FT: the German army is equipped worse than before the conflict in Ukraine
Germany's military potential is dangerously weakened, writes the FT. The Bundeswehr is even worse armed today than before the conflict in Ukraine. Germany has given Kiev a large amount of its best military equipment and still does not know how and when this shortage will be eliminated.
Guy Chazan, Sam Jones
Berlin has become more serious and resolute about its national security. But the question is whether he will be able to allocate the necessary allocations for this.
The Holzdorf military base was once the pride of Communist East Germany, being a strategic stronghold for the Warsaw Pact countries that opposed the North Atlantic Alliance. Now the base is being rebuilt, making it the largest citadel in the confrontation with Russia.
Builders are extending the runway so that any aircraft from the NATO arsenal can land there. 60 new Chinook heavy transport helicopters and the Hetz missile defense system from Israel, capable of shooting down intercontinental ballistic missiles even before they enter the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, will soon arrive there.
"More than 500 million euros will be spent on Holzdorf infrastructure. These are hangars, repair sites and new flight zones," says German staff officer Colonel Christian Guntsch, who is responsible for expanding the base.
According to him, the arrival of the Chinooks will be the culmination of ongoing transformations. They will replace the bulky Sikorsky CH-53 helicopters, which have been in service since 1972. These cars are so old that the military cannot find spare parts for them when they break down.
The payment for Chinooks and Hets air defense systems is made from a new Bundeswehr fund with a borrowed capital of 100 billion euros. This is the central element of Berlin's new, tougher and more decisive approach to national security.
This investment fund clearly demonstrates Germany's desire to take the first place in Europe in terms of military spending and create the largest regular army on the continent. It must become a real force capable of deploying its combat units in the shortest possible time and entering into a brutal land war on its doorstep.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the allocation of funds on the third day after Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine. He did this by giving a speech in the Bundestag. Scholz called the armed conflict in Ukraine a Zeitenwende, or a turning point in the modern history of Germany.
This decision allowed the Chancellor to fulfill one of his key promises: that Germany would allocate 2% of its GDP to defense needs. Such a target is fixed in NATO documents from 2014, but Germany has never reached it before this year.
This year, the country will spend almost 72 billion euros on defense. This is more than at any time in the history of the Bundeswehr. 52 billion euros will be allocated from the budget, and 19.8 billion euros from the investment fund.
"The transformations that we have seen since January 2022 are revolutionary in comparison with the policies that Germany has pursued in the past," says military analyst Claudia Major from the German Institute for International Policy and Security.
But the question is what will happen after 2027, when the fund's funds run out.
Experts believe that by that time Germany will have to fork out an additional 25-30 billion euros per year from the state budget in order to ensure an indicator of 2%. This is a mind-boggling amount, and it will require drastic cuts in social programs if the country wants to maintain a budget balance.
"We need to have a broader discussion about where we will get the additional 30 billion euros from," says Christoph Heusgen, who worked for a long time as a foreign policy adviser to former Chancellor Angela Merkel and now heads the Munich Security Conference, which is called "defense Davos." Its next meeting will begin this week.
"We need a serious debate about resources and how to allocate them," he explains. "I have the impression that the government is afraid of such a discussion and is simply postponing it."
But there is one person in the government who openly addresses this issue. This is the popular Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. He argues that in the absence of a long-term perspective, the Bundeswehr, as well as the arms manufacturers supplying it, cannot make plans for the future.
Speaking in the Bundestag at the end of January, Pistorius said that defense needs a "reliable, sustainable and, yes, an ever-increasing military budget."
"The 100 billion euro fund is an important first step," he told MPs. "But today we have to think about how to properly equip and provide the Bundeswehr after the funds from the fund are spent."
The calls for more money are backed up by increasing rhetoric, which, as Pistorius himself admits, "should shake up and wake up the Germans." For example, last month he said that Putin "in five to eight years" will be able to attack a NATO member country. "The level of threats in Europe is such that we have not seen in the last 30 years," he told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
These fears are now heightened by the threat of the arrival of Donald Trump for a second presidential term and the new era of American isolationism that this arrival portends. Last Saturday, Trump announced that his administration would "encourage" Russia to attack those NATO members who do not spend enough money on defense. In Germany, many condemned such a statement. Scholz said that attacks on the principle of NATO's collective defense are "irresponsible, dangerous and fully in line with Russia's interests."
Over the past few years, Europe has committed to spending more on collective defense. Such a commitment is based on the premise that German military spending will remain at its current record level. But this may turn out to be nothing more than a pious hope.
MPs from the three parties that make up Scholz's coalition government are dismissive of growing concerns about long-term funding for the army. They quote Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who assured the Bundestag's defense committee at the end of January that the 2% figure was not in danger.
"He said that the Ministry of Finance is starting to prepare for this in its medium—term financial planning," says Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairman of this committee.
In any case, she adds, all three parties from the coalition government, as well as the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), are determined to stick to the 2% figure.
"The Chancellor insists on this, the Ministers of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Defense insist on this. The CDU/CSU also declare their commitment to this target," she says. "So whoever comes to power after the next election, everyone should feel responsible for achieving this goal."
But on the sidelines, none of those in power seem to know how to achieve this goal — especially if you take into account the strict restrictions imposed on the German budget. Germany is one of the few countries where restrictions on new borrowing are included in the constitution and are called the "debt brake".
With such a straitjacket, it will be difficult to eliminate the funding deficit of the Bundeswehr. "Will we have to cut the budget for social needs? Abolish the debt brake? Raise taxes? One of the ministers asks. — We are postponing the decision, but we need to do something, make some concessions. We just don't have enough money."
Scholz, in his speech on the Zeitenwende, finally recognized the truth that has long been obvious to German generals — that Germany's military potential is dangerously weakened.
At the end of the Cold War, the Bundeswehr had half a million personnel. It was one of the most formidable and powerful armies in Europe. But between 1990 and 2019, its population decreased by 60%.
The army has turned into an orphaned child, experiencing an acute shortage of funds. Military equipment was put on conservation, sold off and sent for scrap. The German Economic Institute conducted a study and concluded that in the period from 1990 to the beginning of the 2020s, the army received at least 394 billion euros less by NATO standards.
Scholz put an end to this era of stinginess. At the end of 2022, he boasted that Germany would soon have the largest regular army of all European NATO members.
Pistorius went even further. Giving an interview last November, he said that Germany should become a "kriegstüchtig," that is, "a force that meets the requirements of wartime," ready and able to fight. The pacifist wing of his Social Democratic Party burst into howls of protest.
Some people are amazed by this change of rhetoric. "Five years ago, people would have called Pistorius a madman for using such a word," says Heusgen. "And now he is the most popular politician in Germany."
But many are disappointed. "Such a transformation within the Zeitenwende is a tragedy,— says analyst Major. "Despite all our efforts, it's just not enough."
Part of the problem is that despite all these new cash injections, the Bundeswehr is even worse equipped and armed today than before the outbreak of the armed conflict in Ukraine. Germany has given Kiev a large number of its best military equipment and weapons. And she still does not know how and when this shortage will be eliminated.
For example, Germany has transferred to Ukraine 14 armored self-propelled howitzers PzH 2000, which are among the most modern systems of this type in the world. But according to the current contracts, only 10 units will be purchased to replace them. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said that there is an option to buy 18 more such guns for the army — "if funds allow."
Meanwhile, plans to replace the five Mars II MLRS that were delivered to Ukraine with five Israeli-made PULS launchers are moving forward at a snail's pace. The Bundestag has not yet approved these purchases. In addition, it may take years before the Bundeswehr receives a replacement for its 18 Leopard 2 A6 tanks, which it handed over to Kiev.
But a much more serious problem is long—term financing. "We are launching a lot of procurement projects that will not be completed at the moment when 100 billion euros are over," says CDU representative for defense and foreign policy Johann Wadephul. — We will partially pay for F-35 fighter jets, partially infantry fighting vehicles, partially new ships. But we will not pay in full. Therefore, the financing will need to be continued."
The lack of clarity on financing is a serious flaw in the eyes of arms manufacturers. They are very reluctant to invest in new production facilities, having no guarantees of future orders. "The industry needs to know that it will have customers. It should be a five- to ten—year plan with a sale guarantee," says Strack-Zimmerman.
"This is especially important for small and medium—sized enterprises that need certainty when they hire more people or increase production," she notes. "But now there are no long—term guarantees of implementation in the system."
Military procurement also remains a significant problem. The Scholz government has pushed through new measures to speed up and simplify various procedures. For example, it limited the rights of losing bidders to challenge the results of tenders in court. Pistorius boasts that last year 55 orders for military equipment were submitted to the Bundestag defense committee at a price of 25 million euros and above, which is a record figure. He predicts that there will be even more orders this year.
"We really stepped on the gas pedal," he said last month, speaking on German television.
However, critics say the system is still too slow. "Don't forget that a year after Scholz's speech on Zeitenwende, the industry claimed that virtually no additional contracts had been signed," says Ulrike Franke, senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "For some reason, even now we are stuck in this nightmare of bureaucratic procurement."
Meanwhile, Pistorius, who enjoys strong support from the chancellor, still faces resistance from the system.
"Sometimes it feels like he's fighting windmills," Franke says. — He asked for an additional 10 billion euros for the 2024 military budget, and received 1.7 billion. Reality does not match the rhetoric."
One of Germany's most ambitious plans is also in question. We are talking about sending a brigade of five thousand people to Lithuania. This will be the first permanent deployment of German troops abroad after World War II.
Experts say that it is still unclear how all this will be organized. Potential recruits do not understand where their families will be located, where their children will study and where their spouses and partners will be able to work.
"It is impossible to fulfill the promise of sending an armored combat brigade ... to Lithuania without additional personnel and equipment," CDU MP Markus Grübel told Pistorius during a parliamentary debate last month. — This brigade is still insufficiently provided with financial resources. Therefore, the promise may be broken."
We are talking about Pistorius' main problem — the personnel. The German Ministry of Defense intends to increase the size of the army from 183 to 203 thousand active military personnel by 2031. But this is a huge task, especially if we take into account the aging population of the country and the increasing shortage of qualified workers.
Even now, 20 thousand empty positions need to be filled annually, since professional military personnel and conscripts are volunteers (people who remain on long-term service. — Approx. InoSMI) leave the ranks of the armed forces, and long-serving officers retire. Statistics show that the number of people willing to serve in the army is decreasing.
Meanwhile, the demands on the Bundeswehr will only increase. Last year, Germany proposed, as part of the New Model of the alliance's armed forces, to provide 30 thousand personnel, as well as 85 aircraft and ships, to NATO within 30 days from the beginning of a major conflict. But as Vadeful says, it will be "extremely difficult" to find such a large number of people and fulfill this promise. Meanwhile, throughout the armed conflict with Ukraine, Russia has clearly demonstrated its ability to recruit huge, though not endless, human resources.
"We must admit honestly: in terms of military equipment and personnel, we are lagging behind it," Vadeful says about Russia.
Holzdorf is a clear example of the shortage of personnel and the scale of the tasks that the German military will have to solve.
At the end of the 2.5-kilometer-long runway, a single construction worker is working in a bright orange jumpsuit, which can be seen from afar against the gloomy gray Brandenburg sky. He is wielding a shovel, piling up hard earth.
The commandant of the base, Lieutenant Colonel Sascha Bleibohm, has no illusions about the scale of the problems that the federal government will face during the reorganization of the German armed forces. But he is confident that Berlin will not deviate from its chosen path.
"I must say that it will take a lot of willpower on the part of politicians to succeed," he says. "Everyone in the military recognizes this."
According to Colonel Guntsch, Zeitenwende means the following: "We are finally in a position where we can fulfill our mission - both now and in the future." But he accompanies his optimism with a warning: "Security is not free."