The Bundeswehr has been run down for decades. With the "turn of the era" a lever should be turned - actually. Ammunition is not only scarce, but has apparently not even been ordered on a large scale. Criticism also comes from traffic lights.
Scandals about the poor equipment of the Bundeswehr are almost as old as the troops. Seven years after the founding of the German army, the "Spiegel" published an article with the headline "Conditionally ready for defense". In it, the news magazine revealed that everything was missing when the Bundeswehr started in 1955: "officers, non-commissioned officers, weapons, barracks, training areas".
The article triggered the so-called "Spiegel" affair. The reason: Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss did not react with a Bundeswehr reform or a procurement initiative. But by having the author of the article arrested by the fascist Franco regime in Spain.
Even then it was all about the money. Strauss would rather finance nuclear weapons than improve the Bundeswehr's conventional equipment, since this would be "much cheaper" and Germany "can't afford to restrict our standard of living or our exports". A lot has changed since then, also in the Bundeswehr. But the priorities remained the same and the undersupply of the troops was a permanent problem. In February, on the day of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the army inspector, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, wrote that the Bundeswehr was "more or less empty". Three days later, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a "special fund" of 100 billion euros in his "Zeitenwende" speech in the Bundestag, which was then passed in the summer.
From the point of view of the opposition, not nearly enough has happened since then. The latest excitement was a report according to which the Bundeswehr would run out within a maximum of two days in the event of war. There is no official confirmation of these figures: no army in the world reports such stocks. The federal government therefore left a small request from the Union faction unanswered with reference to Germany's security.
Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a wide gap between the capabilities of the Bundeswehr on the one hand and the demands formulated by the chancellor and the objective requirements on the other. According to Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, 20 billion euros would be needed "to replenish our depleted ammunition stocks and bring them up to NATO level," as the SPD politician said in the Bundestag in June; According to NATO regulations, each member must have ammunition reserves for 30 days of war.
This problem is unlikely to have been solved at today's munitions summit - especially since it was not a "summit" but merely "a meeting at official level", "more of an informational meeting", as government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said on Monday. In other words, concrete results are not to be expected. Neither the chancellor nor the Federal Defense Minister takes part. It's about "fundamental production issues, how quickly, how continuously you can produce something like this".
Hebestreit openly admitted the shortage: He could not provide any information on the question of how many combat days the Bundeswehr currently has ammunition for. But in which areas this deficiency prevails is apparently no secret: "I would say it in general: everywhere," says Hebestreit. His colleague from the Ministry of Defense added that he could "only underline that twice". Lambrecht put it this way in June: "For decades, our troops have been criminally neglected and run down, and that has left its mark," she said in the Bundestag. "The equipment is sewn on edge - and often not even that."
Union politicians also admit that the fault does not lie solely with the current minister. "The ammunition stocks have not been replenished since 2011," said CDU defense expert Roderich Kiesewetter ntv.de. "Everyone who deals with alliance and national defense knows that." With regard to the Union, Kiesewetter added: "We should also be self-critical here, since the past difficult government coalitions have not succeeded in replenishing the stocks."
According to Kiesewetter, the 20 billion euros specified by Lambrecht for the procurement of ammunition are not enough. In order to replenish the ammunition stocks, you have to reckon with 30 to 40 billion euros. "Moreover, the ammunition is not part of the special fund," says Kiesewetter. "In this respect, it is questionable why the federal government obviously did not use the entire spring and summer." The CDU expert criticized that Scholz reacted with the summit "unfortunately much too late and only because of the great public pressure". "Obviously, the mindset is missing to really turn the tide into a political program."
Less sharp, but similar in content criticism comes from the coalition partners of the SPD. The chair of the defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, called the meeting in the Chancellery overdue. "We already called for such a meeting in March," said the FDP politician on ntv's "early start". The green European politician Anton Hofreiter said on ntv about the lack of ammunition, "the governments of the last ten to fifteen years are mainly to blame for this blatant disaster". But he also said the Secretary of Defense has a responsibility to ensure procurement gets better.
The SPD, in turn, passed the buck on to the armaments industry. Party leader Lars Klingbeil said on Sunday evening on ARD that after the chancellor's "Zeitenwende" speech, he would have expected the industry to "rebuild at great speed" previously reduced capacities. However, this did not happen. If the armaments industry does not quickly build up capacities, one would also have to look for armaments abroad.
The Federal Association of the German Security and Defense Industry (BDSV) sharply rejected the allegation. Rather, it is the case that the federal government has so far hardly ordered ammunition, weapons and equipment, although companies have made advance payments, said Managing Director Hans Christoph Atzpodien. Immediately after the Scholz speech on February 27, the Ministry of Defense asked 250 companies in a video link to mobilize all possibilities to make the Bundeswehr "ready for combat" as quickly as possible, according to Atzpodien. Within a week, the companies submitted offers for necessary spare parts, ammunition and other goods worth around 10 billion euros. "In the following weeks and months, however, hardly anything could be ordered because the regime of 'provisional budget management' still applied in the federal government."
The reason was that in 2021, as is usual in election years, no budget had been passed for the following year and the federal government therefore had to work with supplementary budgets. However, that does not fully explain the situation: "The issue of shortages has been known for four years," said the head of the Bundeswehr Association André Wüstner ntv. "Now it's finally time to order." From his point of view, the appointment at the Chancellery was too late anyway. Depending on the type of ammunition, it will take up to two years for the deficiency to be remedied.
