{"id":24365,"date":"2023-04-26T11:34:16","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T11:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/german-defence-minister-makes\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T11:38:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T11:38:36","slug":"german-defence-minister-makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/german-defence-minister-makes\/","title":{"rendered":"German defence minister makes speed top priority in military procurement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BERLIN (Reuters) &#8211;     German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has made speed the top priority in military procurement, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday, in a push to overhaul procedures previously criticised as slow and ineffective.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The time factor has highest priority and is &#8230; with immediate effect decisive for providing the troops as quickly as possible with the equipment to be purchased,&#8221; the state secretary in charge of procurement, Benedikt Zimmer, said in a decree signed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>With war raging in Ukraine, Pistorius faces the mammoth task of bringing Germany&#8217;s military, the Bundeswehr, back up to speed after decades of underinvestment since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n<p>Army chief Alfons Mais described his troops as &#8220;more or less empty handed&#8221; on the day of Russia&#8217;s invasion. <\/p>\n<p>Progress in plugging the gaps has been sluggish despite a 100 billion euro ($110 billion) special fund set up by the government last year to pay for new weapons. Arms shipments to Ukraine have depleted stocks even further.<\/p>\n<p>In his decree, Zimmer said procurement needed to become &#8220;significantly faster, more effective and less bureaucratic&#8221; as    Russia&#8217;s war on Ukraine forced Germany to raise the state of readiness of its forces as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n<p>He urged procurement officials to opt for faster off-the-shelf solutions instead of the lengthy development of new weapons. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With a view to time and costs, technical realisation risks are, as a basic principle, to be avoided,&#8221; Zimmer wrote in the document.<\/p>\n<p>Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a &#8220;special military operation&#8221; to protect Russia&#8217;s security.<\/p>\n<p>($1 = 0.9046 euros)<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Sabine Siebold; editing by Matthias Williams and Chizu Nomiyama)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/german-defence-minister-makes\/file-photo-german-defence-minister-pistorius-speaks-to-the-media\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3P0HJ-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3P0HJ-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BERLIN (Reuters) &#8211; German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has made speed the top priority in military procurement, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday, in a push to overhaul procedures previously criticised as slow and ineffective. &#8220;The time factor has highest priority and is &#8230; with immediate effect decisive for providing the troops [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3P0HJ-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24367,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24365\/revisions\/24367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}