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Panzerhaubitze 2000 of the Bundeswehr during an exercise
Photo: IMAGO/Sven Eckelkamp
The Bundeswehr is missing ammunition worth 20 to 30 billion euros, warns the Bundeswehr Association.
Now representatives of the armaments industry have met with the responsible top government officials in the Federal Chancellery in order to increase production.
The armaments bosses urged entering into so-called framework agreements for the production of ammunition with the Ministry of Defense.
"That would provide the necessary security for investments in production facilities," an industry representative who was present told SPIEGEL.
The armaments companies could not easily make advance payments.
This has been communicated to the Ministry of Defense for a long time, but so far no satisfactory commitments have been received.
Jens Plötner, foreign and security policy adviser to the Federal Chancellor, and State Secretaries Benedikt Zimmer (defence) and Sven Giegold (economy) attended the meeting on behalf of the government.
The government officials are said not to have given any concrete promises, but above all to have listened.
It was agreed that the results should first be discussed internally.
According to SPIEGEL information, it is likely that you will have to sit down again.
There has been a shortage of ammunition for years
The summit was called at the end of last week when it became clear that the Bundeswehr could not even meet the NATO requirements at the moment.
These stipulate that ammunition should be available for 30 days of combat.
The Bundeswehr has been suffering from a shortage of ammunition for years, and the war in Ukraine has made the situation even worse.
The lack of ammunition affects all areas of the Bundeswehr, as the federal government has acknowledged.
To put it bluntly, it exists "everywhere" in the German armed forces, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.
For security reasons, he did not want to provide any information on the question "for how many combat days the Bundeswehr currently has ammunition."
"The issue of shortages has been mentioned for four years," said the chairman of the Bundeswehr Association, André Wüstner, the broadcasters RTL and ntv.
"Now it's finally time to order."
The appointment at the Chancellery was actually too late.
Depending on the type of ammunition, it will take time for the deficiency to be remedied.
"There are differences between a few months and two years," said Wüstner.
»But it is important that you start at all.«
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense pointed out that spending on ordering ammunition had already increased significantly in recent years.
In 2015, 296 million euros would have been available for this, in 2018 more than 400 million euros and in 2021 700 million euros.
In the 2023 budget, expenditures of 1.125 billion euros are planned just for the procurement of ammunition.
Mutual blame in politics
The CSU politician Reinhard Brandl criticized Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD).
The procurement office was "at the limit of its capacity" even before the decision was taken on the special fund for the Bundeswehr, he told the Bayern media group.
Lambrecht nevertheless persistently refuses to tackle structural changes.
The chairwoman of the defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), on the other hand, referred to mistakes made by the Union.
After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the federal government, led by the Union, "set the budget for ammunition at 296 million euros, the traffic light after the turn of the century at 1.11 billion," she told the newspapers of the Bayern media group.
“That means that we first have to clean up after the CDU-led Ministry of Defense failed to get going despite the dramatic situation in Ukraine.”
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil had asked the industry to ramp up the production of armaments for the Bundeswehr more quickly.
After Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz's (SPD) speech on February 24, he would have expected the industry to "rebuild previously reduced capacities at great speed," Klingbeil told ARD on Sunday evening.
However, this did not happen.
gt/mgo/AFP/Reuters
