The German Defense Minister, Christine Lambert, who has been in office for about a year, is expected to resign tomorrow. She is accused by her generals but also by external exponents of inadequacy.
Chancellor Scholz has done everything to defend it but by now we have reached a dead end with no possibility of going back. On the horizon the appointment of another woman.
Lambrecht has inherited the sad legacy of his predecessors. Insufficient Defense budgets and an Army not trained for the challenges of the present and the future. But he had had a unique chance because he could handle it turning point, the sumptuous allocation of 100 billion euros that Scholz dedicated to defense after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Goal was to modernize the Bundeswehr. A small attempt was demonstrated with participation in the F-35 program and the purchase of 60 CH-47F Chinook helicopters. That's all. Because one year after the settlement, army materials and ammunition continue to be dated.
In the meantime, however, Germany has supported the Western effort by delivering armored vehicles, missiles and anti-aircraft defense systems to Kiev, but has not been able to replace them. To date, the warehouses remain empty and it does not seem that there are any contracts already in place to remedy the problem in a short time.
Net of his managerial skills, in the year of his mandate, Lambrecht it was also hit by a series of scandals (it is thought thanks to tips to the press by its generals). She used a military helicopter to take her son on vacation to Sylt, the island of rich Germans. Finally, on New Year's Eve, Lambrecht had spread a strange amateur video on her social networks, recorded alone in the midst of fireworks, in which she talked about herself and said nothing about the war.
Not to mention that it has never been appreciated by its generals because of the appointments made in key points of Defense to characters outside the Military Administration.
Chancellor Scholza will have an extra grain, to immediately appoint the replacement because next Friday in the base of Ramstein, in Germany, the defense ministers of 50 countries of the contact group for the defense of Ukraine will meet under the leadership of the United States, to discuss and coordinate new military aid to Kiev. Above all, the supply of German-made Leopard 2 heavy tanks will be on the agenda. Poland has already made its supplies available, but needs authorization from Berlin to deliver them. And Ramstein will need a German defense minister capable of giving the answer.
The German fool in the NATO context
Audino Uski on l'Espresso told the debacle German within NATO. Just two weeks after the handover from France to Germany in the joint command of NATO (VJTF), the rapid intervention unit created at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales in response to the Russian occupation of Crimea. On December 18th, the army leaders and the Ministry of Defense in Berlin received a letter with explosive contents signed by the general of the 18th armored division Ruprecht von Butler. During the exercises in Münster with panzer Pumas, the XNUMX armored fighting vehicles for infantry reached zero operability, a «total bankruptcy» reports the major general. «The operational capability of the vehicles is a lottery, sorry to say it so harshly», concludes the general, aware that the armored vehicles should have entered into action in the NATO VJTF mission shortly thereafter. There news of the misery in the German army risks crossing borders and becoming yet another international case. The holder of the department Christine Lambert it ran for cover, deciding to suspend the entry into action of the Puma panzers in the NATO mission and to put the "old but good" Marders back into operation, the tracked vehicles supplied to the German army since 1970.
The story is summarized by the German press as «the total failure of the Pumas», the vehicle resulting from the joint participation of two major brands of the German defense industry, Rheinmetall, Landsysteme e Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (kmw). The ministry also suspends the purchase of another batch of crawlers while the director of Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, dismisses the matter as "a storm in a teacup» and in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine am Sonntag he speaks of «slight defects» that can be fixed in two-three weeks.