Germany suspends orders for Puma tanks due to damage

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at the end of September that he wanted Germany to have “the best equipped armed forces in Europe.” But efforts still need to be made. Berlin has put new orders for Puma tanks on hold after operational problems again revealed a malfunction in its army’s vehicles. “As long as the machines are unreliable, there will be no second order,” said German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. She acknowledged that these “new failures” are a “dramatic setback” for the Bundeswehr.

During a German army exercise, the commander of the 10th Armored Division said that of “18 modern Puma armored personnel carriers, not one was in working order,” according to Der Spiegel. However, from January these infantry fighting vehicles were to be used by the VJTF, NATO’s “very rapid” deployment battalion.

“The army is more or less dry”

The Alliance “can continue to count on meeting our obligations,” Christine Lambrecht assured, however, who will offer as an alternative solution the Marder-type machines, the old models that were supposed to replace the Cougars. The first copies were delivered to the army in 2015.

Christine Lambrecht back in April expressed regret that more than half of the 350 Bundeswehr Pumas produced by the German groups Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) are not working. “The army I lead is more or less dry,” Alphonse Mays admitted this winter, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused an electric shock to German defense and strategic doctrine.

In the Navy, less than 30% of buildings are “fully functional”, according to the 2021 State of the Army report. In the Air Force, a large number of troop vehicles or fighter jets are unable to fly. Therefore, Berlin created a special fund of 100 billion euros to modernize its equipment.