Eva Högl is the commissioner appointed by the German Parliament to oversee the state of Germany’s armed forces. Many call him “the soldiers’ lawyer. This week he presented his annual report for 2022 on the situation of the German armed forces, known as the Bundeswehr, and the diagnosis has been described as devastating. Wolfgang Hellmich, the defense expert of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), He has said that after 30 years of cutbacks and German complacency it will take decades to restore the country’s ground warfare capabilities.
According to Högl, there is an urgent need to act in all areas and the need to end the low morale of the troops. Soldiers need the best backpacks, suitable helmets and, above all, new digital radios since the old ones are 30 years old. The commissioner summarized her message in three lines: logistical inefficiency, post-pandemic hangover and bureaucratic inertia of the German Defense Ministry, and put on the table many of the main errors and shortcomings of the German Army and the difficulty of modernization in full Ukrainian war.
One of the most common darts in the report presented this week in the Bundestag (German lower house) is the lack of funds “for everything, to hire staff and to make purchases.” It is unheard of because the Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced at the beginning of 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the creation of an additional fund of 100,000 million euros to strengthen the country’s defense. Eva Högl denounces that this promised amount has remained a dead letter. “Unfortunately, I have to say that in 2022 not one euro or one cent has been spent for this special fund,” she said.
Only a small part of that special fund has been used for the acquisition of weapons. Until now, the arms industry has received barely $1 billion worth of orders from the federal government, despite the fact that more than 10,000 people work in the Bundeswehr’s procurement office, Högl denounced.
The report by the commissioner – who is from the same party as the chancellor, the Social Democratic SPD – gives numerous examples of how poorly conditioned the country’s military installations are: “Too many barracks in Germany are in appalling condition” and warns that if they do not hurry it will take “about half a century” to modernize the infrastructure of the Bundeswehr.
He also criticizes the slow bureaucracy that governs the procurement system within the military. For example, It took ten years to process a purchase of a helmet model for a helicopter pilot used by the US.. Providing modern cameras to the media team took seven years. A set of equipment for a biology lab for the NBC defense school in Sonthofen was missing for six years and was not returned. According to Högl all these products were on the market and could have been bought before,
With the war in Ukraine the scenario has changed so much that Germany has had no choice but to introspect: “The defense of the country and of the alliance is once again the central task of the Bundeswehr,” said Högl at the presentation of his annual report . “The Bundeswehr has very little of everything. And it has had even less since February 24, 2022,” said the commissioner of the Armed Forces. To add insult to injury, the number of soldiers has decreased in the last year, from 183,695 in 2021 to 183,051 in 2022.
Manpower shortages are a growing problem as the German military has increased its presence on NATO’s eastern flank. As of 2025, at least 30,000 German soldiers will have to be permanently available for the requirements of the Atlantic alliance, which will reduce the Bundeswehr’s ability to deploy in conflicts on other continents. Högl cited the example of the Navy, which has suffered greatly from austerity measures in recent decades and demands priorities.
For years, many within the armed forces have criticized the ineffectiveness of its structures. It has been said that the 30 year old radios used by German soldiers in joint exercises within NATO make them an unusual case, taking into account that it is one of the richest countries in the European Union. Another recent report denounced that the ammunition currently stored would only last for a maximum of 2 days in the event of an attack on German territory. Another common criticism is the lack of military equipment with a high percentage of useless and obsolete weapons, ranging from broken-down tanks and helicopters beyond repair to rifles that don’t fire correctly.
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