Germany Plans to Drop Anchor.

Germany’s 25 Billion Euro Plan Is Not About NATO. It’s About Power.

Germany is weighing a massive defense procurement plan worth up to 25 billion euros ($29.4 billion) to supply thousands of new combat vehicles as part of NATO’s expanding force structure, Bloomberg reported on July 4, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The plan reportedly includes up to 2,500 GTK Boxer armored vehicles and as many as 1,000 Leopard 2 main battle tanks—enough to equip seven new brigades that Germany has pledged to raise under NATO’s force generation targets for the next decade.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and senior Bundeswehr officials are currently reviewing the proposal, with parliamentary approval expected by the end of the year.

At first glance, this may look like Germany simply leaning further into NATO’s collective defense posture. But that’s only the surface story. The real strategic shift isn’t about strengthening NATO—it’s about reviving and scaling Germany’s own defense industrial base.

Germany's once-vaunted defense industry has suffered for years under a familiar doom loop: high costs, low orders, no economies of scale. In terms of engineering, German systems like the Leopard tank or IRIS-T air defense system are best-in-class. But without large orders—especially domestic ones—their per-unit cost remained too high for most foreign buyers. As orders dried up, production slowed, making exports even less competitive.

It became a closed circuit of decline.

A problem only Germany itself could solve.

This procurement plan is that solution. By ordering thousands of units for its own military, Berlin will kickstart a production surge. Higher output will lower costs. Lower costs will boost exports. And more exports will secure long-term industrial sustainability. The decision to invest in its own military isn’t just about defense—it’s about strategic economic revival.

It’s been just shy of two months since Friedrich Merz took office as Chancellor, and already Germany’s posture on security and power has shifted dramatically. The days of treating the Baltics as a disposable buffer zone are over. So are the days of outsourcing strategic decision-making to Washington.

Germany is now acting—not reacting.

It has already delivered more air defense systems to Ukraine than any other nation, a move that has left significant gaps in its own defensive architecture. Still, Berlin has doubled down. A recent agreement with Kyiv guarantees regular shipments of IRIS-T systems to Ukraine over the next two years. No vague timelines. No delays. A fixed calendar. A decisive statement.

This kind of reliability is new—and intentional.

Vilnius, Not Suwałki, Is the Real Flashpoint

Much has been made of the Suwałki Corridor—a narrow, 65-kilometer strip of land between Poland and Lithuania that separates Belarus from Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. It is, without doubt, one of NATO’s most vulnerable chokepoints. If Russia were to seize it, the Baltic states could be cut off from NATO reinforcements.

But there’s a more immediate vulnerability: Vilnius.

Lithuania’s capital sits barely 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border. It is a civilian center, the political heart of the Lithuanian state—and far more psychologically and politically destabilizing to lose than a rural strip of forested terrain. A sudden thrust from Belarusian territory wouldn’t need to cut off the Baltics to shatter NATO’s credibility. Occupying Vilnius, even temporarily, would be a catastrophic symbolic defeat.

Germany has understood this.

That’s why it accelerated the timeline for deploying its pledged brigade to Lithuania. A full-strength German brigade—eventually expected to number around 5,000 troops—is being stationed just outside Vilnius. While not yet at full operational strength, its very presence is a message: NATO is not asleep at the wheel. Germany will no longer hesitate to act where American leadership has wavered.

The broader shift isn’t just about troops or tanks. It’s about manufacturing power.

Berlin’s decision to inject nearly €8 billion into Rheinmetall—Germany’s largest arms producer—has already transformed Europe’s shell production capacity. Pre-war, Rheinmetall produced roughly 70,000 artillery shells a year. Today, production is nearing 1 million shells annually. That is not a symbolic shift.

That is a warfighting shift. A scale-of-supply shift.

And Germany isn’t done.

It is now in direct talks with the Trump administration to purchase two U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems and a set of Patriot interceptors for Ukraine. These discussions are complex. The Pentagon has long been reluctant to release Patriots.

But this is precisely why the German initiative matters. Even if the negotiations fail, Germany is trying. Persistently. Relentlessly. It understands that leadership means leaning into resistance—not waiting for permission.

There is still a long road ahead. Procurement contracts over €25 million require approval from the Bundestag’s Budget Committee, a safeguard to ensure parliamentary oversight of major defense spending. The proposed €25 billion plan will need to clear that hurdle. Meanwhile, the Patriot deal could be blocked by the Trump administration, and the German brigade outside Vilnius still faces months of buildup before reaching full operational strength.

But one thing is clear: Germany is no longer drifting.

It is building.

And that should concern anyone who believed Europe had permanently lost its appetite for power.

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