Status: 08.03.2023 2:48 p.m
The procurement office of the German Armed Forces has been de-bureaucratized and streamlined for years. So far nothing has happened. The agency is working as slowly as ever. Why is that?
A council of experts was to develop proposals for a reform of the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr (BAAINBw) as early as 2019. The background was “the changed security policy situation and the resulting increased demands on the armed forces”. The Council came to the conclusion that the largest technical authority in Germany was “very large, very complex and not strictly controllable in its variety of tasks”.
The final paper included numerous suggestions for streamlining and reducing bureaucracy in the authority. But the then coalition partner SPD did not want to support a reform at this point in time, and the Association of Civil Servants and Civil Servants of the Federal Armed Forces (VBB) criticized the composition of the expert council as being too unfamiliar with the subject. In the end nothing happened.
Reinhard Brandl, defense expert of the CSU, sat on the expert council and is still angry about sitting out long-known problems. He says: “The situation today is much more dramatic than in 2019, since the security situation means that there is an even greater need for procurement. You are now pouring 100 billion euros more into an already overburdened office and hoping that this alone will make the officials faster and work better. It’s not going to work.”
How does the BAAINBw work?
The Office for Procurement in Koblenz not only procures all equipment for the Bundeswehr – from desk pads to IT to fighter jets – it also develops, tests, maintains and disposes of everything that is needed, used and eventually no longer needed. Founded in 2012, three predecessor authorities merged into the BAAiNBw. It is subordinate to the equipment department of the Federal Ministry of Defence. The President, Gabriele Korb, has divided the office into 10 departments (air, combat, sea, IT, purchasing, etc.) with 12,500 employees.
Procurement is always triggered by a need in the troops, but ordering and delivering is not enough. Only in the rarest of cases may orders be awarded directly to companies. The civil servants are subject to budgetary and public procurement law, i.e. almost every product and service is advertised throughout Europe in order to take account of the principles of economy and competition. According to a brochure that the office has created about itself, the requirements for the BAAINBw have grown continuously in recent years. The order volume has more than doubled since 2015.
Within the framework of the laws and orders
Criticism of the office’s slowness has not stopped for years, but politicians have made the rules for procurement – some of the same politicians who are now saying that everything is taking too long. A spokesman for the BAAINBw comments on the scapegoat function of his authority as follows: “Procuring the material for the Bundeswehr is an extremely complex task in which many positions within the Bundeswehr, but also the respective contractors are involved. Since the BAAINBw, as the management organization for project implementation, is responsible for the agency that acts externally, criticism is often reduced to the office without questioning the causality in individual cases.” In addition, all orders with a value of more than 25 million euros must be approved by the Bundestag.
Last summer, MPs also approved the Federal Armed Forces Procurement Acceleration Act – a long word for short distances – which “contains options for accelerating procurement procedures that are also used wherever possible,” said the spokesman for the authorities. It relates to the delivery and maintenance of military equipment and contains simplifications for joint European procurement, “which can ultimately lead to improved interoperability in the equipment of the armed forces of the individual countries”.
Bundeswehr in “shortage management” mode
In his government statement at the beginning of March, Chancellor Scholz said, “We are putting an end to the neglect of the Bundeswehr.” This also meant the rapid implementation of the special fund of 100 billion euros. In fact, that much money has remained almost untouched to this day.
The fact that so few orders have arrived in the security and defense industry is mainly due to the fact that the Bundeswehr was not able to get out of the “shortage management” mode last year, despite the promised special fund of 100 billion euros, says Hans Christoph Atzpodien, General Manager of the Federal Association of the German Security and Defense Industry.
This will only succeed if the regular defense budget is increased to at least ten billion euros. The special fund is only used to help overdue major projects to be implemented, it is not enough to cover current needs, especially for ammunition and spare parts. Here the industry needs firm commitments from the new defense minister for planning security.
“A regulatory mess”
For Atzpodien, the mere references to award rules and mutual finger pointing are not effective. “According to the current procurement law, acceleration measures could have been applied without a law given the circumstances of the Ukraine war. In some other places, interventions by the ministry are sufficient without the legislator having to bother.”
The spokesman for the defense industry says about the bureaucracy of the procurement office: “For example, the many internal decrees and regulations that have created a regulatory mess of complex, typically German requirements for military equipment in recent years and decades, but also internal regulations for created the procurement process.”
Ingo Gädechen, CDU member of the Bundestag and member of the “Bundeswehr Special Assets” committee, takes the same line. Procurement problems lie “in the presidential structure of the BAAINBw. The decision-making level with power of attorney would have to be increased. The bottleneck at the top of the house is simply too narrow. Existing competencies are clearly not being used. This frustrates competent employees and unfortunately leads not to the necessary motivation, which is urgently needed at this time.”
The hope lies in Pistorius
The new defense minister said a few days ago, “We have no armed forces that are defensible, that is, defensible against an offensive, brutally waged war of aggression.” However, he recently promised on the sidelines of his visit to Lithuania that the backlog in the maintenance and repair of the “Leopard” tanks would now be cleared. Gädechen says: “When it comes to procurement, we have to switch to a mode that leads to faster processes, similar to the ‘immediate operational requirement’. I also include direct awarding, for example, in the case of ammunition procurement orders.”
Atzpodien is optimistic: “We are very confident that Minister Pistorius now has an eye on the relevant levers for improving and accelerating procurement and is moving them in the right direction.” To do this, however, he needs the support of his government and society. The target of earmarking two percent of the gross domestic product for defense in order to be able to provide the services promised within NATO without restrictions has still not been achieved.
A turning point also at the procurement office?
The BAAINBw welcomes the turning point proclaimed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It is suitable “to absorb the consequences of the financial undersupply of the past few years, to ensure the continuous financing of essential, multi-year major projects and their prioritization in the long term and thus to strengthen the equipment of the soldiers in order to ultimately improve their ability to defend the country and the alliance”. . One already sees oneself in a good position to effectively implement the announced special fund, provided that the 1,000 vacancies in the company are quickly filled.
They are also in talks with the Ministry of Defense and are making suggestions for improvement. The quality of these proposals reflects the rapid implementation of the first measures by the ministry, such as raising the direct award limit from 1,000 to 5,000 euros.
However, since most orders are likely to have a larger volume, Gädechens, the former member of the expert council for the reform of the BAAINBw, sees no noticeable improvement. When asked how he would describe the office today, he says: “Since little has changed structurally, the description from 2019 is – unfortunately – still correct today: very large, very complex and not stringently controllable in its variety of tasks”.