The Federal Court of Auditors criticizes that the technical maturity of the weapon system is not yet certain.
(Photo: imago images/Chris Emil Janssen)
Berlin The planned procurement of 50 additional Puma armored personnel carriers raises concerns at the Federal Audit Office. The authority currently still sees “too many technical and budgetary risks” that stand in the way of a decision on subsequent procurement. This emerges from a report by the Court of Auditors to the Budget Committee of the Bundestag, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
On Wednesday, the budget committee wants to decide on ordering 50 more examples of the tank built by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall for around 1.5 billion euros including accessories. At the end of last year, the Puma made negative headlines because all 18 tanks used in an exercise failed one after the other.
The Defense Minister at the time, Christine Lambrecht (SPD), initially stopped both the modernization of vehicles that had already been delivered and the purchase of additional tanks. After the industry had promised to eliminate technical shortcomings and the Bundeswehr had promised more intensive training of the soldiers on the modern weapon system, further tanks are now to be purchased.
The Federal Audit Office recommends waiting for the technical conversion to the modernized variant S1 before purchasing additional copies. Instead of in March, as originally planned, the correspondingly converted vehicles would only be delivered in October, the auditors write. “The technical maturity is therefore not yet certain.”
The Federal Court of Auditors also complained that the purchase contract was based on an outdated price calculation from December 2021. Within a year, however, the price had not risen by five percent, as calculated by the ministry, but by 12.8 percent.
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