The German automobile concern Volkswagen is ready to start the production of weapons, as announced by its CEO Oliver Blume.
Such a statement, as it writes Telegraph due to the fact that car exports have decreased significantly, production capacity is not 100% loaded, and the German defense industry has received the green light for growth without budget constraints under the EU’s ReArm Europe plan. And when it comes to Volkswagen’s capabilities, it’s an industrial giant with an annual revenue of more than 320 billion euros and more than 660 thousand employees at more than 130 manufacturing plants around the world.
And on the part of News Hub, we note that Volkswagen is already in the defense business, but somewhere “half a little finger”, given its volumes of civilian products. The fact is that this concern is subordinated to the Traton Group (formerly Volkswagen Truck & Bus AG), which owns the well-known MAN. The latter has a joint venture with Rheinmetall – Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles, which manufactures and supplies HX military trucks to the army.
At the same time, it is worth recalling that against the backdrop of the same decline in demand for cars, Rheinmetall will begin to produce weapons and ammunition at two factories where car parts were produced. And to understand the decline in demand over the past five years, it fell from 15.1 million to 10.6 million cars in the EU alone.
At the same time, we are currently talking only about the possibility, and not about specific plans and decisions for the production of certain types of weapons or military equipment at Volkswagen. Moreover, as Blum characterized it, this is currently only an open question, and the initiative itself may come from the defense companies themselves.
And obviously, Volkswagen is not going to become a final manufacturer of weapons and military equipment, develop its own models of tanks, self-propelled guns or, possibly, aircraft. The position voiced by the management rather indicates that Volkswagen is ready to produce components for weapons. And if we take the topic closest to Volkswagen, then this is about armored and automotive equipment.
In particular, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, need engines and transmissions that Volkswagen will definitely be able to manufacture. Axles, suspensions, fuel systems, power supply systems, generators and much, much more are needed, for the production of which Volkswagen has production equipment and qualified personnel.
And in this way, it is really possible to achieve a fairly rapid increase in the pace of production of weapons and military equipment. But this, of course, depends on the availability of appropriate financial resources to pay for extended orders, as well as, oddly enough, the desire of defense companies to redistribute them to another player.