Between direct and indirect, the new State investment fever in modernization of the Armed Forces It will create 22,667 jobs in 2023, according to calculations by the Secretary of State for Defense. They will be mostly skilled jobsthe most in engineering offices, but also in vehicle assembly plants, aeronautics and shipyards.
They are part of the total calculation of the impact on employment of projects that have been underway for years, and that in 2023 will derive from the reinvigorated activity of the ministry whose budget grows more for next year, a 25.8% increase. Of “traction impact on the industry throughout Spain” what this increase entails, boasted this Thursday the Secretary of State Amparo Valcarce before the Defense Committee of Congress. The climate of war and the spending commitment to NATO rule.
A real investment of 5,068 million euros – 45.7% of the total defense budget, which reaches historical peak of 12.825 million– It will rain mainly on about twenty modernization and high-tech projects. The 14 most important represent 3,495 million euros. These are the plans, some with a delay of years, to provide the Armed Forces with new fighters, drones, land vehicles, frigates and submarines with the essential minimum of a foreign industrial component.
From the smallest to the giant
In this flood of military spending not everything is huge machines; there are two investment chapters for an elusive, virtual, undeclared and sometimes daily war: develop new combat technologies in the Cyberspace will take 67 million. Others disruptive technologies they will absorb 11.4 million for military applications of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and 5G.
A part of the new jobs calculated by Defense arises from the renewal of the Eurofighter fighter, the most advanced in the Air Force… and also the most expensive: 619,998,750 euros investment next year. The program -since its inception and not only in 2023- spreads 20,000 jobs between direct, indirect and induced, according to the Secretary of State.
Another 8,700 jobs revolve around armored infantry VCR 8×8, key for the Army, which has been delayed for 21 years since its conception. Valcarce has promised that the first seven vehicles will be delivered by Santa Bárbara Sistemas before January.
Among the projects that generate the most new employment is the Euromale. This is the name of the plan to manufacture unmanned aircraft -the terrible role of drones in the war in Ukraine has triggered its strategic value-, that next year it takes 38.6 million and that, according to Defense, it will generate 3,000 jobs a year for the next 15 years. These are jobs mainly associated with the Airbus plants in Seville and the Madrid town of Getafe.
The program of the latest generation frigates, the F110promises 7,000 jobs in ten years, especially in Ferrol (A Coruña), and 6,000 the complex construction, which continues in Cartagena (Murcia), of the S80 submarine, “the closest thing to a spaceship that Spain has & rdquor ;, says one of its promoters in Navantia.
Own personal
Those jobs will come from the industrial flank of defense; much less will sprout among the ranks of soldiers, since the troops and sailors will continue to have a maximum of 79,000 men and women when the end of 2023. The commitment to NATO of reach 2% of GDP in military spending by the end of 2029 -in 2023 it will go from 1.01 to 1.2- It is not implying, for the time being, that the Armed Forces will have more combatants.
For career soldiers, however (from non-commissioned officer upwards), Defense intends to maintain next year a 120% restocking fee.
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In all, the ministry he heads Margaret Oaks 5,375 million euros will be spent on personnel. The increase planned for civil servants and other chapters imply an increase of 313.6 million euros in that chapter, of which 286.9 have to do with the salary increase.
By 2023, the Undersecretary of Defense plans to convene 2,000 places of access to military training centers. In 2022, according to data communicated this Thursday by the Undersecretary Adoration Mateos to the deputies of the Defense Commission, 47,000 people applied for 5,951 seats summoned.