The remaining purchases, such as tank ammunition and new fighter jets, are likely to be from manufacturers in the US, France and Britain. Tusa points to European missile maker MBDA as one company that could secure more business. Its Meteor air-to-air missile was already tested by Germany last year.
He believes there will also be a big focus on maintaining the equipment Germany already has, and retooling it to prepare for active use.
“They need to go back to their maintenance contractors and say: you know we were happy with having only six of these helicopters being available? We actually need twenty-six available,” says Tusa.
Currently, the German army has 701 aircraft, six submarines, 1,340 tanks and personnel carriers and around 54,000 soldiers.
Berlin’s decision to ramp up spending after years of ambivalence represents a “clear signal”, argues Thomis.
“It’s very clear that Germany recognises that defence, particularly in central and eastern Europe, is more important than ever. Both in terms of practical purposes as threat emerges, but also to send a clear signal that the country is prepared to defend itself. And I’m pretty sure other European countries will be thinking along the same lines,” he says.
“All of this is a clear mark of just how disruptive the events of these last few weeks have been.”
Berlin’s military spending stagnated for some time and even fell as a proportion of GDP during Merkel’s third term as Chancellor, before both ramped up in 2019 as a result of international pressure.
Its long lack of aggression in expanding its military budget is not only a result of its past, according to Tusa, but also for economic reasons.
“During the Cold War, German defence spending was quite high, because they understood that they couldn’t rely on everyone else,” he says. “But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they just cut everything.”
“Ultimately they just wanted to spend more on social programmes. That was a choice.”
As Russian missiles reap devastation on cities in Ukraine, Germany is now taking a very different path.
