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MILITARY

Army considers plan to field more tanks

The crisis in Ukraine is prompting a rethink of equipment plans at the Defence Ministry, with officials considering outfitting troops with more battle tanks.

Published: 26 February 2015 08:37 CET
Army considers plan to field more tanks
Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel examines a tank at the Rheinmetall firing range in Lower Saxony. Photo: DPA

Germany has been reducing its number of Leopard 2 battle tanks from its Cold War height of 3,500, projected to fall to 225 under current plans.

But the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Thursday that that number may be revised upwards, along with numbers of other weapons systems.

A spokesman for Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen confirmed to the paper that “modernization and supplementary steps are being considered”.

Enlarging existing armoured capacity would entail taking Cold War-era tanks out of storage, rather than buying new ones.

The Bundeswehr (German army) is currently only 75 percent equipped with tanks and other heavy weapons, with equipment shared between different units as and when they need it under a so-called “Dynamic availability management” system.

A Defence Ministry spokesman admitted this week that the process was “in practice just as bad as it sounds” after it led last week to soldiers using broom handles as mock machine guns during a Nato exercise.

There are no plans to increase the actual size of the army, but rather to fill these supply gaps – fulfilling a long-held demand of soldiers and political defence specialists.

But von der Leyen's spokesman said that the changes were “not about a process for the coming months, but for the coming decade” and would not be included in the 2016 budget.

Bundeswehr Chief of Staff Volker Wieker reportedly confirmed the equipment gaps to the Bundestag (German parliament) defence committee.

Wieker promised to report on the impact of the current “availability management” system on the Bundeswehr's ability to fulfil its Nato obligations.

“If we want to present a credible allied defence for Europe, the troops have to be fully equipped,” defence committee chairman Hans-Peter Bartels said.

“A tank battalion without tanks is not a tank battalion”.

Bartels suggested that the country should aim to field around 300 battle tanks in future – something that could be achieved at little cost, as many of the vehicles are still in storage.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) defence spokesman Hennig Otte told Reuters that “given the background of the security situation”, Germany would have to aim for “full equipment with heavy weapons” – and the financial means to achieve it.

SEE ALSO: Troops tote broomsticks at Nato war games 

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NATO

Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he would back Sweden's Nato candidacy if the European Union resumes long-stalled membership talks with Ankara.

Published: 10 July 2023 12:35 CEST
Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

“First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan told a televised media appearance, before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Erdogan said “this is what I told” US President Joe Biden when the two leaders spoke by phone on Sunday.

Turkey first applied to be a member of the European Economic Community — a predecessor to the EU — in 1987. It became an EU candidate country in 1999 and formally launched membership negotiations with the bloc in 2005.

The talks stalled in 2016 over European concerns about Turkish human rights violations.

“I would like to underline one reality. Turkey has been waiting at the EU’s front door for 50 years,” Erdogan said. “Almost all the NATO members are EU members. I now am addressing these countries, which are making Turkey wait for more than 50 years, and I will address them again in Vilnius.”

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is due to meet Erdogan at 5pm on Monday in a last ditch attempt to win approval for the country’s Nato bid ahead of Nato’s summit in Vilnius on July 11th and 12th. 

Turkey has previously explained its refusal to back Swedish membership as motivated by the country’s harbouring of people connected to the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and the Gülen movement, who Erdogan blames for an attempted coup in 2016. 

More recently, he has criticised Sweden’s willingness to allow pro-Kurdish groups to protest in Swedish cities and allow anti-Islamic protesters to burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

In a sign of the likely reaction of counties which are members both of Nato and the EU, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the two issues should not be connected. 

“Sweden meets all the requirements for Nato membership,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is one that is not connected with it and that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue.”

Malena Britz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University, told public broadcaster SVT that Erdogan’s new gambit will have caught Sweden’s negotiators, the EU, and even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg off guard. 

“I think both the member states and Stoltenberg had expected this to be about Nato and not about what the EU is getting up to,” she said. “That’s not something Nato even has any control over. If Erdogan sticks to the idea that Turkey isn’t going to let Sweden into Nato until Turkey’s EU membership talks start again, then Sweden and Nato will need to think about another solution.” 

Aras Lindh, a Turkey expert at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, agreed that the move had taken Nato by surprise. 

“This came suddenly. I find it hard to believe that anything like this will become reality, although there could possibly be some sort of joint statement from the EU countries. I don’t think that any of the EU countries which are also Nato members were prepared for this issue.”

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