Rheinmetall boss: Can supply Bundeswehr at short notice

As Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Sunday, the federal government is providing an additional 100 billion euros for defense spending in the form of a special fund in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Rheinmetall received its first order for several thousand new helmets this week. The defense budget has been increased significantly in recent years, but that was not enough to resolve the investment backlog, Papperger told WirtschaftsWoche. A lot of money went into major projects such as the construction of frigates. “The billions that were needed for this were then lacking, especially for small and medium-sized projects.” The special fund is now intended to clear the investment backlog that has arisen and to enable the Bundeswehr once more to do justice to its tasks in national and alliance defense . “We start with training the troops, not with the development of new projects,” says Papperger. “It cannot be that in the event of an attack we can no longer defend ourselves following a few days because the Bundeswehr has run out of ammunition.”