Germany’s defence minister has told weapons makers to stop complaining and “deliver” on re-arming Europe, as he called for production to increase to match his country’s booming spending plans.
Boris Pistorius told the Financial Times his government had addressed long-standing industry concerns by streamlining hundreds of billions of euros of new military spending.
“There is no reason to complain any more,” Pistorius said in the FT interview. “The industry knows perfectly well that it is now responsible for delivering.”
The industrial groups had to hold up their end of the bargain, he said, as Europe seeks to deter Russian aggression amid waning US interest in the continent’s security. Berlin is aiming to raise its annual defence spending to €162bn by 2029, a 70 per cent increase from this year.
“Unfortunately, we still experience delays in individual projects, where everything seems settled, and then delays occur on the industry side — which I then have to account for,” Pistorius said.
“Industry needs to ramp up its capacities. That applies to ammunition, to drones, to tanks — really to almost every area.”
The 65-year-old Social Democrat is tasked with delivering a “Zeitenwende” — or sea change — in his country’s approach to defence. The aim, announced three years ago after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, is to transform the armed forces after decades of under-investment and give Germany a leading role in European security.
Pistorius is due to meet US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth in Washington on Monday where he said he would discuss a “road map” for US security support for Europe. A widely expected reduction should not leave capability gaps that would risk “making an invitation to Putin”, he warned.
Also on the agenda is Ukraine and the pressing issue of US Patriot air defence systems, after deliveries to Kyiv were paused by Washington. Berlin has already given three of its once 12-strong stock of the critical Patriot systems to Kyiv.
“We only have six left in Germany,” Pistorius said, adding that two others had been lent to Poland and at least one was always unavailable due to maintenance or training. “That’s really too few, especially considering the Nato capability goals we have to meet. We definitely can’t give any more.”
Pistorius said he would discuss a proposal he made to Hegseth last month to let Germany buy two Patriot systems from the US for Kyiv.
But he said Germany would not deliver its long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine despite a wave of recent Russia air attacks and a renewed request from Kyiv.
The minister also rejected joint borrowing or eurobonds at EU level to help indebted countries such as France and Italy increase defence spending. Asked about proposals for such borrowing, he said: “No.”
“Eurobonds mean that those who have already done or are doing their homework pay for what others don’t do,” he added.
Pistorius said his ministry was working on a procurement plan for equipment including tanks, submarines, drones and fighter jets well into the 2030s, to make good on conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s pledge to make the German army Europe’s strongest.
Long-term contracts with “regular annual purchase obligations” would aim to address the long-standing industry complaint that it cannot invest in expensive new production lines without certainty about future orders.
The measure would prevent German soldiers from lumbering around with outdated weapons, he said. In 2022, as Europe reeled from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the then head of the German army said its troops were virtually “empty-handed”.
“The weakness in the past was always that replacements were only procured once the existing ones were practically gone or broken,” Pistorius said. “We need a system that renews itself through continuous deliveries over many years, so that the number of operational tanks always stays the same.”
On drones, where innovation is taking place at a dizzying pace, he pledged that Germany would ensure the armed forces only received “state of the art” products. He added he would allow advance payments to arms producers: “These are all new instruments intended to help the industry gain momentum.”
A report published last month by the think-tank Bruegel and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that European ammunition and artillery manufacturing capacity had increased substantially over the past three years. But it warned that the production rate of the battle tank used by many European nations — the Leopard 2A8 made by the Franco-German KNDS, with a gun made by Rheinmetall — continued to lag behind that of US and Russian equivalents.
Even as he called for the industry to speed up, Pistorius said he was seeking to improve procurement. “We need to get faster. We need to become more effective. We need to throw rules overboard when it comes to procurement and planning.”
Known as a straight talker and a staunch supporter of Ukraine, Pistorius has emerged as the country’s favourite politician since becoming defence minister. He is the only member of the previous cabinet, led by Olaf Scholz, to have remained in post since the change of government in May.
Pistorius said the country had been quicker than he expected to accept the need to re-arm. He pointed to surveys showing that a majority of the population supported higher defence spending as well as the introduction of a voluntary form of military service, due next year. “This mindset change is in full swing,” he said.
A native of Osnabrück in the north-western state of Lower Saxony, where British soldiers were stationed to protect what was Nato’s eastern flank during the cold war, Pistorius said he stood out within his party for opting for military service rather than a civilian alternative.
He was also in favour of the deployment of US Pershing II missiles in West Germany in the 1980s, when most of his fellow Social Democrats demonstrated against it. More recently he has been criticised by the party’s old guard, who have been pushing for a détente with Moscow.
“I’ve always been convinced that if you want to talk about peace and détente on equal terms, you can only do that from a position of strength, only from eye level,” he said. “Not to intimidate anyone, but to make it clear that we know what we can do — we want to live in peace with you, but don’t think that we’re weak or that we won’t defend ourselves. That is still true today.”
The inauguration this year of a permanent brigade of German soldiers in Lithuania to guard the Baltic state — one of Pistorius’s flagship projects — was a strong symbol of Germany’s commitment to Nato almost four decades after the collapse of the iron curtain, he said.
“The British, the Americans and the French were in Germany to protect our eastern flank,” he said. “And today, Lithuania, the Baltic states, Poland are the eastern flank and we must make a contribution there.”
He insisted that troops from Germany, which for years had a culture of military restraint in response to the horrors of the second world war, would be willing to kill Russian soldiers in the event of an attack by Moscow on a Nato member state.
“If deterrence doesn’t work and Russia attacks, is it going to happen? Yes,” he said. “But I would recommend that you simply go to Vilnius and talk to the representatives of the German brigade there. They know exactly what their job is.”
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