Palkom@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•Russia confirms it hit Swedish plant in Lutsk, saying it was a military targetEnglish
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1 year agoIt is a factory belonging to SKF, a swedish company that produces bearings. Famous for supplying bearings for use in tanks by almost every major power during ww2, and supply to the german side was finally cut off when SKF told the allies that the entire stock was for sale to anyone who paid. I believe the last payment was made by the US 10-15 years ago, finally settling the debt.
Since the war, SKF has grown into a very large supplier of the highest quality bearings, and saying its a factory making parts for weapons is a bit narrow. Bearings are used in most things that have rotating parts, and SKF is large in a lot of markets that aren’t weapons. Their product catalogue is well over a thousand pages, for example.
Just to underline what this comment is saying: this type of breakthrough was the wet dream of WW1. The race to the sea, where the western front was established, was based on finding a flank and turning it. That was the objective of most warfare up to that point, and it ended because they ran out of ground on which to turn a flank. Then they couldn’t meaningfully break through the defenses (or layers of, to be more accurate), like we see Ukraine doing in Kursk. If they turn the flank, they’ll have routing russians for days, and have achieved maneuver warfare again.