German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has made speed the top priority in military procurement, based on a doc seen by DailyKhaleej on Wednesday, in a push to overtake procedures beforehand criticised as sluggish and ineffective.
“The time factor has highest priority and is … with immediate effect decisive for providing the troops as quickly as possible with the equipment to be purchased,” the state secretary in cost of procurement, Benedikt Zimmer, stated in a decree signed on Tuesday.
With struggle raging in Ukraine, Pistorius faces the mammoth activity of bringing Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, again as much as speed after a long time of underinvestment because the finish of the Chilly Conflict.
Military chief Alfons Mais described his troops as “more or less empty handed” on the day of Russia’s invasion.
Progress in plugging the gaps has been sluggish regardless of a 100 billion euro ($110 billion) particular fund arrange by the federal government final 12 months to pay for brand new weapons. Arms shipments to Ukraine have depleted shares even additional.
In his decree, Zimmer stated procurement wanted to turn into “significantly faster, more effective and less bureaucratic” as Russia’s struggle on Ukraine pressured Germany to lift the state of readiness of its forces as shortly as doable.
He urged procurement officers to go for quicker off-the-shelf options as a substitute of the prolonged improvement of recent weapons.
“With a view to time and costs, technical realisation risks are, as a basic principle, to be avoided,” Zimmer wrote in the doc.
Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to guard Russia’s safety. ($1 = 0.9046 euros) (Reporting by Sabine Siebold; enhancing by Matthias Williams and Chizu Nomiyama)
