This article has some good points, and the EU definitely needs to standardise and integrate, but quotes like this completely miss the economies of scale the USA MIC is operating under.
Look for instance at the price of modern, third-generation battle tanks and the cost of self-propelled howitzers, which have been key to the fighting in Ukraine. German prices are far higher than their American counterparts.
The US has produced well over 10k of this “main battle tank” in the last 40 years, and has at least 10x the number of those in active duty as Germany. All of the EU’s combined tanks (of comparable capability) would probably still be less than half, or even a quarter, the size of the USA’s. Naturally, the average cost is much less when you build 10k instead of a few hundred.
I’d wager (heh) Tooze is familiar with armament production. Germany still built something like 4k Leo 2s. Add to that about 1k of Leclercs, half that of Challengers, some Ariettes, and a bunch of other crap, there’s room for an economy of scale, it’s just not being used. And frankly, EU armies buying M1s isn’t helping. In addition, you can put the proposition backwards, and say high unit costs are a sign of too few of them being built.
I’m wondering if he’s maybe comparing older models. An M1A2 can come from anywhere between early nineties and today - L2A8s are brand spanking new. But even then, the PzH 2000 being six times more expensive then the K9 is just insane.
Spesificially german mic procurment is… a mess, which makes the problem worse.
That is the point of the article. If Germany would buy weapons from other countries it would be much cheaper for Germany. To be fair Leopard2 is the most common modern tank in the EU, so the logical choice to use as the standard, but Puma, Fennek, all ships of the German navy, Dingo, PzH 2000 and a bunch more are only really used by Germany and maybe some other countries as hand me downs or to bribe Germany. That means Germany pays for development cost, setting up the production line and so forth. Much cheaper and better to buy from European allies.
