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Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Political-Moments
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had to admit an embarrassing defeat in one of her most important armaments projects on Friday.
In a letter to the chairmen in the Defense Committee, State Secretary Peter Tauber announced that the surprising contract confirmation for the Thuringian arms manufacturer CG Haenel had to be withdrawn by the federal administration office due to a possible patent infringement.
An insider told SPIEGEL that the project was "first reset to zero".
Tauber's writing reads cryptically, even for those familiar with the subject.
The State Secretary explains that due to a complaint from the competitor Heckler & Koch, "for the first time verifiable", they learned of a possible patent infringement by the selected provider, CG Haenel.
Since it cannot be ruled out that Heckler & Koch was disadvantaged as a result, the commitment to CG Haenel would have to be withdrawn.
Now both offers, ie the HK416 and the MK556 from CG Haenel, would be checked again.
According to SPIEGEL information, there is a patent litigation surrounding the magazine of the MK556 assault rifle.
Haenel has apparently had a longstanding cross with a US manufacturer who had certain components of the magazine protected by patents.
From the perspective of the Thuringian gunsmiths, however, there is no protection.
Nevertheless, the manufacturer should have made the ongoing dispute in the application for the major Bundeswehr order for the new assault rifle transparent, according to procurement law experts.
Just a few weeks ago, the ministry surprisingly announced that after three years of testing, CG Haenel had been selected for the major order, which in total should be worth around 600 million euros.
Until then, all experts up to the ministry had assumed that, as in previous decades, Heckler & Koch would be awarded the contract, since the gunsmiths are considered the gold standard worldwide.
However, with the MK556, CG Haenel offered an equivalent but significantly cheaper weapon.
Politically dangerous
For Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer the process is more than annoying, politically it is even extremely dangerous.
Hardly any other armaments project has received as much public attention as the search for a new standard rifle for all around 180,000 soldiers.
The project volume seems downright measly compared to the purchase of new tanks or aircraft.
Similar to the breakdown-plagued renovation of the sailing training ship "Gorch Fock", however, the performance of the top commander is measured against prestige projects such as the G36 successor.
The first reactions are correspondingly clear.
Green defense expert Tobias Lindner spoke of a "gigantic embarrassment" for the ministry, which did not discover the formal error despite a selection process that took years.
He demanded tough clarification from the minister, who had evaded questions about the cause in the Defense Committee on Wednesday.
He wanted to know how big the financial damage is, so Lindner.
Then Kramp-Karrenbauer would have to "also draw personnel conclusions from these processes".
There was also ridicule and malice from the coalition partner SPD.
For example, housekeeper Dennis Rohde wrote on Twitter of a "disaster" for the German armed forces, and the Ministry's purchase of armaments was characterized by "completely unacceptable quality".
At the end of his tweet, Rohde asked remarkably sharply who was actually responsible for such mishaps.
His party friend Thomas Hitschler made his anger with a short "So angry!"
on Twitter air.
The second flop
Kramp-Karrenbauer will have to put up with sharp questions about her management in the coming days.
The procurement is not organized directly in the ministry but in the procurement office.
However, at the beginning of her term in office, the CDU politician had promised to closely monitor the important armaments projects.
She also decided that the selection processes in her legal department should be monitored.
The maneuver was risky, because ultimately the minister bears political responsibility for breakdowns.
The breakdown in the G36 successor is already the second flop in an armaments project under Kramp-Karrenbauer.
The procurement of a new and urgently needed transport helicopter for the Bundeswehr had to be canceled as early as the end of September.
Officially, it was said that the offers received were too expensive.
However, insiders reported that the Bundeswehr had contributed to the cost explosion by constantly adding new extra requests.
It was precisely these so-called "gold edge solutions" that Kramp-Karrenbauer actually wanted to abolish.
How the minister reacted to the current incident remained completely open on Friday.
The only sign of life was a tweet.
In it, Kramp-Karrenbauer congratulated the World Food Organization (WHO) on the Nobel Peace Prize.
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