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Bundeswehr soldier (during an exercise in February 2023): 280 million euros less for ammunition than the ministry had budgeted
Photo: Martin Meissner / picture alliance / AP
Ammunition is in short supply.
It is missing in the Bundeswehr depots and also in the Ukrainian defense campaign.
Six months after taking office, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius addressed the problem and declared the procurement of artillery shells a top priority.
“We must and want to invest well over 20 billion euros in ammunition by 2031,” Pistorius told SPIEGEL in July 2023.
But the procurement offensive is apparently getting off to a halt.
Last year, the Defense Ministry spent less money on purchasing ammunition than was available for it.
Around 845 million euros went into the procurement of ammunition - around 280 million euros less than the ministry had budgeted.
This emerges from the defense department's answers to written questions from CDU Bundestag member Ingo Gädechens, which SPIEGEL has received.
"It's alarming, everyone knows that we urgently need ammunition - but too little is happening," criticizes the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's rapporteur for the defense budget.
Gädechens accuses the Defense Minister of breaking his word: "Although Pistorius wanted to make the issue of ammunition a top priority, he hardly achieved anything."
According to Gädechens, the federal government even spent around 40 million euros less on ammunition last year than in 2022, if you exclude costs for advance payments for goods that have not yet been delivered and annual inflation.
The ministry says that there has been a “reversal in the trend” in ammunition procurement in the past two years.
Ammunition is expected to be purchased for around 3.5 billion euros this year.
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