Germany’s planned Boxer order under the Arminius program, covering about 1,800 GTK Boxer armored vehicles, cannot be finalized before February 2027 instead of December 2026, Defense Express reported on November 3, 2026, citing Hartpunkt. Defense Express also cited Hartpunkt for a price about 10% below the figure Rheinmetall’s leadership gave earlier, because of a “decision not to take certain services or options proposed by industry.” A report headlined “Rheinmetall cuts 2026 sales forecast again as Boxer order slips” appeared on November 4; Lens could not open it, and search-result summaries said Rheinmetall no longer expected the contract award this year.

The figures

  • Defense Express recalls that Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger described a firm contract worth €25 billion in August 2026. Its own estimate of the new price is about €22.5 billion, a reduction of about €2.5 billion, which it says is not an official figure.
  • It gives an average of €13.89 million per Boxer, which is €25 billion divided by 1,800; at €22.5 billion the average would be about €12.5 million, and the article does not reconcile the two. It also notes that Rheinmetall had cited up to €40 billion in November 2025, including 600 to 650 Skyranger air defense guns, without explaining the gap.
  • Earlier coverage, seen as search-result summaries including Calibre Defence in August 2026: the firm order covers roughly 1,800 vehicles, mostly command Boxers and Skyranger self-propelled anti-aircraft guns; Rheinmetall and KNDS Germany share Boxer sales 50:50; Papperger said the roughly €25 billion contract was on track for December 2026 and that a wider framework could pass €75 billion; a first option would raise the total to about 3,500 vehicles and a second to about 5,500; and a separate €4 billion in-service support contract, half of it for Rheinmetall, was expected in January 2027.
  • Lens found no source other than Defense Express’s citation of Hartpunkt for the reduced price or the removal of options, and it saw the February 2027 date only in that article and in a German report headlined “Boxer billion-euro order could be delayed until 2027.”

Vehicles and industry

Defense Express says most of the order is Führungsboxer command vehicles and Skyranger self-propelled air defense guns, with armored bridgelayers, more RCH 155 155 mm howitzers, Gruppentransportfahrzeug personnel carriers, medical and training vehicles, JFST schwer targeting and fire direction vehicles, NNbS short- and very-short-range air defense systems, Schakal infantry fighting vehicles and heavy weapon carriers also included. It says two delivery timelines running through 2035 and later have been put forward and the final decision is unknown. The ARTEC consortium, owned equally by KNDS Germany and Rheinmetall, coordinates the Boxer program and wants to reach 1,000 armored vehicles per year by 2030, according to the article.

Defense Express describes the order as the largest Boxer order in history and says that, because signing is no earlier than February 2027 and the project budget and formalities still need to be settled, the final deal could slip even further.

Sources and notes

Sources: Defense Express, Borys Gulkevych, November 3, 2026; Calibre Defence on the Arminius program, August 2026, seen as a search-result summary. Notes: Lens did not read the Hartpunkt report. The pages for the November 4 Rheinmetall report and for the German and French articles on the delay returned errors (HTTP 403) and were seen only as search-result summaries. The article cites no official procurement documents, and the contract value and timing are not confirmed by the German government or OCCAR in the material Lens read. Thumbnail photo: a Boxer armored vehicle in camouflage at the Tag der Bundeswehr in Augustdorf, 2019, by Thomas Vogt, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped. Illustrative photo; it does not show the order.

Image: Thomas Vogt (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.