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Germany’s defence minister acknowledged Friday that countries like Canada — and to a lesser extent Ukraine — are in a tough spot when it comes to maintaining older variants of the Leopard 2 main battle tank and keeping them in the field.
Boris Pistorious, who visited Ottawa and met with his counterpart Defence Minister Bill Blair, was asked about the world-wide shortage of spare parts affecting the A4 model of the Leopard, the type overwhelmingly used by the Canadian Army.
It’s also the model which Canada, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Portugal all donated to Ukraine.
Media reports in Germany and elsewhere in Europe last winter said that many of the Leopards donated to Ukraine — of which 67 were A4 variants — were out of commission, either due to battle damage or a shortage of spares.
The problem, said Pistorious, is that there’s no production line to make spare parts for the A4. That’s something Canada has been quietly lobbying to change for months.
“We can easily provide more spare parts for the Leopard tank 2A6, for example, but for 2A4 there is no production line,” Pistorious said during a media availability at Department of National Defence headquarters.
“So we have to collect those spare parts all over the world and try to get more of them by … I don’t know how fast it’s possible to make, to start with a new production line.”
In January, German Green Party lawmaker Sebastian Schäfer told Der Spiegel that Ukraine has “very few” Leopard tanks left and some are no longer operational. He made the comments after visiting a repair facility in Lithuania where he was briefed about the dearth of spare parts.
Schäfer wrote to the German manufacturers to tell them that “only a very small number of the battle tanks delivered can still be used by Ukraine.”
On Friday, Pistorious could only offer a partial solution to the problem.
“At the moment, this is a particular challenge for those countries who used to use Leopard 2A4 tanks in their recent past,” he said. “We have been using only the Leopard tank 2A6, we have spare parts for that, and we are delivering spare parts for that to Ukraine too.”
After a lot of hesitation, Germany delivered 18 Leopard 2 A6s to Ukraine a year ago in March as part of its military assistance package.
The Canadian Army has roughly 54 Leopard A4s and A4Ms variants, as well as 20 A6 models in its inventory. It also has faced a shortage of spare parts, which has sidelined and in some cases limited the use of the tanks in training.
Last fall, CBC News reported on how high prices and corporate rivalries helped fuel the shortage of spare parts and hobbled efforts to set up a new tank repair facility in Poland for Ukraine’s donated Leopards.
Critics have pointed the finger at the German manufacturers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (which makes the chassis) and Rheinmetall (which makes the cannon) and said their refusal to share the intellectual property rights for the various components of the Leopard A4s with other companies has caused the parts shortage and driven up the cost of repairs.
Federal officials say Canada has been working behind the scenes with Germany to establish a production line to deliver spares for Leopard A4s. They were unable to say where the discussions stand.
Also on Friday, Blair announced Canada will contribute $76 million to Germany’s Immediate Action on Air Defence (IAAD) initiative in support of Ukraine. The initiative — essentially a pool of money to which allied countries contribute — is designed to quickly source and deliver air defence systems for Ukraine.
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