'Germany has three years to overhaul military'

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BERLIN - Germany's armed forces have three years to acquire the equipment to tackle a possible Russian attack on NATO territory, the head of military procurement said Saturday.

Defence spending has risen up the political agenda since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and more recently, with the United States pushing NATO members to increase their commitments.

"Everything necessary to be fully prepared to defend the country must be acquired by 2028," Annette Lehnigk-Emden, head of the Federal Office for Military Procurement, told Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Chief of Defence General Carsten Breuer recently warned that Russia could be in a position to "launch a large-scale attack against NATO territory" as early as 2029.

He said there was a Russian build-up of ammunition and tanks for a possible attack on NATO's Baltic members.

Lehnigk-Emden stressed that Chancellor Friedrich Merz's new government was enabling the upgrade by allocating hundreds of billions of euros for defence.

She said the priority would be for heavy equipment such as Skyranger anti-aircraft tanks.

Merz has made rearmament a priority of his coalition government to make it "the most powerful conventional army in Europe".

Rearmament had already begun under the previous government of Olaf Scholz after Russia launched its war in Ukraine.

And US President Donald Trump has raised the temperature further this year by pushing NATO members to increase their defence spending to five percent of GDP from the current level of two percent.

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday that 50,000 to 60,000 new soldiers would be needed in the coming years to meet the increased defence needs of NATO.

Last year, the army had more than 180,000 soldiers and set a goal of exceeding 203,000 by 2031.