Japan seems to be considering following South Korea's example in terms of lending the United States artillery ammunition in order to allow the US to transfer more of their own stocks to Ukraine.
There's a lot of interesting implications about this when considered in relation to the
American and the
EU own efforts being made to ramp up artillery shell production. Volume in artillery fire has been one of Russia's big advantages in this conflict, but by now even they are needing to employ a lot of shell rationing similar to the Ukrainians in order to prioritize their artillery fires. I kinda of wonder long term how long Russia can maintain their artillery advantage given the limits of their own MIC, and limited number of partners willing to supply them large scale stock.
edit: So this is very interesting. Apparently due to so much demand for replacement heavy equipment getting donated to Ukraine,
Israel is in the pretty far into an arms deal with two separate country (one of which is in Europe) to potentially export their surplus Mark 2/3 Merkava Main Battle tanks. News is splashing across a lot of english language new sources, and an Israeli Hebrew source
is putting the number of tanks in this deal as over 200.
While I'm not sure this translates into Merkava tanks appearing in Ukraine itself, it seems like there are a lot of countries who could hand over more of their Soviet Era tanks if decent quality Merkava tanks could be slotted in as replacements.