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Puma infantry fighting vehicle: companies promise quick repairs
Photo: Philipp Schulze / picture alliance / dpa
The armaments companies Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) want to repair the defective Puma infantry fighting vehicles in the next two to three weeks.
The companies announced this in a joint statement on Wednesday.
Some of the tanks have been examined for the exact damage patterns since Wednesday at the Rheinmetall Unterlüß site in Lower Saxony, among other places.
Experts from KMW and Rheinmetall have been sent to the Bundeswehr locations where other Puma vehicles are located, it said.
“All efforts are now focused on repairing the vehicles in the next two to three weeks,” the companies explained.
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht had previously given the industry a tight window of opportunity to repair the failed Puma tank.
'I'll give you a few weeks.
Because I need reliable systems and not ones that I might be able to use at some point in 2025," the SPD politician told Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday.
Lambrecht rejected criticism from the Union of a stress test that was carried out too late.
With a view to Germany's participation in the NATO intervention force VJTF, which begins on January 1, the exercise was scheduled exactly right, explained the defense minister.
"That's why an exercise months beforehand would not have helped us at all, because such exercises were very promising," says Lambrecht.
At the weekend, a SPIEGEL report revealed that all 18 of the tanks used during a firing exercise by the Bundeswehr for participation in the VJTF NATO intervention force had failed.
The tracked vehicle, plagued by numerous technical problems, was only declared fit for combat last year.
kfr/dpa
