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.
The proposed 2,000+ km range deep precision weapon planned to be fielded in the 2030s could fill a capability gap uncovered by the death of the INF Treaty between Russia and the U.S., which barred land-based intermediate range missiles.
Europe appears to have accepted the prospect of acting independently of the United States, with a new rearmament program proposed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, last week.
Ukraine has agreed to a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia in exchange for resumption of suspended military aid and intelligence after talks between the two countries in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
As NATO races to supply Ukraine before Trump takes office, Europe is struggling to touch two percent of its GDP on defence expenditure while Russia plans to spend more than 32 percent of its national budget on its military.
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.
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.
Russian officials did not, however, specify the country that has ordered the aircraft, the export variant of which is called the Sukhoi-57E. Potential customers for the Sukhoi-57 in the past have included India, China, Vietnam and Algeria.
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.
In the September survey, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius’ (SPD) proposal to increase defence spending to 3% to 3.5% of the gross domestic product received 50% approval, while 15% said that was too low.
No signals have as yet been received from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on resuming dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite statements to the effect by Scholz, according to the Kremlin.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has prompted Germany to revisit its defence posture, which increasingly suffered from a lack of investment since the end of the Cold War as imminent threats appeared to diminish. The legislation must now pass through Germany’s two houses of parliament. It could come into force in May of next year.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that the Bundeswehr needs around €58 billion ($63 billion) in 2025 to quickly close capability gaps. “As things stand, we will be allocated around €52 billion”, he said, adding, “That means we will be short of almost €6 billion next year.”
“The Russian army increases its number of tanks by 1,000 to 1,500 additional units every year. The five largest European NATO member states together have just half of that in their inventory,” said Germany’s chief of defence Carsten Breuer.
