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"The time factor has highest priority and is ... with immediate
effect decisive for providing the troops as quickly as possible with
the equipment to be purchased," the state secretary in charge of
procurement, Benedikt Zimmer, said in a decree signed on Tuesday.
With war raging in Ukraine, Pistorius faces the mammoth task of
bringing Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, back up to speed after
decades of underinvestment since the end of the Cold War.
Army chief Alfons Mais described his troops as "more or less empty
handed" on the day of Russia's invasion.
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.
In his decree, Zimmer said procurement needed to become
"significantly faster, more effective and less bureaucratic" as
Russia's war on Ukraine forced Germany to raise the state of
readiness of its forces as quickly as possible.
He urged procurement officials to opt for faster off-the-shelf
solutions instead of the lengthy development of new weapons.
"With a view to time and costs, technical realization risks are, as
a basic principle, to be avoided," Zimmer wrote in the document.
Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation"
to protect Russia's security.
($1 = 0.9046 euros)
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; editing by Matthias Williams and Chizu
Nomiyama)
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