In view of the numerous failures of the Puma infantry fighting vehicle during an exercise in Lower Saxony, a joint initiative by the Ministry of Defense and the armaments companies involved is apparently being launched.
A spokesman for the company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann announced this to the FAZ on Tuesday evening.
KMW, together with partners from the official and industrial side, have decided on an initiative to analyze the failure reports as quickly as possible and repair the affected systems as quickly as possible, the spokesman said.
Lorenz Hemicker
Editor in Politics
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The primary goal of the initiative should therefore be to make the Puma operational again.
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) had stopped further and the modernization of existing vehicles after reports of the failure of all 18 infantry fighting vehicles of the system during exercises on the military training area in Bergen, Lower Saxony.
At the same time, it was announced that the Puma would not be used as part of the NATO VJTF blocking spearhead from the beginning of next year, as previously planned.
The task is now to be taken over by the decades-old predecessor Marder.
The necessary capacities for the repair of the Pumas should already be available.
However, the spokesman emphasized, it was first necessary to obtain "access to the vehicle".
From this it can be inferred that to date the company has been informed of the 18 "total failures" that are said to have occurred up to the previous week.
couldn't see a single one.
Only when the Pumas are "detailed" can the necessary measures be taken and "reliable statements about maintenance and the scope of the work" can be made.
The army has around 350 Pumas and, at a unit price of 17 million euros, is considered the most expensive infantry fighting vehicle in the world.
It was only at the beginning of 2021 that a working group from industry, the army and the procurement office managed to get a total of 41 Pumas ready for combat after many years in the troops.