Against the obvious demands of a modern mechanised war, the Bundeswehr’s 157 current artillery pieces are laughably inadequate. The Russian army loses, in six months, as many howitzers and rocket launchers as today’s German army has in its entire arsenal.
The planned expansion mitigates but doesn’t totally solve this problem. The Germans intend to restore to active service a couple of dozen stored Pzh 2000 tracked howitzers and complement them with dozens more brand-new RCH-155 wheeled howitzers. They plan to supplement their 33 MARS II tracked launchers with new wheeled launchers – seemingly the same Israeli-designed PULS models that Denmark and The Netherlands are buying to bolster their own armies.
If Berlin sticks to the plan, its army should claw back – by the mid-2030s – roughly half the artillery firepower it had at the end of the Cold War. It’s worth noting that Germany is balancing competing artillery initiatives: growing its own artillery corps while also sending used or newly-built howitzers and launchers – around 90, so far – to Ukraine.
Whether the Germans can stockpile enough ammo to keep their growing arsenal of big guns and launchers firing through a potentially long conflict is a separate problem.
German arms-maker Rheinmetall is expanding its ammunition production in order to meet growing domestic demand, and also to feed Ukraine’s insatiable hunger for ammo. But the goal, by 2027, is for Rheinmetall to produce just 1.1 million of the most important 155-millimeter shells every year.
That’s only slightly more shells than Ukraine fired, at an annualised rate, at the lowest point in its own ammunition supply between the fall of 2023 and this spring.
The Germans are building up their artillery. But can they build up their ammo stockpile, too?
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
