For about two years, Volkswagen AG has been working on the idea of using free production capacity at the plant in the city of Osnabrück to produce weapons, or rather, non-lethal components for them with no significantly reformatting existing capacities.
Although back in May of this year, they began to announce the conclusion of an agreement between Volkswagen AG and the Israeli Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to which Germany is to begin production of components of the Iron Dome air defense system, it has not yet been concluded.
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This does not mean the production of missiles or components for them, but just trucks, launcher elements and generators for the Iron Dome version, which the Bundeswehr could potentially order as part of the European Sky Shield initiative.
But as it turned out, even such plans were thwarted by Qatar. According to Bloomberg, this country continues to block any cooperation between Volkswagen and Rafael. It does this as it is one of the important shareholders of the German automaker. The Qatar Investment Authority owns more than 10% of Volkswagen and controls 17% of the voting rights.
To circumvent such a blockade by the Qataris, as the publication notes, an option is currently being worked out when part of the plant in the city of Osnabrück will be separated and transferred to the ownership of the local government of Lower Saxony.
The publication reports on the development of such a scenario for Volkswagen to form a joint venture with Rafael. While, according to Bloomberg, spokespeople for Rafael and Volkswagen declined to comment, something were partially confirmed by the local authorities' statement on "Lower Saxony is currently examining how it might participate in a potential future industrial solution for the Osnabrück site". It is believed that the decision on such a restructuring of Volkswagen AG may be made on September 4 of this year, during the next auto giant's supervisory-board meeting.
That is, in general, the entire decision on the part of Volkswagen AG regarding the production of weapons, paradoxically, is not to produce weapons... At the same time, the separation of part of the capacity from the company is due to the fact that otherwise the plant in Osnabrück will soon be out of work, as the production of the T-Roc model in the convertible version will be discontinued there in the summer of next year.
It is not excluded that VolkswagenAG, which is actively fighting the crisis against the background of competition with Chinese electric cars, in case of success in solving the problem with this plant, will expand the experience to other free production lines.
As Defense Express reported, earlier Volkswagen secretly built two military vehicle prototypes in just four months, but said it does not wanted to produce weapons
.
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