New assault rifles for the Bundeswehr should be available quickly in Germany, a total of 120,000.

The Bundeswehr has been working with the weapons manufacturer Heckler & Koch for decades, supplying the standard G 36 model that is to be replaced.

But the job is difficult, it has been dragging on for more than seven years.

After an award procedure advertised throughout Europe and a time-consuming test, the purchase contracts were about to be concluded.

The arms supplier CG Haenel was awarded the contract, having submitted the cheapest offer.

Until Heckler & Koch confronted the competitor with allegations of patent infringement.

Since then, the job has been hanging in the air - and the soldiers continue to use the rifles that should have been discarded long ago.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Ulrich Friese

Editor in Business.

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The simple order has long since become a case for the judiciary, this Wednesday the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court is hearing whether Haenel will be excluded from the ongoing procurement process or be allowed to participate again.

If Haenel stayed out, Heckler & Koch would almost certainly have the job.

It is said that the sales contracts are already in the drawer and can be signed at any time.

Speed ​​is required now

The legal wrangling between the arms manufacturers and the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr, or BAAINBw for short, is a symbol of what is going wrong in German procurement: lengthy, overly thorough procedures with a penchant for shameful thrift, which then do not prevent legal disputes can - these are the basic components of a run-down Bundeswehr.

Andreas Glas, head of the armaments management research group at the Bundeswehr University, puts it this way: "The Bundeswehr is structurally ruined." The origins go back two decades, and the increasing military budget of the past few years (currently 50 billion euros) has not been able to change that.

“Now we have to invest significantly more to make up for decades of austerity.

It shouldn't stay at a few billion either, on Sunday the Chancellor surprisingly announced a new special fund of 100 billion euros.

But the scramble for the assault rifles gives an idea of ​​the tortuous paths that the lavish special budget could take.

There is probably not much that financial politicians, armament planners and industry managers can agree on as quickly as this: the effect of the new windfall for the armed forces will fizzle out if the procurement system of the Bundeswehr is not radically reformed at the same time and trimmed for greater efficiency at lightning speed.

Speed ​​is required now.

The new special fund had just been announced when the responsible department head in the ministry, Vice-Admiral Carsten Stawitzki, called the managers of 30 German armaments manufacturers together for a video conference on Monday and made the priorities unmistakably clear: the internal work processes in the procurement office in Koblenz had to be streamlined as well as According to the conference participants, the military's top equipment planner said that the current stocks of weapons and defense material should be checked and made operational as quickly as possible.

The procurement authority with around 12,000 employees concludes contracts with an average purchasing volume of 4.5 billion euros every year.

In the medium term, you must concentrate on military research and development projects as well as major European projects such as the FCAS fighter jet program or the construction of a successor to the Leopard 2 main battle tank.

On the other hand, smaller orders such as the purchase of equipment or the awarding of repair orders that fall below the EUR 500,000 limit should be processed using standardized purchasing processes wherever possible.

"A very cynical situation"

The manager of a German armaments manufacturer is convinced that if Stawitzki succeeds with his ideas, the "state buyers of the Bundeswehr are in for a culture shock".

The Federal Office itself did not want to comment on Tuesday.

Whether it's about replacing the outdated transport helicopters with large American equipment or equipping them with automatic rifles: in the recent past, the Koblenz authority caused negative headlines with breakdowns in tendering and the awarding of large orders.

Armaments management researcher Glas is more merciful: "The BAAINBw works within a very narrow framework." It is very difficult for the employees to spend the scarce euro.

“The optimization programs have been running for more than a decade.

Several ministers have tried to reform the procurement office in recent years.

Most recently, former Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) failed to privatize at least parts of the agency.

But the timing for fundamental reform has never been worse.

"We are currently experiencing a very cynical situation," says Bundeswehr researcher Glas soberly.

"It took a war of aggression for us to appreciate the value of security."