Bundeswehr Restructuring

[TopHatter]

I'm kinda partial on Ian McCollum regarding his factchecking since his gaffe where for his book publishing job he (supposedly "accidentally") promoted a Swedish neonazi on his channel complete with videos of that man's time in the Azov battalion and at the same time Ian in narration casting aside any war crimes accusations against them. For his apology on that and - in the comments - plenty of discussion on that see here.

Minor bit of confusion on my part:
You do or don't like Ian's factchecking?

[kato]

Minor bit of confusion on my part:
You do or don't like Ian's factchecking?

Maybe should have used the word "divided".

I tend to question his factchecking. Along the lines of looking into it myself once it doesn't seem kosher because in some cases what he says can get a bit dodgy. Especially once it's about politics of any kind. He has also done a number of videos on e.g. gun ownership rights (in other countries often with guests), where it can sometimes get a bit "politically one-sided".

In general i do like it though. For historic firearms and such i absolutely have no problem with it. I mean, that's his main focus and that's what he's good at. There are sometimes "weak" points to it too, but he manages to present it in such a way that it doesn't present a "problem" and i do like his style of presentation.

For the G36 video what he says is all quite correct, even if in order to make a concise story some elements are only briefly mentioned (the court case that only appears in half a sentence for example was a major turning point of the story, where it turned from "a few people with an agenda" to a wider disdain of the rifle in public).

He could maybe also have added in his introduction that the "accusations" of the G36 "melting" did not really come about with the anecdote about the training he mentions at the beginning, but really have been around for as long as the rifle itself. I mean, i personally remember joking about "the plastic rifle" with buddies in the Army in 1999 when part of the battalion got issued their first G36 for a Kosovo deployment and we first got our hands on one that way.

[TopHatter]

Maybe should have used the word "divided".

I tend to question his factchecking. Along the lines of looking into it myself once it doesn't seem kosher because in some cases what he says can get a bit dodgy. Especially once it's about politics of any kind. He has also done a number of videos on e.g. gun ownership rights (in other countries often with guests), where it can sometimes get a bit "politically one-sided".

I agree, anytime you get into political matters, things are subjective and some kind of preference will be shown. It's human nature.

In general i do like it though. For historic firearms and such i absolutely have no problem with it. I mean, that's his main focus and that's what he's good at. There are sometimes "weak" points to it too, but he manages to present it in such a way that it doesn't present a "problem" and i do like his style of presentation.

Agreed again, he's got a fine presentation style, dispassionate and fact-based, while still showing the occasional flash of humor but not overdoing it.

Personally I'm more into the history part of his presentations. The actual tear down of the weapon isn't quite my thing but that's just me.

For the G36 video what he says is all quite correct, even if in order to make a concise story some elements are only briefly mentioned (the court case that only appears in half a sentence for example was a major turning point of the story, where it turned from "a few people with an agenda" to a wider disdain of the rifle in public).

I also got the feeling that H&K almost seems to go out of their way to piss people off, just as a matter of company policy.

[Bigfella]

I agree, anytime you get into political matters, things are subjective and some kind of preference will be shown. It's human nature.

Thus far he has been smart enough to keep his politics largely out of sight or buried in the subtext (there was that one time agreed a little too enthusiastically with Larry Vickers lamenting the end of white minority rule in Rhodesia....). Gun channels talking politics are damn near a dime a dozen. Gun channels doing the sort of history Ian does are very, very rare. C&Rsenal do it, still a bit on InRange. Can't think of many others. I don't imagine I would be the only one who switched off if such channels got political.

Agreed again, he's got a fine presentation style, dispassionate and fact-based, while still showing the occasional flash of humor but not overdoing it.

Personally I'm more into the history part of his presentations. The actual tear down of the weapon isn't quite my thing but that's just me.

Same here. I used to be more interested in the mechanics, but I've seen so many now that it has to be something pretty unusual. The history is the hook, and it is well done. If the postage wasn't prohibitive I would buy some of his books.

[kato]

The defence and budget committees yesterday signed off on extending the contract between the Bundeswehr and the government-owned clothing general contractor indefinitely.

The new contract is worth 6.9 billion Euro, coming from the general budget - not the 100 billion fund. This however includes planned procurement throught the contractor, administratively the company typically gets around 60 million per year in recent time.

The large-scale contract is intended to cover fast-tracking procurement of personal equipment for all soldiers in the Bundeswehr from original planning dates of 2032 to now 2025. While i do think so, I am not exactly sure whether the sum already includes the 2.3 billion Euro worth that they signed for rapid procurement until 2025 over the last three months.

Those 2.3 billion for which the company signed a contract with the Bundeswehr by now released numbers include 311,000 uniform sets, 351,000 ballistic vests, 338,000 backpack sets and 313,000 combat helmets (.. of the earlier mentioned "intermediate solution"). There's a couple items that are not in this contract that have been mentioned for new procurement within the above, such as projects for new combat boots and some other stuff (i think new individual tent systems?).

BwBekleidungsmanagement GmbH, the company

• acts as a general contractor for any procurement of the Bundeswehr in their field of individually issued personal equipment, excluding any weapons and electronics.
• runs the warehousing and job-specific issueing of uniform and personal equipment parts for about 250,000 soldiers and civilian employees, including 80 "service points" for that at or near Bundeswehr bases
• organizes the turnaround (maintenance, cleaning) of these items upon re-issue
• manages clothing accounts for officers (*) incl. running both online and physical shops for these
• specifically handles all NBC-related stocking for the Bundeswehr, including - unlike the rest - for single-use issued items (filters, autoinjectors etc).

BwBekleidungsmanagement (back then under another name) is one of the military supply companies privatized out of former Bundeswehr civilian agencies about twenty years ago that were ultimately all re-nationalized about 5 years ago and subsequently re-focused on supporting the Bundeswehr as an exclusive customer again. To my knowledge BwBekleidungsmanagement is the last of these companies to get an "indefinite contract".

(*) Officers have to buy certain parts of their uniform on their own, mostly their dress uniform and sports clothing. They are free to procure this from other suppliers as well, but BwBekleidungsmanagement even then handles paying out the actual money from their clothing allowance.

[Albany Rifles]

(*) Officers have to buy certain parts of their uniform on their own, mostly their dress uniform and sports clothing. They are free to procure this from other suppliers as well, but BwBekleidungsmanagement even then handles paying out the actual money from their clothing allowance.

In the US Army officers get a one time uniform stipend at commissioning...usually gets eaten up in the first set of dress blues. All other uniform items are purchased out of pocket (boots, shoes, socks, trousers, jackets, coats, hats...everything.) Combat gear is issued by the installation. Most officers enter service from set's of uniforms issued in their Precommissioning source (West Point, ROTC). Enlisted personnel are issued their complete uniform set at enlistment and then receive an annual clothing stipend to upkeep and upgrade their uniforms. Officers do on rare occasions do get issued dress uniforms for ceremonial units (The Old Guard for instance) or special ceremonies...I was issued a complete new set of dress greens and combat boots for taking part in the 1984 D Day 40th Anniversary Ceremonies.

Similar in other services as well.

[kato]

In the US Army officers get a one time uniform stipend at commissioning...usually gets eaten up in the first set of dress blues. All other uniform items are purchased out of pocket (boots, shoes, socks, trousers, jackets, coats, hats...everything.)

Depending on force you get more money here - Navy officers in particular will spend most of their service in some sort of dress uniform, hence they have more of each item to buy on their list and get more money to spend. The overall stipend is somewhere on a scale of 800-1000 Euro - which is explicitly stated as "unlikely to fully cover the list".

Funnily they get all of those items on the list issued here at first, at the start of their service as enlisted men in training. However once they get commissioned (not sure on current career plans, but i think it's after 2 to 2.5 years) they have 6 months to hand them back in and buy new. Or alternatively buy the used items at a small discount, currently for 12% less than new. Exception are issued socks, shoes and swimclothes. They can keep those for free, as they can't be reissued for sanitary reasons anyway.

There's an upkeep stipend for officers ("not covering maintenance and care"), which is paid out monthly with the regular salary here. It's roughly enough to replace the whole set every 4-5 years.

A bit notably BwBekleidungsmanagement has explicit orders not to pay out any money if officers buy clothes for their list from military surplus stores.

Officers in the regular reserve officer track are excluded from the above, since they only have 2-3 years active service time (and less than 12 months remaining active service time after getting their commission).

Enlisted - up to NCOs with 8 years or less service time - get their full uniform set incl. dress uniform issued and can exchange items damaged in service for free at those service centers. There's generally also free washing services for issued uniform parts (i.e. not for officer dress uniforms...) through local contractors. For replacement of lost/stolen items if I remember right you need your unit's S4 to sign off on it (and pay out of pocket).

[Albany Rifles]

Interesting differences. The one area where Soldiers get additional uniform items at the unit level (outside of field gear and special clothing) is in the National Guard. In the Guard each state has unit which issues dress uniforms and field gear since they aren't on a fort.

BTW the officer stipend when I was commissioned in Winter 1981 was $300. They currently get $400. So much for factoring for inflation!

[kato]

The MoD has published its "current report on stock-taking" (translates badly to English, i know). It's basically about taking stock of current structures and developing measures as to improvements at top-level. The hidden political purpose was to basically revisit controversial organizational and administrative decisions of the last MoD.

The report was formally agreed upon in the coalition treaty in December and started in the Bundeswehr in January this year. It was originally supposed to be completed in May, but events of February 24th led to the report process being repurposed to analyze required immediate measures to quickly raise readiness of the armed forces. The repurposing was formally ordered on March 1st.

I'm not gonna translate it all because frankly it's a wall of text with 30+ measures detailed (... and a further 70+ omitted).

Key milestones established in it, a bit thrown together, are though:

• The establishment of the Territorial Command, homeland protection regiments and strenghtening of "enabler" forces under its command.
• Reorganization primarily of the Army for Allied and National Defense, but also fixed assignments of contributing support forces from other branches in this reorganization.
• Continuous significant increase in posts available for activated reservists over the next several years.
• Significant increases of capacity in basic functional elements for operations, such as in the production of MREs or in available basic training capacities; Improvements in civil-military cooperation and coordination in fields such as firefighting or pre-chartered commercial transportation contracts. Buying a shipyard in East Germany as a third Navy Arsenal site also falls into this category, as do digitalization projects saving manpower (example given: mass translation of texts through AI).
• Ministerial workgroups working on tackling certain laws and internal rules e.g. with regard to work time for soldiers, or with regard to new unified vaccination schemes. Also stuff like developing family support plans for soldiers deployed in allied and national defense.
• Ministerial Task Force "Optimization Procurement" specifically tackles quick-win small procurement projects that can create immediate improvements through off-the-shelf products, initially focusing on 11 pilot projects. Examples given in the report are new medium machine gun tripods for the army and establishing online video consultation services for the medical service. The purpose of the taskforce is not so much realizing these projects, but analyzing to what extent rapid off-the-shelf procurement yields improvements over established processes.

[Albany Rifles]

I don't know if it is a German thing or if it's me but I gotta say I get an eye twitch when I see East Germany instead of Eastern Germany!

[kato]

I don't know if it is a German thing or if it's me but I gotta say I get an eye twitch when I see East Germany instead of Eastern Germany!

"Östliches Deutschland" as a literal translation of "eastern Germany" just isn't used as a term here. It's "Ostdeutschland". Same as "Süddeutschland", "Norddeutschland" etc.

German conservatives who did not acknowledge the existence of the German Democratic Republic liked to call the area "Central Germany" in the 50s to 80s btw - when talking about it geographically. With a connotation that the Polish administrated areas east of the Oder and Neisse rivers are "East Germany".


Anyway, the shipyard referred to in the above post is the former MV Werften shipyard in Rostock which the government just bought for 87 million Euro. Main reason for buying it is its rather large drydock, and a quite dire lack of available docking resources for maintenance pretty much everywhere along the Baltic Sea.

In GDR times the shipyard was VEB Warnowwerft founded in 1948, post reunification sold off in 1992 to Kvaerner in Norway, integrated into Aker in Finland in 2002, then sold on to a Russian investor as Wadan Yards in 2008 (owner was shot in Moscow a few years later), sold on to Gazprom as Nordic Yards in 2010, and in 2016 sold on to Genting in Hong Kong. Then went broke earlier this year due to the pandemic.

[kato]

The Bundeswehr is getting new camping gear:

The new equipment is getting a bit ridiculed and maligned in social media. Along the lines of "they're soldiers, all they need is a hole in the ground".

• These are in addition to the half-tent every soldier carries in his backpack anyway.
• By default they come in 4-man sets issued to units and would typically be stowed away on vehicles.
• Main benefit - in comparison to manpack gear - is that this gear can withstand severe weather conditions (insulation against cold weather, water-tight, tested against heavy winds up to storms). This was also the focus of the procurement.
• Main purpose is for initial accomodation of mobile forces in secure areas before e.g. field camps with larger tents can be set up or other accomodation organized.
• Setup is fairly rapid (15 minutes with two soldiers, no tools required)

The default 4-man set weighs 57.7 kg and contains:

• 4 individual tents (can be issued individually, 3.2 kg per man) with 4 headlamps as core set
• single larger "common" tent, includes tent light, folding table and seats, 4 field beds (for the individual tents)
• chemical toilet with separate tent for weather protection, with sanitary kit (wet wipes, soap)
• multifuel cooker with fuel container, fuel pump and wind shield; 4 thermos cans, 4 sporks, single cooking pot
• trash disposal set

Any consumables/expendables in the set are laid out for 3 days use, nominal use of the system as a whole is for up to 60 days.

The core set individual tents are configured such that packed they can clip onto the soldiers' backpacks for ease of carry. The rest comes in two larger packs, with the bag for the cooking set laid out heat-resistant so you can just pack it up even when pot and cooker are still hot. The tents can be combined in other ways than shown. Inner tents can also be separately used for mosquito protection in combination with other accomodation. The lighting, while originally off-the-shelf, is modified to conform to military standards (switchable white/red, dimmable, non-volatile batteries). The cooker can supposedly work with about anything gas or liquid that burns.

There are plans to develop an add-on system (probably at squad/platoon level) for heating/cooling, energy and water generation to make usage more flexible, as well as plans for a shower tent (at company level) and a standardized camouflage net set.

Initial batch (which was just completed) for NATO VJTF2023 is for 10,000 men, full planned procurement is for 87,000 men.

[Albany Rifles]

The Bundeswehr is getting new camping gear:

Looking on enviously from 1981!

[kato]

Oh, they're still keeping the ... well, the German term is "Dackelgarage".

I guess when using these new tents the old tarps would probably mostly be used for setting up camouflage or wind cover around the camp...


The Bundeswehr also had fully insulated proper 2-man tents back then btw - the "Tent, Light, for Mountain Troops". Looked like this, was bought in batches between ca 1980 and 2000:



These were replaced for the mountain troops by these modern igloo tents a couple years ago:



The next larger tent beyond the above 4-man set is the (much larger) "Standard Tent Type II" for semi-permanent accomodation for 8 men btw. Dedicated for field camps, comes transported on trucks.

[Albany Rifles]

Oh, they're still keeping the ... well, the German term is "Dackelgarage".

I guess when using these new tents the old tarps would probably mostly be used for setting up camouflage or wind cover around the camp...


The Bundeswehr also had fully insulated proper 2-man tents back then btw - the "Tent, Light, for Mountain Troops". Looked like this, was bought in batches between ca 1980 and 2000:



These were replaced for the mountain troops by these modern igloo tents a couple years ago:



The next larger tent beyond the above 4-man set is the (much larger) "Standard Tent Type II" for semi-permanent accomodation for 8 men btw. Dedicated for field camps, comes transported on trucks.

I remember those. The 231st Gebirgsjaegers were one of our partnership units and I got to spend a week with them training. We slept in those a couple times. Much better than our Canvas Hotels!