To get his eco-friendly combat vehicles ready for a fight, Scholz will have to pay billions

Worry about this now, if you worry at all about Europe’s defence abilities: fixing the problems with Germany’s Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) will cost billions, the Berlin government has said.

Billions, because there are hundreds of these vehicles and they are not combat-ready.

The IFV is Puma class– Schützenpanzer Puma – and do I know a lot about it? No, I don’t. But as I live in central Europe, I can take you outside my apartment and show you the Soviet army bullet holes that survive along my street, all blasted there by Red Army tanks – so I am aware of the point of military vehicles. Like soldiers, armour-plated war machines are there to inflict maximum devastation on enemy territory and maximum numbers of deaths to enemy fighters.

You would think it was obvious, but in recent years, there has been no evidence that the Germans have again grasped this principle: maximum destruction and maximum enemy deaths. Instead, as Brussels Signal reports today, we have this IFV whose big billing is that it is “eco-friendly.”

That kind of unmilitary outlook is not a new selling point. Recently my colleague Kevin Myers wrote that ten years ago, “when EU President Ursula von der Leyen was German Minister for Defence, she ordered that tanks be rebuilt to suit pregnant drivers, while not a single German U-boat could submerge, 40 per cent of Germany’s combat aircraft were unable to fly and German soldiers on Arctic manoeuvres carried blackened broom-handles because of lack of serviceable rifles.”

Ten years ago, that is when the now-troublesome Puma was launched. The link between the woolly-headed thinking of German Minister for Defence von der Leyen and the Puma is not proof of a connection, but you could call it a trend.

Now the IFV needs €2.6bn to be retrofitted and ready for combat. In military tests in 2022, the vehicle’s eco-friendly fire extinguisher, now using biodegradable powder instead of CO2 gas, sent powder into sensitive parts of the IFV, including the engine, rendering it unusable.

So eco-friendly. The IFV was left unable to kill anybody. Very Green.

According to the German newspaper Bild, the only way for the vehicle to be returned for use would be to disassemble the whole thing, clean every part and then reassemble it.

That is where the €2.6bn spend comes in.

Yet that is the least of the problems with defence in European countries. The Swedish Home Guard, the military reserve force of the Swedish Armed Forces, faces a soldier shortage after a wave of applicants realised they would have to handle weapons and engage in combat training. (“What, a gun? Shoot? At someone?”) A third of applications to join the force were withdrawn.

In the United Kingdom as well, recruiting drives for the forces are failing to make the desired numbers. Ministers have even been told that the current levels of recruitment were a “profound national security risk.” In March, Forces News reported that in the last 12 months, just 10,680 joined the UK Regular Armed Forces, while 16,140 left.

Some European armed forces are managing to sign up soldiers and reservists. In the Netherlands, the government started a “voluntary year of service” reserve programme. Of the 136 individuals who began it, only 10 withdrew. While that is a low figure for pulling out of the service, remember it is just 136 who volunteered.

The most shocking figure of what one could call not-going-to-fight resistance is in Ukraine. It is not mentioned much, but the number of men who have fled the country to avoid joining the army is reckoned to equal the number of men who serve against the Russians. According to the BBC, “tens of thousands” have fled.

So desperate were some of the draft-dodgers that a few of them died the first winter of the war, fleeing over the frozen Carpathian mountains, looking for safety in Romania. Others have drowned in the Tisa River.

At which point I will stop and say something good about the Ukrainians who stay and fight. The average age of the soldiers is 45. This is extraordinary. The average age of the US Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima in 1945 was 19.

All those tough, dirty, exhausted, aging Ukrainian soldiers – and can I emphasise “tough” – who are trying to hold back the Russians are sharing bad knees, lower back pain, bellies too big, and middle-aged exhaustion. And yet they go on. Perhaps it is only a real threat from a real enemy that makes men turn into soldiers.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us, we have Swedes who don’t want to hold a gun.