Germany Rearms, Part II
In my last piece I set out a brief overview of the political landscape in Germany following the announcement by chancellor Olaf Scholz of a €100bn investment in the country’s armed forces. More immediately, German weapons exports to Ukraine have so far amounted to little. Some newer man-portable air-defence systems have been delivered alongside those dating to the 1960s, a remainder of the arsenal of the German Democratic Republic’s armed forces. And even as the details of the new €100bn investment fund are still to be ironed out, fiscal hawks are already calling for a reduction in social spending to pay for defence.
But leaving behind the political landscape for now, in this piece the question is rather more material: what can €100bn buy?
In recent years, Germany has spent about 1.5% of GDP on defence. Never in the past 30 years has Germany reached the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. In terms of actual numbers, Germany currently spends around €50bn per year on its armed forces. That is comparable to France and slightly less than the United Kingdom. France currently spends about 2% of GDP on defence, the UK about 2.7%. Scholz has indicated that he intends for Germany to meet that target from 2024, meaning an additional €20bn or so per year will be spent on the country’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
The Cost of Modern War
Modern weapons systems come with staggering price tags. The United States’ latest generation combat aircraft, the F-35, costs around US$100 million per unit. Adam Tooze has described the F-35 programme as feeding an entire “industrial ecosystem”, rather than simply developing a plane. Various parts of the system are designed and built not just domestically, but by the United States’ allies across the globe. The aircraft comes in a series of variants, each with modifications required either by the United States’ own armed forces services branches (the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy all have different requirements) or its allies. The programme to design and build this new aircraft has been running since the late 1980s and ultimately ran about a decade behind schedule, with enormous cost overruns. The fragility of high-end electronics means that even minor faults can lead to crashes.
The estimated cost to build, deploy, and maintain the United States’ fleet of F-35s is currently around US$1.7 trillion over the lifetime of the programme, which is slated to run into the 2070s. By 2070 we may already have lived in a net zero world for a decade or two, Germany’s last coal power plant would have shut down over 30 years earlier, and no cars with internal combustion engines will have been sold in Europe for 40 years. Despite all that, the F-35 may be with us still.
The Bundeswehr’s Shopping List
The German government seems committed to replace the Tornado, an aircraft flying since the 1980s, with F-35s. The Tornado plays a key part in Germany’s arsenal, it enables what Germans call Nukleare Teilhabe, rendered into English as “nuclear sharing”. Germany has no independent nuclear deterrent but relies on nuclear warheads made available to it by the United States. German Tornados and, in future, F-35s can be equipped with American nuclear warheads stationed in the Eifel Mountains at Büchel Air Base. Continued German access to these warheads relies on the acquisition of aircraft able to carry them, such as the F-35. This replacement programme alone would cost an estimated €15bn.
Beyond the acquisition of F-35s, Germany is developing jointly with France and Spain the FCAS (Future Combat Air System), essentially Europe’s answer to the F-35. This programme too is likely to be plagued by delays and cost overruns. Another major question will be export licensing. The new German government is keen to limit the weapons exports to NATO countries, while for French arms manufacturers this is a nonstarter. Between 2017 and 2021, France accounted for 11% of all global weapons exports. Over half of those exports are accounted for by sales of the Rafale by Dassault Aviation, which the FCAS is expected to replace.
A further €34bn is earmarked for a number of projects which include joint development, with various European partners, of: a new main battle tank, new artillery platforms, a new frigate class, a new drone, a new heavy transport helicopter, and much besides. If that sounds as though it amounts to a near complete overhaul of the German armed forces’ main weapons systems, it does.
In an obvious effort to spin the new investment in armaments as “defensive”, the German social democrats are now reportedly endorsing the purchase of an Israeli missile defence system. The system is able to intercept missiles and artillery shells and destroy them mid-air. But a focus on the idea of defensive weapons systems obscures their actual use: the interception of missiles is generally followed by a devastating counterattack. In short, defensive systems play a key role in supporting offensive operations.
German Inefficiency
But even before Scholz’ commitment to more defence spending, the German armed forces had a budget of nearly €50bn a year. The United Kingdom and France spend broadly comparable sums on their armed forces but manage to maintain better equipped armies and navies alongside their own independent nuclear arsenals. A German brigade currently designated part of NATO’s rapid response forces, meanwhile, had to borrow equipment from other formations across the armed forces in order to be fully equipped for the task.
Some experts have noted long term neglect on the part of successive German governments of the armed forces’ finances as a reason for a reliance on older weapons systems which have increasingly become extremely expensive to maintain, repair, and operate. The German armed forces regularly fail to fulfill even basic NATO requirements, such as one for minimum stocks of ammunition which is projected to cost €20bn. Military procurement is notoriously inefficient. Cost overruns are likely to become even more severe than they usually are as Germany embarks on joint developments of next generation weapons systems. But perhaps more significant is the fact that even this most basic of state functions, the maintenance and deployment of armies, has not been immune to neoliberal reform. The arithmetic of military power has long been subject to the relentless calculations of the market. Unsurprisingly, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the share price of Germany’s largest arms manufacturer has nearly doubled.
Neoliberalism at War
Privatisation, driven by the belief in the inherent efficiency of market forces, has affected military infrastructure and logistics much like civilian highways or railway franchises. Even the privatisation of the maintenance of German tanks and other armoured vehicles was only narrowly avoided. It had been driven ahead by a senior civil servant poached from a major consultancy. For much of its logistical operations, the Bundeswehr maintains contracts with private companies which often leave much to be desired. No longer is a stock of spare parts kept, for example, as they are now subject to the same just-in-time logistics as civilian car parts. That exactly these supply chains might be disrupted during a conflict - leading to shortages of parts critical for the maintenance of military capability - matters little to outside consultants hired to justify such changes in the name of efficiency. The result has been that most military hardware is, at any given point, not operational due to poor servicing and a lack of spare parts.
Germany is far from the only country to have privatised military logistics. Even the U.S. Army no longer carries out many key functions required to sustain its forces in the field itself. But it is not clear that a massive injection of funds, like that now proposed, will solve this problem. Because, not unlike civilian structures, the German military may be unable to cope with a sudden influx of investment. In this, military power is much like most other civilian domains of the state, atrophied due to decades of neglect.
Even as the need for more public transit and cycling infrastructure grows, as new housing will need to be equipped with heating systems not based on fossil fuels, and the existing housing stock urgently needs to be better insulated and made more energy efficient, planning capacity in the German state is woefully lacking. That means that even if more money is made available, the infrastructure to spend it effectively, to develop and evaluate projects, simply no longer exists. By making short term cuts a necessity, neoliberal policies have made long term planning near impossible without reliance on corporate actors keen to maximise their own profit.
Jan Tattenberg recently completed his PhD in contemporary German history at the University of Oxford.