The German newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" in the material "Die schwierige Frage der Munition" ("The difficult question of ammunition") reported that the German government had previously approved the delivery to Ukraine of old Leopard 1 tanks stored by German industry enterprises - Rheinmetall Group (which has 88 Leopard 1A5 tanks previously removed from service Bundeswehr) and Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG, has 99 Leopard 1A5-DK tanks decommissioned by the Danish Army).
The Leopard 1A5-DK tank of the Danish Army during the Cold Grouse NATO exercise in 1995 (c) the Danish Armed Forces / olfi.dkHowever, there remains the problem of ammunition for the 105-mm guns of these tanks, which Germany has almost no left.
It is reported that the German side has applied for the purchase of 105 mm tank shells to Brazil (which has a large number of Leopard 1 tanks), but it still refuses to sell them.
The newspaper also reports that Ukraine has only about 30 thousand 35-mm shots left to the 37 Gepard anti-aircraft self-propelled guns previously transferred by Germany, which greatly limits the possibilities of their use. Therefore, the new German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius offered to buy 15 Gepard 1A2 ZSU and ammunition for them from Qatar, which bought them in Germany in 2020. Switzerland has so far refused to transfer shells of its own production for the Gepard ZSU.
It is reported that "in the medium term, starting in July," the problem with 35 mm shots should be solved by the new Rheinmetall group production facility in Unterlus in Lower Saxony. The Bundeswehr plans to order two batches of 150,000 rounds of 35 mm caliber (both fragmentation and sub-caliber) at this production facility for delivery to Ukraine.
A little earlier, a Danish web resource olfi.dk He said that the Danish government plans to buy, repair and send to Ukraine a "large double-digit number" of old Leopard 1A5-DK tanks, previously in service with the Danish army, and now in storage with the German company Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) in Flensburg. FFG reported that it currently has 99 Leopard 1A5-DK tanks in storage, purchased after their final decommissioning by the Danish army in 2005. FFG claimed that it could deliver 20 repaired tanks in three months, and 40 tanks in six months.
In total, Denmark once had 230 Leopard 1A5-DK tanks, which are actually a variant of the Leopard 1A3 with a welded turret, upgraded in the early 1990s to the level of the German Leopard 1A5.
The German magazine "Spiegel" confirmed that the official representative of the German government, Steffen Hebestreit, said in Berlin on February 3 that the German federal government had granted a license to export Leopard 1 main tanks to Ukraine. According to Spiegel, FFG has 29 Leopard 1A5-DK tanks mentioned, which are "already largely prepared for use."
Leopard 1A5-DK tanks, previously in service with the Danish Army, in storage of the German company Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) in Flensburg (c) Constanze Emde / DPA / DW