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I don't know why this hasn't come to my mind before but here goes...are there any rules tied to the Euro100 Million...i.e., it has to be spent within the EU?
For the 100 billion fund there's by now only a draft bill from the govornment that isn't public yet.
Apparently the only restriction in it is to use the money "for measures improving national and alliance defense".
According to GI Zorn the Army is planning to fast-track "Division 2027" and realize it by 2025.
"Division 2027" is about fielding a combat-ready armoured division with full divisional troops, support assets, fully equipped and stocked at 30-day notice. It's an intermediate step for "Heer 2032" which planned a similar full readiness for the entire German Army within 1 GE/NL (MN) Corps for NATO. This will include establishment of several new battalions in particular in combat support, support and command support fields, including in particular artillery.
If you see or hear anything regarding its usage please share here.
As an update, there is a two-day-old paywalled article in a reputable German defense press site which apparently confirms that there is an internal list being traded back and forth that may or may not include as relatively quick off-the-shelf orders:
20 billion Euro for ammunition
for air force: 35 F-35A (nuclear carrier - confirmed), 15 Eurofighter ECR (SEAD - confirmed), 40 Eurofighter (CAS/strike) as Tornado replacement
for air force: fleet-wide CH-53G replacement (considered likely, primary candidate is CH-47F with MH-47G specs mixed in)
for navy: 5 K130 corvettes, extending current production to replace 1st batch which could then be sold off
for navy: 2 U212CD submarines, additional to two ordered (considered likely)
for navy: combat boats for naval infantry (about 15-20, CB90H-style armed small boats)
for army: 350 additional Puma IFV (instead of 229 planned for second batch, presumed to be in order to fully equip reserve mech inf battalions)
for army: additional Boxer GTK in a variety of variants (artillery, fire support, air defense, forward observer, medical), in total probably minimum 300-400.
for army: upgrade of 600 Fuchs APCs of older models to Fuchs 1A8 standard is being mulled - i.e. upgrading the Fuchs fleet all to 1A8 (*).
for army: up to 1000 new armored 6x6 vehicles (although to me that sounds more like it's the alternative to the Fuchs upgrade, especially due to numbers)
In addition there is a threat analysis ongoing at the governmental level regarding the possible need for an anti ballistic missile defense system (on the scale of THAAD or Arrow 3 with nationwide coverage and possible extension of cover into neighboring countries).
(*) Fuchs APC in the Bundeswehr were only replaced by Boxer in infantry-related functions. There are about 940 Fuchs in operation for around 16-18 different functions, primarily as armored transports with reconnaissance and engineer forces as well as in a variety of command & control and electronic warfare functions. About 270 of the vehicles were previously upgraded to 1A8 standard for Afghanistan in multiple batches - which is mostly about increasing its armour levels against anti-tank mines, RPGs and small arms, as well as adding a remote weapon station.
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When I first read this I read boots and not boats and I was all...WHAT?!?!!?
Well, the mountain infantry has its own boot model separate from standard, so maybe the naval infantry should get their own model too... ;-)
Seriously though, it's basically about getting something similar to what the US runs as the Mk V Special Operations Craft or historically say a WW2 PT boat - although a bit smaller than either of those.
Procurement of such boats has been tossed around for a while - and a number of sailors of the Naval Infantry Battalion have actually been certified as crews both on Swedish CB90H since 2015 and on Finnish JEHU more recently (they're looking for "something like those") and regularly get to play around with these craft during larger-scale joint exercises. Cost would likely be relatively low, probably somewhere around 3-4 million Euro per boat.
German shipyard Fassmer has designed something around what they think could be the Bundeswehr requirements and came up with a fairly heavily armed 40-knot fast patrol boat sized just right to be air-transportable in an A400M (without modification, unlike the Mk V for air transport) or to be carried on LCVP davits on Dutch amphibious ships.
According to GI Zorn the Army is planning to fast-track "Division 2027" and realize it by 2025.
The "first division" to be realized by 2025 will apparently be the 10th Armoured Division with
37th Mechanized Brigade
12th Armoured Brigade
the Franco/German Brigade
but not the 23rd Mountain Infantry Brigade.
The reason for this is that
the above three brigades are already switched to the vehicles they need in the target structure (Puma for mechanized infantry, Boxer for medium infantry). The 23rd is exempted precisely since it has yet to switch (from Bv206S to now planned Bv410) with vehicles not procured yet.
37th Mechanized Brigade in particular fields NATO VJTF 2023, and therefore just keeps its material.
10th Armoured Division has nearly sufficient artillery and reconnaissance units to fill out the target structure for Division 2027, as well as most of the requisite divisional units (signals, security, engineers). Logistics still lacking.
Investment would therefore for this division primarily be in "filling up" material.
The Franco/German brigade is sort of the cop-out joker to fill up the Division in place of the 23rd. It is not really accounted for in Army 2031 planning. A bit interestingly the other two brigades assigned now have almost enough extra units to fill up a "spare brigade" subordinated, primarily in reserve/cadre form, and in theory could fill up the German components of the Franco/German brigade into a full mechanized infantry brigade.
The Bundeswehr is planning out socalled "medium forces".
The intended mission spectrum of these forces is this (translations by me):
Basically, in the shown progression of enemy conflict escalation the Bundeswehr sees an operational gap in its own forces in responding to phase 1 - the "hidden offensive activities" - inbetween its rapid response forces (paratroopers) and the mechanized forces that are more apt for a response to phase 2.
The Army Planning Office had a project group working on defining a possible layout for covering this operational gap throughout the last year.
Templates - "vignettes" - for their capability requirement within the wider context of NATO standard operations are:
relocation for the purpose of deterrence (requiring high strategic and operative mobility)
remain in place for deterrence (requiring extensive, mixed, wide-area recce assets and acquiring a hybrid overview)
defensive operations (requiring anti-tank capability, long-range indirect fire, air defense, command capability within contested EM spectrum)
offensive operations (requiring supporting mobility and self-sufficient operation)
The requirments stated above of course stack on top of each other top to bottom.
They do have a broad initial layout derived from that capability set:
The "infantry brigade" itself would apparently be primarily equipped with Boxer GrTrsp as APCs and Boxer Makabo (30mm/Spike) as fire support vehicles - possibly only in half of the maneuver battalions, going by the above layout displaying two "motorized infantry" and two "medium infantry" units - as well as Boxer RCh-155 for artillery.
The units shown without size markings are non-sizable "element" contributions from other arms of the Bundeswehr (medical electronic warfare, air defense, NBC defense, military police - and whatever the rightmost one is, possibly something along the lines of mobility or field camp).
There is an IOC chart, but that's basically just showing the transition with initially three maneuver elements and no artillery, otherwise the same; this IOC transition is stated as "being usable" only for the above two show-of-force templates.
Conceptually overall this is similar to a US Stryker Brigade or a FR Scorpion Brigade, both of which are cited as having had influx on the layout considerations.
The equipment being bought now has to be seen in the context of the inspector general of the the army having pushed forward recently and announcing he wants to reorganize to establish three brigades like that by "end of the decade".
Man...I was brushing off my technical military German from the early 80s!!!!
I am flashing back to the late 1990s looking at these slides. It reminds me very much of what we in the US Army in the late 1990s and what we went through which birthed the Stryker Brigade Combat Team...which turned out to be a pretty good unit for the mid-range conflicts.
Thanks for sharing as always, Kato!
“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain
I am flashing back to the late 1990s looking at these slides. It reminds me very much of what we in the US Army in the late 1990s and what we went through which birthed the Stryker Brigade Combat Team...which turned out to be a pretty good unit for the mid-range conflicts.
The assets as in units - other than artillery - exist in the current army as well, it's more of a reorganization.
Currently the miedium infantry battalions are distributed variably among mechanized and armored brigades in order to increase the available manpower in those brigades - so that for those stabilization deployments they could just cycle through all of them without having to shift men around.
If you want to brush up on spoken technical military German, this is the 3-hour event from last December that the above slides are from:
The event was organized by a press outlet specializing in public authorities and defence, and had as speakers, in order of rank:
Stephan Thomas, LtGen, commander "German components of Multinational Corps / Military Organization" (retired 3 months later), presenting the reasoning and use case for medium forces for Germany
Nicolas Riviere, Col, French liaison officer at the German Army Command, on medium forces in the French Army and their current re-fitting (Scorpion)
Konrad Fuchs, LtCol in general staff service, department "principles" at Army Planning Office, presenting the German planning for medium forces
Ewan Harris, LtCol, British liaison officer at the German Army Planning Office on medium force transformation of the British Army (Future Soldier)
Matthew Crowe, LtCol, US exchange officer at the German Army Planning Office on medium forces in the US Army and their development(Stryker Brigade Combat Teams)
Marc Wietfeld, 1st Lt, "University of the Bundeswehr at Munich", on the benefits of drone swarms in support of medium forces
As well as Arnaud Saint-Claire Deville, retired four-star General, former commander of the French Ground Forces, presenting the Scorpion concept on behalf of his employer Nexter (and in his case that's made quite clear, repeatedly).
All the presentation are in German, even if the British officer was really struggling heavily (he did the Q&A afterwards in English).
The lowest-ranked guy, Wietfeld, was recently featured in Stars and Stripes on "his research project". His presentation here refers to "Mosaic Warfare" as developed by DARPA. Much like in the Stars and Stripes article it's not quite made clear - and not just by obfuscation, but in my opinion misrepresantation - whether the presentation given is "as a soldier" (... he's in postgrad studies at the Army Officer School Dresden now) or "as CEO of his own company", the startup ARX Landsysteme - which is trying to sell such development to the Bundeswehr.
The staff for the five regiments and the four main training facilities will be raised "following existing training grounds".
There aren't all that many training grounds (large-scale) left in Germany. Removing those co-used with Allies as well as Nordhorn (Air Force bombing site) and Putlos (seaside artillery training range) it becomes a pretty simple decision process:
For the East regiment it is in my opinion likely that Berlin will be chosen for the regiment command staff for political reasons, with no primary training grounds due to there being training grounds everywhere anyway.
The second regiment is currently being established at Münster - not Munster.
The base at Münster used to house the Air Transport Command of the Luftwaffe until 2010 and was intermediately planned since 2019 to be kept for a possible future Army Command. The HQ of 1 GE/NL Corps is in a separate base in the same city. Münster has a standard-sized 2 square mile base training area.
The "Southwest Regiment" will be placed in Hesse state, the "coastal regiment" in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, the "eastern regiment" in Berlin.
I don't know why this hasn't come to my mind before but here goes...are there any rules tied to the Euro100 Million...i.e., it has to be spent within the EU?
I ask that cause thinking of the munitions buy. I am thinking of Raytheon specifically along with IAI which produces a metric crap ton of small arms ammo.
Thanks...if you posted something to that it went right by me.
The 100 billion fonds has been passed as a law bill by now (senate agreed on thursday).
Rules within the passed law are:
restricted to expenditures for the purpose of increasing allied and national defense capability and shall serve for the financing of important procurement projects, in particular complex multi-year measures
expenditures are bound to projects listed with exact projected figures in an economic plan for management of the fonds. Expenditures assigned to a project may not be used for other procurement, not even for one also listed in the plan (big difference to regular budget).
the economic plan is passed as an annex to the general federal budget annually (i.e. once per year it is revisited and adapted)
unspent expenditure for a project is transferable to the next year (huge difference to regular budget).
all projects exceeding 25 million expenditure are subject to the same parliamentary approval rules as expenditures of that amount from the regular budget.
They then went and kinda cheated on these rules. Because the economic plan does not assign expenditures to individual projects, but instead forms "titles" assigned money that group multiple projects from the same field. Meaning you can still shift a bit back and forth within each such group.
There are no restrictions on sourcing, or on what such a project or title within the fonds may entail.
Since the economic plan for 2022 is in an annex to the passed law there is a list that is public which i'll put in a separate post.
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