Germany reports record defence spending ahead of NATO meeting

For the first time in thirty years, Germany has reported to NATO planned defence spending that would amount to two percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Published: 14 February 2024 16:58 CET

Troops of the German armed forces Bundeswehr at the military air base in Wunstorf, northern Germany. Photo: Ronny HARTMANN / AFP

This comes after German leaders have suggested, more and more urgently, for a need to bolster defence forces.

It is clear to everyone “that we have to put significantly more money into defence,” government spokesman Steffan Hebestreit told DPA in Berlin.

Additionally, German and European leaders have recently expressed concern and criticism in response to comments made by Donald Trump, at a campaign appearance in the US, which implied that he would not provide American support to allies with low defence spending in the event of a Russian attack.

According to research by DPA, the German government has budgeted a sum that equates to 73.41 billion dollars for the defence alliance in the current year. This is a record value for Germany in absolute terms and, according to the current NATO forecast, would equate to 2.01 percent of the country’s GDP this year.

Germany has achieved this target with the help of the €100 billion special fund for the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr), which is to be exhausted by 2027. The federal government reiterated on Wednesday that Germany intends to continue to meet the target in the following years from 2028 onwards.

Regardless of the increasing expenditure, the Bundeswehr is far from the declared goal of being fit for war. Notably, it had 181,500 enlisted soldiers left at the turn of the year, which is 1,500 fewer men and women than a year earlier. Additionally, weapons systems that have been ordered may take years to arrive.

There are doubts as to whether the army division, which is promised to be operational by 2025, will then be ready. In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Inspector General Carsten Breuer admitted that Germany will only be able to provide NATO with some of its capabilities later than promised.

According to documents from the NATO archives, Germany last spent two percent of its GDP on defence in 1992. During the Cold War, the rate was usually over three percent.

The development of defence spending by NATO countries is to be discussed this Thursday at a meeting of defence ministers at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Wednesday that he expects 18 of the 31 allies to achieve NATO’s goal of spending two percent of their GDP on defence this year. That would be six times as many as in 2014. At that time, only three alliance partners had achieved the two percent target.

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the surface-to-air system was part of a build-up of German and European defences launched after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Ukraine invasion in 2022.

“Russia has been massively rearming for many years, especially in the field of rockets and cruise missiles,” Scholz said at the inauguration ceremony at a base in Todendorf near the northern city of Hamburg.

Putin had broken disarmament treaties and “deployed missiles as far as Kaliningrad”, a Russian exclave located some 530 kilometres (330 miles) from Berlin, he added.

“It would be negligent not to respond to this appropriately,” the chancellor said. “A failure to act would put peace at risk. I will not allow that.”

Scholz, who was joined by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, said the system was part of the European Sky Shield Initiative, which also includes long-range defences against ballistic missiles.

The German military has ordered six of the Iris-T SLM systems at a total cost of 950 million euros ($1 million) from manufacturer Diehl Defence, to be delivered by May 2027.

Iris-T success in Ukraine

Germany, the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States, has already supplied four Iris-T SLM systems to Ukraine and pledged another eight.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov was visiting Germany on Wednesday, a day after a Russian missile attack killed at least 51 people in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, one of the single deadliest bombardments of the war.

The Iris-T systems sent to Ukraine feature truck-mounted launchers that fire missiles to intercept aerial threats at a range of up to 40 kilometres (25 miles).

Scholz said that “in Ukraine, Iris-T has shot down over 250 rockets, drones and cruise missiles to date and saved countless lives”.

The German leader said that Europe, aside from defensive systems, would also need more precision missiles of its own “so that there is no dangerous gap with Russia in this strategically important field”.

In July, Washington and Berlin announced that the “episodic deployments” of long-range US missiles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, to Germany would begin in 2026.

Scholz stressed that “our sole concern is to deter potential attackers. Every attack on us must mean a risk for the attacker. Our concern is to secure peace here and prevent war, and nothing else.”