The poll, conducted by the Forsa polling institute for the magazine Internationale Politik, found that 64 percent of German respondents were in favour of establishing a European nuclear shield as a deterrent, while only 29 percent were opposed.
Some 45 percent of German respondents favour spending 5 percent of GDP on defence that compared to 37 percent who oppose it, with 18 percent saying they don’t know, a poll from YouGov conducted for the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung showed.
A survey published on Monday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that support for increased defence spending is highest in Poland and Denmark (70 percent), followed by Britain (57 percent), Estonia (56 percent) and Portugal (54 percent).
Over 56 percent of respondents polled by the opinion research institute Innofact said private investments in the arms industry were justifiable, in a significant change from 2022 when 53 percent of respondents still had reservations about investing in defence companies. Since then, the prospect of higher government defence spending in Germany and many other countries has driven many stocks to record highs.
The Bundeswehr had a strength of 181,150 soldiers at the end of 2024, falling short of previous recruiting targets. NATO member states are to be assigned new national targets for their military capabilities, including weaponry, that are expected to be increased by around 30%.
Figures from the Germany’s Economy Ministry show arms exports to Israel worth €485 million between October 7, 2023 and May 13, 2025, as a new poll shows a majority of Germans support suspending arms exports to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Germany’s Federal Court of Audit warned that a ‘signal of unlimited willingness to incur debt’ could lead prices in defence industry to soar, with incentives for industry to charge higher prices for the same services due to ‘almost unlimited availability of financial resources and increased demand.’
The German military has stationed a permanent presence abroad for the first time since the Second World War with the activation of a new brigade in Lithuania that will number 5,000 and with headquarters near the Belarusian border.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius outlined a plan for Germany to increase military expenditure as a ratio of gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.2 percentage points per year over a period of seven years.
According to Helsing, hundreds of SG-1 Fathoms can be deployed with the Lura AI software platform by a single operator to autonomously detect threats at 10% of the cost of crewed Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) patrols.
At the end of the 2023/2024 financial year, the order backlog stood at €11.7 billion, but the figure has now risen to €18 billion after significant orders from Germany and Singapore.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “has long since switched completely to a war economy,” and the country is currently producing as many weapons and ammunition in three months as the entire European Union does in a year, Pistorius said.
Damage to submarine communication cables between new NATO members Finland and Sweden and their alliance partners Germany and Lithuania was likely sabotage, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday. “No one believes that these cables were cut by mistake,” Pistorius said in Brussels at an EU defence ministers meeting to discuss the different threats facing the European Union.
Shortly before the conversation with Putin, however, Scholz also reiterated in remarks to parliament that Germany would not supply Ukraine with the long-range Taurus cruise missiles, which Ukraine has repeatedly requested.
An analysis of the military capabilities of the Western alliance and Russia “leaves no doubt about NATO’s overall military superiority.” Only in terms of nuclear weapons do the two sides have parity, concluded the study’s authors.
