Difficult times are ahead for the Department of Defense.

Because despite growing tasks and necessary investments, the budget is expected to shrink substantially in the coming years.

After around 50 billion euros in the coming year, the budget is to decrease gradually to 45.7 billion by 2025.

This is what the medium-term financial planning that Olaf Scholz (SPD) presented as finance minister provides.

Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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The union with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has agreed to this. At the same time, however, the Ministry of Defense had calculated for the Bundestag that it would actually need at least 62 billion by 2025 to fulfill its mandate. Should the budget remain as planned, Germany would break its promise to its Western allies to spend 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2024. In fact, after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the attack on Ukraine, an agreement had been reached to increase defense spending to two percent of GDP.

The planned weakening occurs in a tense situation on NATO's eastern borders with Belarus and Russia, in the face of hybrid warfare against Poland and Lithuania and the irregular deployment of Russian forces on the borders with Ukraine. The NATO concept of effective deterrence is based on the ability to respond to every attack in a superior manner. After two decades of foreign missions with contingents of numerous troop units, this now requires that the Russian army be countered by forces of equal value, consisting of fully equipped and sustainable large units.

Germany would have to provide a large part of this, at least eight brigades with 5,000 soldiers each and fully equipped by 2032. This is what NATO has promised to do. But even with the current budget, the Bundeswehr is far from being able to do that. It cannot even provide a single fully equipped brigade at the moment. The goal of having at least one German division in five years, ready for action within 30 days, has become a long way off.

Those in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania in particular will not be happy to hear that, if the worst comes to the worst, they will quickly join the three or four own brigades and the NATO elements currently active there - around four battalions of a thousand men each the rapid reaction force (VJTF) of NATO is on the spot and then regular units, including the Bundeswehr. But if they are not operational, American support across the Atlantic would probably come too late.

In addition to clout, it is primarily about speed. And so generals, especially in the Bundeswehr, have long been concerned about whether there should be no more medium-sized combat units that roll on wheels, not on chains, in addition to traditional tank units, such as the Leopard 2 heavy battle tanks. The development of larger medium-sized forces would be another billion-dollar project for which there is no funding.

As things stand at present, the Bundeswehr does not even have the money to make its 350 Pumas operational.

Most of these armored personnel carriers do not meet the NATO criteria, they are unsuitable for combat.

This year, at great expense, 40 Pumas were converted so that they can be used for the next major NATO commitment: Germany is to provide the core of the VJTF rapid reaction force in 2023, and the 40 refurbished Pumas are intended for this purpose.