits anti-German among Poles sentiment to win elections, and thus likes to pick highly public unnecessary verbal fights with Germany in order to gin up nationalist sentiment. They did this of course with the patriot missile defense systems too (publicly requested Germany share its missile defense systems, then when Germany obliged, moved the goalposts and instead demanded they be sent to Ukraine, so as to preserve the grievance).
Hi David! Congrats to your decision to writing a substack (which I know is only an add-on to the other things you wrote and are writing currently).
Concerning the training question, I don't have an answer, only some side-comments: first, Poland, while complaining a lot and very loudly about not being able to send tanks because of the needed German permission didn't in fact formally ask for this permission until last week. I understand, that it might be a normal procedure to first talk about such things among governments, and then follow this up with formalities, but in this case putting out the formal request would have made Poland's loud claims more credible. Why didn't they do it? I can only speculate, and my first guess is that they were in fact as reluctant to be the 'only' one to send those tanks as everybody else. Or more precisely, they explicitely wanted the cover of Germany sending tanks as much as Germany wanted U.S. cover.
On the training question, one of the first things the new German minister of defense said, was 'the Ukrainians can already start to train on the Leopards' (even before the decision by the German government to send tanks).
Finally, what I gathered from expert talks, the most challenging part is not to operate the tanks, it's more to be capable - and have the logistics availabe - to repair the tanks on the spot.
Cheers, and enjoy your Sunday!
The more cynical answer is that this is an election year in Poland, and Poland's ruling party - the PiS - exploits anti-German among Poles sentiment to win elections, and thus likes to pick highly public unnecessary verbal fights with Germany in order to gin up nationalist sentiment. They did this of course with the patriot missile defense systems too (publicly requested Germany share its missile defense systems, then when Germany obliged, moved the goalposts and instead demanded they be sent to Ukraine, so as to preserve the grievance).