Leading in spending, lagging in innovation: German defence procurement compared to the UK and Poland

• This report is built on an update of the Kiel Military Procurement Tracker, covering the UK, Poland and Germany up to January 2026. We show that orders have grown rapidly in frequency, size and number since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2025, German military procurement reached roughly €85 bn and dominates overall European military procurement, compared with about €25 bn in the UK and €21 bn in Poland. But is Germany also leading in innovation?

• Defence strategies differ across the three countries. Germany's defence strategy is endorsed only by the defence minister and remains disappointing at both the strategic and the military-technological level. Reflections on Germany's contribution to European defence outside a US-led NATO are absent. While only partially public, reflection on lessons from changing warfare are limited and do not translate into a priority strategy. The UK's strategy review as well as Poland's defence strategy each carry the prime minister's backing and argue for lessons from Ukraine to be translated into an ambitious agenda.

• We measure the shift toward the new warfare paradigm in our unique procurement dataset. Based on an LLM-assisted classification of all 736 procurement orders in the dataset, only about 12% of spending is dedicated to new-paradigm systems. In Germany, absolute spending on this category has stagnated over 2020 to 2026 while its share has fallen distinctively. The UK has raised absolute spending but seen its share stagnate; only Poland has increased both the absolute amount and the share of procurement devoted to new-paradigm equipment.

• Germany, despite the highest spending levels in Europe, shows the slowest transformation of the three, possibly reflecting the absence of top-level political leadership. A re-orientation of Germany's procurement strategy is needed to prioritise early technological change. An update of military and training doctrines would be the necessary complement. Failing to learn the lessons may well mean that credible deterrence capabilities are not achieved or at excessively high costs.

• We also show that across all three countries, the data confirm a strong home bias in procurement, with purchases from global suppliers falling sharply in 2025. Genuinely pan-European procurement remains extremely limited, pointing to fragmented industrial bases rather than a coordinated European rearmament effort.

• Moreover, we show that expected delivery timelines at the time of ordering are long: Where final delivery dates are specified, they typically fluctuate between two and four years across all three countries. In Germany, however, a growing share of orders is placed without any reported specified delivery date, a trend not observed in the UK or Poland.

Kiel Institute Experts