Germany is spending 7 more billion euros in ships and tanks

The federal government continues to upgrade the armament of the Bundeswehr . As Bloomberg news agency reported, citing informed sources, the semaphore coalition will place orders this quarter for two naval frigates and hundreds of armored vehicles with a total value of up to seven billion euros.

According to the report, the plan is to buy two more F126 frigates for about three billion euros. The initial plan was to acquire four frigates. For this, the federal government had calculated about 5.3 billion euros.

At the same time, the federal government had also agreed on an option to build two additional frigates with the general contractor for the construction of the F126, the Dutch shipyard company Damen Naval. The first F126 is scheduled to be delivered to the German Navy in 2028.

Frigate F126

The German Navy has not shown much of itself in recent years. Maybe with two new frigates built in the Netherlands he will be able to improve performance

Bundeswehr to receive new armored transport vehicles

According to Bloomberg, these are 900 Fuchs armored transport vehicles. The costs amounted to up to four billion euros. The manufacturer is the Düsseldorf-based arms company Rheinmetall. The Defense Ministry has not yet commented on the news. This is not a new vehicle, but recently renovated and, above all, of German construction.

Rehinmetall Fuchs

So far, it seemed that the 6×6 armored transport vehicle from the Finnish arms company Patria would replace the Fuchs in the Bundeswehr. However, Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger recently said in an interview with Handelsblatt that he would like to equip the Bundeswehr with the successor Fuchs 2.

Patria: Negotiations with the federal government are still ongoing

Patria’s communications director, Sirje Ahvenlampi-Hyvönen, said Patria will not comment on the report and stressed that the federal government has not commented on the report. According to Patria, negotiations with the federal government are still ongoing. Ahvenlampi-Hyvönen did not provide any information on the status or timetable of the negotiations. “The negotiations are currently ongoing. As a company, we inform when we have something to report,” he said.

Patria is a much more modern armored vehicle than the Fuchs and, among other things, 8X8, therefore capable of better performance. This does not mean that Germany will not also purchase this model to be able to send it to Ukraine

The frigate Rhineland-Palatinate is part of the German Navy’s fleet, which the federal government wants to significantly expand.Photo: IMAGO/Christian Ohde
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the federal government established a special fund worth 100 billion euros. This is in addition to the regular defense budget, which is about 52 billion euros this year.