Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Gregor Spitzen
[REGNUM] The 100 billion euro special budget adopted back in April 2022 was intended to make the German Armed Forces “fit for war,” bringing the Bundeswehr out of a state of permanent degradation. However, the method of extinguishing a fire with banknotes, which had worked for many years in prosperous Germany, failed this time.
€100 billion is already running out, and the German army is still a pale shadow of its Cold War self.
SHORTAGE OF CLERKS, WELDERS AND IT SPECIALISTS
“More than €60 billion from the special fund has already been allocated to contracts, in other words, we have placed an order and are waiting for industry to fulfill it,” says Annette Lechnigk-Emden, head of the Bundeswehr procurement department, without specifying how much money is from the special fund fell specifically to German military-industrial complex enterprises.
The Bundeswehr managed to use a special fund to finance purchases that had been delayed for years. For example, to purchase new fighters, infantry fighting vehicles and ammunition. However, several representatives of the military industry warn that this is not enough to sustainably strengthen the armed forces and create an effective defense industry.
President of the Society for Security Policy (GSP) and former Defense Commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels acknowledges progress in equipping the Bundeswehr: “But we still see staff shortages in the procurement office, with the number of orders increasing many times over.”
That is, the German Ministry of Defense is currently not only unable to effectively rearm the army and recruit new recruits, but even to staff its own commissariat department with clerks.
In addition, the industry “still has supply bottlenecks” and the capacity of the German military-industrial complex has not yet been sufficiently increased in accordance with the international situation and the associated economic situation.
According to experts, the reason for this is that the federal budget “does not provide sufficient planned security.” Translated from bureaucratic German into colloquial Russian, this means that the market economy of the Federal Republic of Germany in a crisis could clearly benefit from such a relic of the times of the socialist GDR, which has died in the Bose, as a planned national economy.
It is precisely this planning that the companies of the German military-industrial complex lack.
“70–80% of German defense suppliers are medium-sized companies that require a planning horizon of 8–10 years,” says Martin Kroell managing director of Hamburg-based Bundeswehr supplier Autoflug.
Defense manufacturers need a signal that additional funds will be allocated to permanently increase capacity, and will not be a one-time event that does not justify investment in expansion of production: “Lots of personnel and capital are needed to return the industry to the productivity levels of the 1980s, when companies supplied the largest volumes of products. Today we lack armor steel welders, as well as software specialists for the digitalization of data transmission.”
WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO?
For a long time, the Bundeswehr had to cope with a shortage of funds. The government only changed its position after Scholz's "change of eras" speech in February 2022.
This year, Germany will spend about €20 billion from the special fund on top of the regular budget of €52 billion, thereby meeting NATO's target of 2% of GDP for defense spending for the first time.
Almost €35 billion has been earmarked for procurement, materiel maintenance and defense research, according to the government's 18th report published on Monday.
Planned projects include a new short-range air defense system, a heavy armored personnel carrier, a further development package for the Eurofighter, two F126 frigates and long-range artillery.
But the new pace of procurement cannot be sustained unless policymakers increase the defense budget in the long term, industry officials warn.
To keep military spending at 2% of GDP, the regular defense budget must be increased by at least €25 billion per year starting in 2028, when the special fund is spent.
The government is aware of the problems, but has not yet found a long-term funding model that goes beyond a special fund. The discussion about this is just beginning.
The creation of a second special fund would be one option to solve the problem, but this is likely to meet resistance from the Ministry of Finance, headed by the leader of the Free Democrats (FDP) Christian Lindner.
It all comes down to good old squabbles within the “traffic light coalition” again. Savings in the social budget planned by the FDP will never be spent on the SPD, which is strenuously building itself up as a progressive party of defenders of the working people, and many “greens,” even having turned from truly “green” pacifists into “olive-green” militarists, see even more the urgent need for priority investments in climate-neutral economic reorganization.
"RUSSIAN THREAT"
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) is confident that Germany “now has about five to eight years to catch up – both in the armed forces and in industry and society.”
According to government military experts, it is during this time that Russia will compensate for its losses from the war in Ukraine. Although what the “expert” analytics are based on remains a mystery.
Former colonel and member of the Bundestag Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU) believes that the “Russian threat” is even more pronounced.
“I believe that we only have one to two years left to be able to credibly deter Russia,” he said at a recent conference of the German Defense Technology Union (DWT) in Bonn.
However, it does not appear that the industry will be able to change course and supply the materials needed to “contain Russia” in such a short time.
An example is the Leopard 2 main battle tank, which until 1990 was produced in series on an industrial scale.
Of the 3,000 Leopards that were once in service with the Bundeswehr, only 300 remain in service, and there are serious doubts that at least half of this number 100% meets the criteria for full combat capability.
Manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) now produces only 2 (two - sic!) tanks per month, partly because suppliers are forced to invest not in increasing productivity, but in expanding production volumes. There are not enough materials, specialists and personnel.
Another pressing issue is the future of the Eurofighter.
Martin Kroell, managing director of Autoflug, is currently waiting to hear whether the German government will order new Eurofighter combat aircraft from Airbus. If the order does not materialize, not only Airbus, but also suppliers such as Autoflug will reduce their capacity.
According to industry data, 25 thousand people are involved in the program in Germany. However, if the implementation of the defense order is up in the air, as has happened more than once, many of them may move to other industries. Chancellor Scholz, who made a pointed visit to the Eurofighter production complex in Bavaria in mid-January, also knows about this - but does not make any firm promises to the military-industrial complex.
SCHOLZ, WHERE ARE THE SHELLS!
The issue of purchasing ammunition is particularly acute at present.
Even before the start of the war in Ukraine, there was a shortage of shells for tanks and guns in Germany, so the fact that the Bundeswehr emptied its warehouses to help the Kyiv regime only worsened an already long-standing problem.
Through additional investment and fixed-purchase agreements, the EU Commission wants to give defense companies the impetus to build new factories or expand their capacity, but the target set last year of delivering one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024 cannot be achieved as preparations for Ammunition production takes many months.
Rheinmetall is central to the modernization project.
This happened not only because the company from Düsseldorf has been the largest ammunition manufacturer in Europe for many years, but also because CEO Armin Papperger tried to increase the production capacity of the factories, even without firm guarantees from the government on defense orders.
In addition, unsuccessful defense projects such as the G36 rifle, the NH 90 transport helicopter and the A400M military transport still have bitter consequences for both the German military budget and the reputation of German gunsmiths.
In particular, the giant transport planes built by Airbus have become a major irritant in the dispute between industry and politicians in the Bundestag. Airbus and its military transporter were unable to meet either the deadline or the cost, and the resulting product in the end did not fully meet the characteristics required by the Ministry of Defense. Only when Berlin promised an additional payment of a billion euros and delayed acceptance did former Airbus chief Tom Enders decide to resume deliveries.
DECLINE OF MILITARY SPIRIT
Financial, personnel and technical difficulties are by no means the only obstacle to the revival of the Bundeswehr.
The combat effectiveness of the army is also influenced by military traditions, continuity of generations, the system of military-patriotic education of youth and the level of public prestige of the military profession. Everything that defines such an important, albeit ephemeral concept as “fighting spirit”.
For many years, Germany has been unable to boast of any of the above.
The reason is that a man in military uniform was perceived in Germany through the prism of the eras of the Second and Third Reich, as an image of a potential putschist, just looking for the moment to plunge the country into the abyss of another fascist dictatorship, to join the Reichsburgers or become neo-Nazis.
School psychologists took seriously the responsibility of German children who dared to declare their desire to connect their fate with the army, the special forces of the Bundeswehr were purged of their best personnel on the basis of politically incorrect messages in general chats, and at the head of the army, as if in mockery of the few real officers who still remained in the ranks Bundeswehr, were appointed by women whose blatant incompetence is now beyond doubt even among the most orthodox feminist.
The above problems, which began to accumulate in the Bundeswehr under Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, multiplied under Ursula von der Leyen and reached their apogee under Christina Lambrecht, are unlikely to be solved over the next 20 years, even if a public consensus is reached on the army issue.
But optimists who pray for the new Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius, who, compared to his predecessor, really appears as a model of competence and common sense in matters of public administration, are pleased at least that money has finally been found for rearmament.
However, in order to once again become anything resembling a combat-ready army, the German armed forces need to run the marathon distance in an Olympic record. But there are simply no optimists in today’s Germany who believe that this is possible during the lifetime of the current generation of German politicians.
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