Lambrecht puts pressure on: Industry promises speedy “Puma” repairs

Lambrecht puts pressure on
Industry promises speedy “Puma” repairs

After the total breakdown of 18 “Puma” armored personnel carriers, Defense Minister Lambrecht calls for rapid repairs. The Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann groups want to make the vehicles operational again in two to three weeks. The first “Puma” are already being examined for damage.

The armaments companies Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) want to repair the defective “Puma” infantry fighting vehicle in the next two to three weeks. The companies announced this in a joint statement on Wednesday. Some of the tanks are already being examined for the exact damage patterns at the Rheinmetall Unterlüß site in Lower Saxony, among other places.

Experts from KMW and Rheinmetall have been sent to the Bundeswehr locations where other “Puma” vehicles are located, it said. “All efforts are now directed towards repairing the vehicles in the next two to three weeks,” the companies said.

Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht had previously given the industry a tight time window to repair the failed “Puma” tank. “I’ll give them a few weeks’ time because I need reliable systems and not ones that I might be able to use sometime in 2025,” said the SPD politician on Deutschlandfunk.

The industry knows that this project has no future if it does not show the government a perspective, Lambrecht said. Everyone knows that the “Puma” is vulnerable. According to Lambrecht, things cannot go on without the appropriate changes being made. Otherwise you have to look around for other systems, “and they exist”.

Over the weekend it became known that all 18 of the tanks used during a firing exercise by the Bundeswehr for participation in the VJTF NATO intervention force had failed. The tracked vehicle, plagued by numerous technical problems, was only declared fit for combat last year.

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