Bundeswehr: Ammunition for two days

In the discussion about insufficient ammunition stocks of the armed forces government representatives, opposition and the association of defense contractors have criticized each other. The occasion was a meeting in the Chancellery. According to government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit, the appointment should take place “at civil servant level”.

The deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Johann Wadephul, resigned as defense minister Christina Lambrecht (SPD) inaction before. “Without sufficient ammunition, no army in the world is operational. It is therefore an unbelievable failure that Minister Lambrecht has so far apparently done nothing to end the Bundeswehr’s ammunition crisis.”

Bundeswehr budget increased

The FDP politician Marie Agnes Strack Zimmermann replied: “Mr. Wadephul should know better as a CDU parliamentarian. In 2015, a year after the Donbass raid, the Union budgeted 296 million euros for ammunition. Today, 1.125 billion euros are available for this.” Green Party leader Omid Nouripour said that ammunition was being discussed in the Chancellery was very welcome. As far as he knows, the Bundeswehr currently has two days’ worth of ammunition, “and of course that’s absolutely not enough”.

The SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil called on the defense technology industry to produce. He would have expected the industry to rebuild these capacities “at a tremendous speed”. “Waiting and saying, first let’s see what politics offers us, that’s not an attitude with which we will now successfully reduce these deficits.”

The chairman of the defense industry association, Christoph Atzpodien, told Klingbeil that he was quite wrong. Within a week of the beginning of the war, the companies submitted offers for spare parts, ammunition and other goods worth around ten billion euros. “In the following weeks and months, however, hardly anything could be ordered.” The Bundeswehr lacks ammunition worth more than 20 billion euros.