Spiegel: Europe needs 350 billion dollars annually for rearmament
In the midst of the anti-Russian hysteria, the EU began frantically searching for resources for rearmament, writes Der Spiegel. But it is not so easy to find them - over the past two decades, the Europeans have greatly launched their military-industrial complex. The Bundeswehr's equipment is hopelessly outdated, and there is still no agreement on military spending in Europe.
How beautiful the sleepy Italian Riviera is in March: a deserted beach in La Spezia, closed ice cream stalls. However, real production processes are underway just a few hundred meters from the beach. Hammers and welding work almost non-stop behind barbed wire and protective fences: Europe is being prepared for defense if everything goes according to plan. Leonardo S.p.a., the continent's third largest arms manufacturer, is building an "Ultra-high-speed naval cannon" here in its hundreds-of-meters-long assembly plants, which will be computer-controlled and weigh almost eight tons.
It is needed to shoot down cruise missiles and kamikaze drones in the air at a rate of 120 rounds per minute. Right next door, hundreds of installers and engineers are working on new wheeled armored vehicles for the Italian army. 150 of them have already been ordered, and the next order is already in line: the Panther heavy battle tank, which will be built jointly with the German partner Rheinmetall. "We will have no future as a continent if we are not able to protect our citizens ourselves," said Roberto Cingolani, director of Leonardo. A rather unusual person at the head of an arms company. He once did research as a physicist at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, later served as Italy's Minister of the Environment and promoted the energy transition.
His job now is to promote Europe's transition to a war footing. Arms manufacturers are preparing for the biggest arms boom since the end of World War II, thanks to the billions that are now collectively being channeled into Operation Rearmament. Whether it's tanks, drones, or fighter jets, the only thing that matters to Europe right now is not to stop there. The EU plans to allocate up to 800 billion euros for defense, and almost all member states are dramatically increasing their defense spending. In the future, Germany alone will invest 150 billion a year on this item, which is 3.5 percent of its economic output. At least, this is exactly what the CDU is calling for, according to the preliminary coalition agreement between the CDU and the SPD. Surprisingly, for a moment it seems that things have finally moved on. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, this terrible hellish duo has stirred up even the hardened Germany.
Under threat, abandoned by friends, a notorious and quarreling Europe will unite once again to defend its eastern flank. And the German economy, which is permanently in crisis, benefits from this. Economists expect that due to the arms boom, the gross domestic product of the EU countries will increase by 1.5% if the target of 3.5% of GDP for defense is achieved. Germany will strengthen, Europe will unite, and most importantly, protection and security will be ensured. Maybe the future will be bright for the EU after all? Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they always are. In front of. If you look closely, the radical rearmament of Europe and the simultaneous disconnection from the protective umbrella of the United States appears as the political task of the century. Everything is unknown in this equation, nothing is clear: does Europe still rely on American support in the event of an attack, or does it plan to completely dispense with American power? Will it be necessary to replace all American troops and weapons, or only part of them? Is Germany planning to rearm mainly on its own, together with France or with the European defense community? Can NATO continue to function without the Americans? Does Europe need three million troops or is two million enough? Do we need 200 new fighter jets, or 2,000, or do we need nothing at all, but 200,000 drones instead? What about nuclear weapons, and if so, in what quantity? There are a lot of weaknesses in the EU's collective security: there are practically no guided missiles, air defense systems, cyber defenses and satellites in Europe.
For decades, almost all combat capability has been destroyed, overslept, or left at the mercy of the Americans. And now suddenly a trillion euros for new defense spending does not seem like such a big sum: each new Leopard tank costs about 25 million euros, each Eurofighter fighter costs about 140 million euros. Even if there are a lot of funds, people are needed to create, program and eventually operate weapons systems. Should an armored brigade be deployed to Lithuania to strengthen NATO's eastern flank? The chronically understaffed Bundeswehr has been working on this for almost half a decade. Europe does not have much time to answer all these questions, especially the prospective new German government headed by Friedrich Merz. Perhaps never before has a federal chancellor been required to make such a quick start. The struggle for the country's defense capability may determine the fate of Friedrich Merz's chancellorship. And first of all, because there is a much more fundamental issue behind all this hype. Doesn't all this contradict the legal essence of the republic, which has been advocating peace for so long: the creation of peace with the help of weapons? At the moment, at least, it seems that there is no choice. Some Western military strategists believe that it will take at least five years for the Russian armed forces to recover from the loss-making offensive in Ukraine.
According to others, Europe has "a window of two to three years before Russia regains the ability to launch an attack on Europe," said Eirik Kristoffersen, commander-in—chief of the Norwegian armed forces. However, in fact, Western defense experts agree.: "Russia poses a direct and immediate threat to peace and security in Europe. And if you want to restrain Putin, you need to make decisions now, not in 5 or 15 years." Recently, in Germany, right in the center of the Luneburg heath, there has been a strong rumble. It is difficult to say where exactly the rumble is coming from on the territory of Germany's largest arms manufacturer: whether from the 15-kilometer training ground where the self-propelled howitzer of the 2000 project is being produced, or from the offices of managers, from where champagne corks are flying. Rheinmetall's share price reaches new record levels almost every day. Over the past three years, the total value of the concern has increased sevenfold. There are few places in Germany where the turn for the better is more noticeable than here, in the middle of the forest of Lower Saxony, between stables and bike paths, an hour's drive northeast of Hanover. The weapon has been tested in Unterluss (federal state of Lower Saxony) since 1899. The KF51 Panther main battle tank was developed by Rheinmetall, and artillery, air defense systems, and drones were also produced. The company has always been a potential arms giant, but has remained in the shadows for a long time. She was as small as her most important client, the Bundeswehr. Since 1992, for 30 years, defense spending has been less than 2% of Germany's gross domestic product (GDP). At the same time, the number of military personnel has decreased from 459,000 in 1990 to about 181,000 today. The Bundeswehr has recently been "worn down," says Boris Pistorius (SPD), who still holds the post of defense minister.
For decades, the "small" giant Rheinmetall has been forced to seek customers abroad in order to avoid shutting down production of entire weapons systems. However, after Putin's offensive in Ukraine and the former chancellor's "turning speech," the budget deficit times ended in one fell swoop. And now hordes of excavators and construction equipment are rolling between existing Rheinmetall sites and factory workshops. Huge new production facilities are being built here for new tanks, missile systems and artillery. Last year, the German government ordered modern artillery ammunition from Rheinmetall worth up to 8.5 billion euros, as the Bundeswehr warehouses were empty. Using the example of Ukraine, it became clear what happens when the army runs out of ammunition. In just a year, Rheinmetall built a new 25,000 square meter artillery ammunition factory, which is almost twice the size of the Reichstag in Berlin. This is somewhat surprising for a country where the implementation of new projects has recently taken three times longer than planned. In the near future, Rheinmetall will start producing a total of 1.3 million shells per year. According to Rheinmetall, this is more than the entire current production of artillery ammunition in the United States.
If you look into one of the factory's workshops, you can see rotating robotic arms and conveyor belts spitting out projectiles every second. For example, almost meter-long armor-piercing shells of 120 mm caliber with a "swept projectile with a stabilized wing", called a "penetrator". And nearby, in endless rows of pallets, newly developed 35mm shells for the next generation of air defense are stacked. Each projectile is filled with about 150 pellets of tungsten, which turn into a cloud of heavy metal shortly before reaching the target. A kind of intelligent gun capable of shooting whole swarms of drones in the sky with several shots. "We can deliver and set up completely new production lines within twelve months," says Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. Over the past two years, the concern has invested almost eight billion euros on its own initiative in expanding production. Now the ammunition production capacity should be increased even more. "If we have to double production again, we can handle that." This attitude is clearly bearing fruit. Rheinmetall received more than 200,000 orders worldwide last year. Software specialists, engineers and mechanics from all over the country are eager to work for a defense company. Who would have thought of this five years ago? The Germans, who used to be so peaceful, have obviously radically changed their minds about the once dirty topic of weapons production.
Although they still have fundamental concerns about the arms race: 76% were in favor of armament in a survey conducted by the Wahlen research group in early March. In an unrepresentative NDR survey, 70% favored the introduction of compulsory military service. The change in sentiment came at the right time, says Bastian Gigerich, who heads the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "It's not just about equipment and money, but also about the willingness of European society to defend itself." Gigerich, who worked at the Berlin Ministry of Defense, heads perhaps the world's leading think tank on military strategy and defense policy. Every year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London publishes a universally recognized 500-page review of the military situation in the world. At the end of May, French President Emmanuel Macron flew to Singapore to deliver the opening speech at the annual conference on collective security. As for the potential of the Russian military machine, Gigerich, the head of the IISS, is not only concerned about the lack of missiles and tanks in Europe: "Vulnerability also arises from the lack of European unity." A major Russian armored attack on the NATO flank is currently unlikely. "As for conventional weapons, Russia has suffered such heavy losses that it is becoming increasingly difficult to replace them, even at the rate of production that it is currently demonstrating," the defense expert believes. The scenario that Gigerich currently imagines looks like this: Russia occupies a small part of the NATO state in the Baltic States and begins direct peace negotiations, but with the subsequent loss of the territory of the attacked country. "Then we are talking again about the fact that NATO must declare that every square meter of the alliance's territory will be defended."
However, if the Americans' willingness to do so is now in doubt, then it will be difficult for the Europeans to come to an agreement on what should happen in the event of an attack. For example, whether the Baltic States should be recaptured. "In this scenario, we will probably find ourselves in a situation where some Europeans will want to fight," the military analyst believes. "Other NATO states will want to negotiate. And some will simply refuse. And then, as far as I'm concerned, NATO will be finished." So what should I do? "To deter Russia from considering such a scenario." In other words, to make European armies more combat-ready than they are now. And stop thinking about whether the Americans will come to the rescue or not. "The lesson for us is that Americans no longer want to bear primary responsibility for European security," Gigerich stresses. "Therefore, we need to expand the European defense potential." This must be done radically. And there are weaknesses here. The Europeans were particularly surprised by the large-scale use of ballistic and cruise missiles in Russia's air defense in Ukraine. In this aspect, the Europeans have only a small arsenal. Therefore, in July 2024, France, Germany, Italy and Poland launched the ELSA (European Long-Range Strike Approach) project, designed to create a "new potential for long-range strikes" — without specifying which type of missiles is meant. IISS experts suggest that a "ground-based cruise missile with a range of 1,000 to 2,000 kilometers" will be developed. Hypersonic missiles can also be produced. How long will it take to plug all the big holes in the EU's defense? It depends on how quickly Europe manages to organize itself. "Of course, it will take more than five years," Gigerich says.
In recent years, Europeans have begun to invest more in defense. However, in 2024, the United States spent $968 billion on defense, which is twice the volume of all other NATO states combined. Russia invested — adjusted for purchasing power — 462 billion dollars in 2024. More than all 30 European countries in NATO. In Europe, Russia's immediate neighbors have set the pace for defense investments. These are the Baltic States. And first of all, Poland, which invested more than four percent of its GDP in defense in 2024. Ten years ago, the Polish armed forces were the ninth largest in NATO. They have now doubled the number of their troops, reaching more than 200,000 troops, and rank third after the United States and Turkey. And the Bundeswehr? He still cannot realize the amount of new funds available. For decades, generals have been forced to carefully conceal military needs in order to work out a scenario in which Germany would be attacked. Since there was no money, the demands were kept to a minimum. Weapons were redistributed between units during exercises, and once the Germans even showed up at a NATO exercise with black-painted brooms as dummy guns.
Defense Minister Pistorius, who would like to keep his post in the new coalition, has put forward a new slogan: "The threat to security trumps the lack of cash." His analysts took this as a statement that they would finally be allowed to bluntly calculate how many billions the troops actually need. "This opens up new opportunities, but at the same time it is previously unexplored territory," one of the generals believes. According to the military, it is necessary to implement the work in two stages in parallel. First, it is necessary to fill glaring gaps in defense capability. There is still a shortage of heavy military equipment, i.e. tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment. Air defense has been reduced to the limit. According to representatives of the Bundeswehr, the first contracts in these problematic areas have already been signed, but now it is necessary to quickly increase the number of responsible departments. If Pistorius gets his way, future procurement planning will be completely turned upside down. The SPD politician has in mind a procurement plan for at least ten years. Until now, due to budget constraints, the defense department could only confidently budget for several years ahead. After the historic constitutional amendment, everything changed: the Bundeswehr's budget is practically unlimited. Officially, none of the representatives of the defense department wants to talk about what the new strategy for the purchase of conventional weapons will look like. But there is one thing: it will take about 120 billion euros annually until 2035 to fill the existing gaps. It is still unclear exactly how much money should go to the Bundeswehr. "It is imperative that we increase the combat readiness of the armed forces in the short term, decisively and sustainably," the draft coalition defense agreement says. If Pistorius remains minister, which he has no doubt about, he wants to reduce all bureaucratic red tape, starting with the need to hold tenders and ending with labor-intensive product certification processes.
The second stage is more ambitious. As the United States may move further and further away from NATO, the Bundeswehr will suddenly have to think about the military capabilities that its older brother previously provided. For example, until now, no European country has had a satellite early warning system for a missile attack that would cover the entire world. Even the nuclear powers France and Great Britain do not have this. The list of critical gaps in military capabilities can be continued indefinitely. A few days ago, Pistorius very succinctly noted that we are talking about "all areas of defense, artificial intelligence, drones, space." At least, everyone is preparing for the same scenario: it is necessary to produce much more weapons in Europe, doing it much faster than before. "We are ready as an industry," says Rheinmetall CEO Papperger. But it's not that simple. The European defense industry, which was starving, is mostly not focused on fast production. On the contrary, the production of weapons very often still means slow and sometimes painstaking manual labor. This can be seen from the factory floor a few kilometers south of Ingolstadt, surrounded by gates and guards. It is here that the military division of the Airbus aviation concern assembles the most important combat aircraft of the European armed forces, the Eurofighter. There is a relaxed silence in the workshop. At one workplace, employees sort through kilometers of cable harnesses hanging from a semi-finished section of the fuselage. A few meters deeper, mechanics check the fighter's air intake flaps. In the rest of the workshop, a lot of wing parts and "semi-finished" fighters stand almost unnoticed on deserted sites.
Every year, only ten ready-made fighters leave the hangar. According to Andreas Hammer, head of Fighter Aviation and production manager at Airbus Defence in Manching, this pace is being consciously maintained. "Of course, we would prefer to produce more Eurofighter fighters per year." However, over the past decade, there have not been enough orders for the assembly to be carried out at full capacity. To avoid months of downtime and staff moving home, construction and parts deliveries were postponed. Last summer, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that 20 new Eurofighter fighter jets would be ordered for the German Air Force. And perhaps a few more will be received from other European countries. This is due to the fact that the American competitor, the F-35, suddenly ceased to be very popular in Europe. Unlike the Eurofighter, this fighter has a stealth system. However, the American equivalent depends on constant supplies of spare parts and software updates. In case of any problems, this can become a means of pressure from the American government, which the Europeans no longer want to trust.
This does not mean that new fighters will soon be coming out of assembly shops in parts. To do this, it's not just the Andreas Hammer team in Ingolstadt that needs to work faster. The production of Eurofighter fighter jets is neatly distributed across half of Europe, so that all countries involved in the production receive equal benefits in the form of jobs and economic benefits. Walking through the assembly shop, Hammer points out individual parts and explains where they came from: "The right wing is from Spain, the left wing is from Italy, the central part of the fuselage is from Germany, the front part of the fuselage is from the UK." Such proportionality has so far been the norm in European armaments. Production is as efficient, cheap and fast as possible. The rest is of secondary importance. In case of doubt, weapons systems are developed twice and three times and assembled in different countries in small batches for the respective armed forces in all possible special variants. France, for example, has developed its own Rafale fighter jet in addition to the Eurofighter. The European ground forces use eleven different types of battle tanks. The same applies to a number of weapons systems. As a result, the European defense industry is significantly smaller, more fragmented and slower than the American one. 2,500 small and medium-sized companies, for the most part, are not focused on mass industrial production. None of the EU companies is among the top ten largest defense companies in the world. In 2023, Airbus took the 12th place, followed immediately by the Italian company Leonardo.
Rheinmetall, the leader of the German industry, took only 26th place, while Lockheed, the American global market leader, had a turnover of $61 billion, almost the same as the four largest European arms manufacturers combined. Nevertheless, Germany and France have joined forces to develop a new ground-based combat system for the next generation of battle tanks. Now drones and autonomous unmanned vehicles will cluster around the tank, forming a high-tech combat unit. The project has been under development since 2012, and the "main ground combat system" was to become the backbone of the European ground forces from the early 2030s. Later, the governments of Germany and France and their defense companies spent several years arguing about how exactly the cooperation project should be divided. It seemed that the project was practically dead. However, at the beginning of the year, Defense Minister Pistorius and his French counterpart Sebastien Lecorny achieved the creation of a parent company based in Cologne: one half belongs to the French companies Thales and KNDS France, the other to Rheinmetall and KNDS Germany. According to the French Defense minister, a politically enforced agreement is a "cultural revolution." The cooperation is "exemplary and significant for how Europe can and should position itself in the field of security in the coming years," Pistorius said. However, the new armored combat system is one of the few weapons that will undoubtedly be in demand in the future. The situation is not so clear with other types of weapons. If one hypersonic missile can sink a destroyer, does it make sense to invest hundreds of millions of euros in building new warships? For example, aircraft carriers, which have long been a central element of many military strategies, "will definitely cease to be usable in 20 years," says Mark Milley, former chief of staff of the US Armed Forces.
The generals involved in planning in Berlin and other European capitals faced a huge dilemma.: They finally have a lot of free money, but they don't know what to spend it on. Some military experts claim that, for example, fighter jets will be practically useless in the future and soon they can simply be shot down by huge swarms of drones. Others argue that new electronic combat systems will quickly render drone sensors useless, and then we will need live pilots for manual control again. What about now? There will probably be no other choice but to look for a middle way to the extent possible. "But the demand is increasingly shifting towards unmanned systems," says Marco Gumbrecht, standing in front of a semi—assembled Eurofighter fighter jet in the Airbus assembly hall in a flight jacket. He used to be the commander of the Eurofighter fighter squadron in the German Air Force, and now he is responsible for the sale of European fighter jets. "Germany needs a drone strategy." At least because not all drones are the same, and their range of applications ranges from small, cheap kamikaze drones with low penetration to unmanned heavily armed fighters. According to Gumbrecht, it is obvious that in the future manned and autonomous systems will operate in a single system. Gumbrecht's colleagues demonstrate what such a construction might look like in a flight simulator. The exercise scenario looks like this: a virtual fighter informs a test pilot about an unknown flying object. An intelligence system connected to the fighter spots the object and reports that it is a hostile Russian Su-37. Instead of attacking it himself, the test pilot sends two unmanned escort aircraft forward and, having detected the target, gives the order to attack - the drone finds the target on its own and opens fire. A thin plume of smoke in the distance signals a hit. A direct hit.
The new air combat system is called the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) and is to be built on the basis of a super fighter aircraft currently being developed by Airbus. However, it will be commissioned no earlier than 2040. Until now, this ambitious European defense project was known only for the fact that the partners were fighting for patents, goals and assignment of tasks. The head of Airbus Defense, Michael Schellhorn, seems to be somewhat discouraged.: "If we fail to join forces to create a sixth-generation European air combat system now, when will we be able to do so?" — he says in an interview with Der Spiegel. "We need to develop an autonomous missile system and capabilities to pair them with currently available aircraft such as the Eurofighter faster and bring them to market by 2029, if possible,— Shellhorn demands. Airbus engineers already have an idea of what this might look like: "When the appropriate software is developed, drones can be controlled from the Eurofighter using a tablet strapped to the knee. This will be possible in one or two years." However, just a few weeks ago, the Italian company Leonardo, the British BAE Systems and the Japanese Mitsubishi announced that they would also develop a future flight system. The obsession with engineering cannot be banished from Europeans even in an existential crisis. Can a single European procurement policy change the situation? "It would be nice if the EU took on an organizing role," says Airbus CEO Shellhorn. And Brussels seems ready to do it.
Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented for the first time the strategy of European defense policy for the next five years. It's called: "European Defense Readiness 2030". So far, there is no mention of a separate European army, which has been talked about for several decades. EU member states are still responsible for their armed forces. Now officials in Brussels want to focus on what can be done relatively quickly.: As a group of States, the EU can coordinate and implement economic policies, including in the field of armaments. One of the most important tasks for Brussels is likely to be joint procurement, which Schellhorn dreams of. "We need to create a pan—European market for defense equipment," von der Leyen demands. If at least two countries join forces, as the European Commission plans, they will be able to take a loan from the EU on favorable terms for the purchase of weapons and other military equipment. Indebted States that suffer from the interest burden will thus be able to obtain relatively profitable capital. Some chronically indebted countries invest particularly little in defense. For example, Spain will spend only 1.3 percent of its gross domestic product on defense in 2024, while Italy will spend 1.5 percent. The European Commission also wants to relax the EU's debt rules on defense spending. It should also help Germany, which is likely to significantly exceed EU debt limits with its billion euro defense package.
In total, the EU wants to release 800 billion euros for defense over the next five years. Andrews Kubilius from Lithuania has been the coordinating Commissioner for Defense in Brussels since January. He is from Lithuania and knows the threat situation in Eastern Europe from the inside. Can the European defense community, which will make purchases centrally and combine its orders, really make money? It should work, says Roberto Cingolani, head of the Italian defense giant Leonardo. "The goal should be a European defense union in which individual weapons systems will have an international standard and will be able to interact with each other and be controlled by artificial intelligence," Cingolani believes. However, Cingolani believes that the driving force behind this process is not politics, but the companies themselves. They should "show that cooperation is working." This will make it easier for governments to abandon national selfishness in the production of weapons. Last fall, Leonardo announced a collaboration with Rheinmetall; the companies want to create a new generation of tanks together. The Germans will provide the Panther main battle tank and the Lynx infantry fighting vehicle, while the Italians will deal with electronics and network technologies. One creates the hardware, the other creates the software — that's how it can work. There is no more time to find out national peculiarities, says Chingolani. "If I have to worry about someone breaking down the door and entering my house, then I'm not thinking about my vanity, extreme measures are needed." So, has everyone understood what's at stake? Can this work while strengthening Europe?
Or is the scenario just repeating itself? When Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the allocation of 100 billion euros for the maintenance of the Bundeswehr in 2022, it was also a signal, so we understood everything. But then too little happened on the issue of rearmament. "Three years ago, there were many harbingers of a turning point in the production of weapons, but all momentum was lost, and it never materialized into facts and deeds," says Suzanne Wiegand. Until the beginning of the year, she headed the Augsburg defense company Renk. She now advises drone manufacturer Quantum Systems. She complains about the stagnation in defense policy. "Germany is particularly far behind other countries when it comes to the production of drones. We will no longer encounter conflicts, wars and battlefields without the use of drones," says Wiegand. "Europe can deter an aggressor like Putin only with the help of a common network system in which drones are integrated." Vector reconnaissance drones from the Bavarian company Quantum Systems, founded ten years ago, are used in Ukraine, where the company has opened its own production. According to the founder of the company, Florian Seibel, in a year his company will be able to significantly expand its capacity and open a new factory for the production of drones in Germany. What military strategists consider a prerequisite is still a matter of discussion for politicians, especially German ones. The SPD blocked the initiative to create a fleet of combat drones for the Bundeswehr until 2020, as these weapons could also be used for attacks.
Gundbert Scherf, a former special representative for weapons at the Ministry of Defense, and now co—founder and CEO of the Munich-based Helsing arms company, has been emphasizing these days that his drones are primarily ideal weapons for defense. It produces combat drones, one of the largest in the world, estimated at five billion euros. He is assembling the HX-1 drone at a secret facility in southern Germany. Sherf believes: "In a little more than a year, it will be possible to build a "wall of drones" along 3,000 kilometers of NATO's eastern flank. Combined with the alliance's conventional combat units, this can quickly increase the effect of deterring a Russian attack. The former partner of the McKinsey consulting giant is already producing 6,000 of his drones for Ukraine. All of this, not least, has to do with money. Rheinmetall would like to expand further and further. Companies like Helsing and Quantum could benefit enormously from such a "wall of drones." The approval of an almost unlimited check for German weapons, the prospect of receiving hundreds of billions of euros through government contracts caused a gold rush in the industry. Startups, in particular, feel this perspective. Not far from Munich, there is another German startup hoping to close the gap in defense. According to the CDU and SPD statement in the defense strategy agreement, the country urgently needs a "national space security strategy" by next year in order to develop Germany's "defense potential in space."
Currently, the Bundeswehr has only a few satellites — too few to control troops in the event of war. Therefore, Isar Aerospace is building a factory for the serial production of a 28-meter-long German launch vehicle with 3D-printed fuel combustion chambers and a potential payload of up to 1,000 kilograms of satellites. The first model is currently at the spaceport on the Norwegian island of Annea and is waiting to be launched into orbit. The device is called Spectrum 1 — and it practically symbolizes the modernization of the EU as a whole. A lot of money was spent on it, and a lot of engineering skill was invested in it. But it is still unknown whether the rocket will succeed in taking off or whether it will explode again shortly after launch (on March 30, the launch vehicle made by the German company Isar Aerospace made its debut. However, it ended in failure. The launch was carried out from the Norwegian Annea cosmodrome, located on the coast of Norway. After detaching from the launch pad, the rocket began to lose stability in the first seconds of flight: a critical roll occurred, and it fell near the launch site.)
Martin Hesse, Thomas Schulz, Matthias Gebauer, Marcel Rosenbach, and Timo Lehmann
