Germany is expanding its army and investing hundreds of millions of euros in its defense. But is the country buying the right weapons? Today, cheap drones increasingly dominate the battlefield.
The German government's efforts to modernize and expand the Bundeswehr are at risk of failure due to the country's slow public procurement processes, critics say.
The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown that drones costing only tens of thousands can be effective against weapons that have cost countless millions to develop and produce. Ukraine’s air defenses, for example, have shown that they can withstand Russian attacks despite having fewer fighters and bombers.
War is a completely different thing now
Meanwhile, Germany has significantly increased its defense spending in the past few years. In addition to the 100 billion euro “special fund” announced after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country has rapidly increased its regular defense spending: from 62.4 billion euros in 2025 to 82.7 billion in 2026. The plan is to reach 152 billion by 2029.
But critics question whether these huge sums are being spent in the best way. Military analyst Nico Lange has been harshly critical of the current strategy. “It’s the same dysfunctional system as before. They are simply pouring significantly more money into it," he told the news portal Web.de. "If the structures of military planning and procurement are not really changed, nothing better will come of it."
Social Democrat Andreas Schwarz, a member of the Bundestag's defense committee, said the war in Ukraine was "completely changing the way war is fought." On a visit to Ukraine earlier this month, Schwarz found that the debates that dominated German politics in the first year of the war - whether Germany should send Taurus missiles, for example - had become completely irrelevant. "What is needed now is help with drones, with ammunition, with modernizing their IT sector, with satellites and communications," he said.
Can an army still fight with "old" weapons?
But the Ukrainian experience does not mean that heavy weapons systems are obsolete, as some analysts have argued in recent months. Max Becker, a policy expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, says the war in Ukraine has shown that tanks or artillery systems are still important for capturing and holding territory, as well as for long-range strikes. He believes that the balance between new technologies and conventional weapons is important.
According to Becker, the Ukrainian army has developed its drone-based strategy - partly out of necessity, because it lacks conventional artillery and battle tanks. "I think the scenarios that Germany and NATO are preparing for are very different from those in a war between Russia and Ukraine, because NATO has very different equipment."
Andreas Schwarz also believes that the Bundeswehr still needs the old weapons. "I'm not saying we don't need tanks anymore - we'll always need them," he says. "But the question is: do we still need them in such large numbers? And can't we supplement them or even optimize them with smaller, more flexible units?"
The procurement problem
The big problem is bureaucracy. Defense procurement is slow and complicated, especially in a country where the arms industry is dominated by big companies like Rheinmetall, which has made a lot of money building tanks and submarines for armies around the world.
"We have an arms industry that has relied on certain proven technologies for decades," says Schwarz. "Of course, we also have an army that has prepared for decades for scenarios that are no longer very likely today. It is difficult to impose a new way of thinking when we have been operating on the basis of different scenarios - this requires those responsible to be prepared to rethink their approach."
In an attempt to facilitate processes, the German government has introduced a new law to speed up military procurement. The measure aims to decentralize procurement by increasing price thresholds so that certain purchases can be made without involving additional decision-makers, and by eliminating bureaucratic procedures in defense procurement between governments.
These are all useful things, Becker believes, because they help change the established logic of public procurement in the sector: in a world where drones and weapons can become obsolete within weeks, it makes no sense to place an order and then have weapons in warehouses that will be obsolete in months.
What Germany needs to focus on, according to expert Becker, is creating a new production infrastructure that can respond quickly to new orders. "I can't buy a million drones", he said. "I need a stockpile of drones for training and exercises, but I also need industrial capacity so that the production of a large number of drones can be organized within four to six weeks."