Defense Minister Boris Pistorius wants to make the Bundeswehr fit for future threats as quickly as possible. He emphasizes Germany’s responsibility as NATO’s largest European partner.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) has reiterated the need to equip the Bundeswehr as quickly as possible. By 2029, one must expect that Russia will have completed its military reconstitution and could be in a position to launch a military strike against NATO territory, said Pistorius in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
“That is why it is important that we adapt to this threat scenario as quickly as possible,” he explained on the sidelines of a visit to the German Army’s 36th Combat Helicopter Regiment “Kurhessen” in Fritzlar in northern Hesse.
“We are not alone. Looking at the Bundeswehr alone would be too simplistic,” explained Pistorius. Germany is the largest NATO partner in Europe and is part of the alliance, which is larger than ever since Sweden and Finland joined. “We are playing our role,” explained the minister. “That is why we have a corresponding responsibility, which we want to live up to. And that includes equipping the Bundeswehr as quickly as possible.”
Limits of industry and construction
Pistorius did not give a specific answer as to how much money would be needed for this. “Even if I had a thousand billion instead of a hundred billion tomorrow, certain processes would not be able to be made any faster, because both industry and the construction industry still have to process the orders.” Nevertheless, money is needed “somewhere in between”.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) recently criticized Germany for rearming – but only slowly. In its current “Kiel Report”, the institute predicted that at the current procurement rate it would take many years to get the inventory back to the 2004 level – around 15 years for fighter jets and around 40 years for battle tanks. It would even take until 2121 for the 2004 inventory of howitzers to be reached.
According to the IfW, this is due on the one hand to the drastic disarmament of the past decades and on the other hand to the still too slow rearmament under the traffic light government.
Pistorius rejects criticism of slow rearmament
Pistorius rejected the criticism. The IfW itself said that it had carried out a very striking and not military-analytical analysis. The Phantom fighter plane, for example, was already 35 years old in 2004. “Today we are talking about Eurofighters of various levels and we are talking about F-35s, which will arrive next year. For that reason alone, you cannot compare them.”
Nor can one compare a Bundeswehr during the Cold War with 500,000 soldiers and its tank inventory with a Bundeswehr with 180,000 soldiers and its tank inventory at the end of a 35-year period after the Cold War. Nevertheless, the study is meaningful.
However, as far as he understands, she is not criticising the pace of procurement in the Bundeswehr. “That would surprise me too, because we picked up speed enormously in 23 and 24,” said Pistorius. It cannot be done much faster, not least because industry has to keep up.
Needs long-term financial resources
“Nevertheless, the approach remains correct: the procurement pace can only be increased to the extent that there is money for procurement. And not just for one or two years, but in the long term, presented sensibly, so that industry and we know which contracts we can conclude, at what speed and in what steps, and then we can deliver accordingly,” explained the Defense Minister. “That is the challenge we are facing. And we are working on it.”
During his visit to the combat helicopter regiment in Fritzlar, Pistorius spoke to soldiers and civilian employees. The 36th Combat Helicopter Regiment is the only flying combat unit with Tiger combat helicopters in Germany. It comprises around 1,200 posts at the Fritzlar site.
The Tiger Regiment is also deployed abroad. Its combat helicopters flew from 2012 to June 2014 as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan and from 2017 to 2018 in support of the UN peacekeeping mission Minusma in Mali. Two pilots from Fritzlar were killed in a crash there.
Source: Stern
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