Bundeswehr Restructuring

[kato]

short version:

long version:

When the ceremony for inauguration of new staff building for the Luftwaffe and CIR's Space Command sorta falls in too close date-wise with both April 1st and Carneval festivities.

[tbm3fan]

I can just see Russia getting this and saying here is the proof that NATO wants to absorb Russia into their Empire. Gotta watch and see if this video turns up modified in Russia I'm pretty sure there are Russians who wouldn't get the joke.

[Officer of Engineers]

When the ceremony for inauguration of new staff building for the Luftwaffe and CIR's Space Command sorta falls in too close date-wise with both April 1st and Carneval festivities.

Where's the French?

[kato]

Where's the French?

They're the main competition when it comes to space commands. ;-)

[kato]

According to an interview with the new president of the procurement agency of the Bundeswehr it is planned to have contracts signed for two thirds of the 100 billion fund by the end of the year, the remaining third following in Q1/2024.

The agency is preparing 91 separate procurement processes for approval by the defense and budget committees for this year, i.e. big-ticket projects above 25 million Euro project cost.

[kato]

Another question for you. In one mf my trips to Germany there were some tests for women to serve in combat arms units. Are you aware of any decision and manning regarding that? In the US we have now allowed women to serve in all areas.

The 375th Artillery Battalion, the newly established brigade artillery battalion for 37th Mechanized Brigade, will officially be inaugurated next thursday, being commanded by LtCol Hekla Marlen Werner.

She'll officially be the first female battalion commander in the Army, although not the first in Army uniform - that would be LtCol Anja Buresch-Hamann, commander of 172nd Logistics Battalion in the Joint Support Force, who became battalion commander in 2021 (for scale: she joined up in the first year that women were allowed into general service). She actually switched out of this post after two years just last thursday.

[Albany Rifles]

The 375th Artillery Battalion, the newly established brigade artillery battalion for 37th Mechanized Brigade, will officially be inaugurated next thursday, being commanded by LtCol Hekla Marlen Werner.

She'll officially be the first female battalion commander in the Army, although not the first in Army uniform - that would be LtCol Anja Buresch-Hamann, commander of 172nd Logistics Battalion in the Joint Support Force, who became battalion commander in 2021 (for scale: she joined up in the first year that women were allowed into general service). She actually switched out of this post after two years just last thursday.

As always Kato, thank you for your insights.

[Monash]

The 375th Artillery Battalion, the newly established brigade artillery battalion for 37th Mechanized Brigade, will officially be inaugurated next thursday, being commanded by LtCol Hekla Marlen Werner.

She'll officially be the first female battalion commander in the Army, although not the first in Army uniform - that would be LtCol Anja Buresch-Hamann, commander of 172nd Logistics Battalion in the Joint Support Force, who became battalion commander in 2021 (for scale: she joined up in the first year that women were allowed into general service). She actually switched out of this post after two years just last thursday.

What about ground level positions kato? Senior command positions are one thing, do you have an info on what if anything is happening with squad level combat roles?

[kato]

What about ground level positions kato? Senior command positions are one thing, do you have an info on what if anything is happening with squad level combat roles?

A bit difficult to detail. It's actually quite a bit higher though. Below numbers for July 31st '23.

By military careers:

• among 8,883 "Voluntary Military Service" posts - that's all enlisted soldiers serving maximum 23 months - 18.5% are female
• among 115,592 "Limited Duration Soldiers" posts - soldiers serving between 2 and 12, in rare cases up to 25 years in time-limited contracts - 15.3% are female
• among 56,761 "Professional Soldiers" posts - soldiers serving minimum 8 to 12 years and from there until mandatory age limit - 8.5% are female

That "Voluntary Military Service" is effectively considered an internship of sorts by the military. Besides people actively applying for these posts it's also a form of career that recruiters use to shove applicants not quite suitable for real service for various reasons into - to fill out numbers. In general these have limited training, but - if serving longer than 12 months - are actually sent on deployment abroad.
"Professional Soldiers" as opposed to the rest are (for the most part) only recruited - or rather may apply - from within the force itself. These are all "senior command positions", effectively either officers above company commander position (that's typically an end-of-career position for "Limited Duration" officers) or NCOs in some sort of senior specialist role (Master Sergeant equivalent basically).

So if you want the general "ground level positions" you're basically looking at that 15.3% there.

By service there are clear preferences though:

• Army : 7.6% female
• Air Force : 9.5% female
• Cyber Domain : 10.1% female
• Navy : 11.0% female
• Joint Support Force : 11.4% female
• Medical Service : 41.5% female
• All other branches : 24.4% female

The "all other" besides ministry, personnel department, infrastructure department, procurement department also includes all soldiers currently at one of the two military universities as part of their officer career training.

Among 80,290 civilian employees of the Bundeswehr 39% are female. About 26% of civilian employee posts are assigned to one of the active service branches (i.e. not the "all other" above), it's somewhat likely the distribution there is similar to that among soldiers.


Apparently for 2022 18% of all applications for military posts were from women, for officer careers 24%.

Since that basically means that the original recruitment target of 15% for new recruits was reached they promptly recently raised the recruitment target to 25%.

[kato]

It is planned to succeed ATHENA with another demonstrator for the Bundeswehr at larger scale dubbed NOVA as the final one for the RDRS development contract. NOVA is planned to have her first flight in second half of 2023, and in company plans upon finishing their Bundeswehr contract with it is planned to be followed with a full-scale spaceplane by 2025.

NOVA has been pushed back to 2024.

Polaris got a new contract from the Bundeswehr in April, this time for testing a linear aerospike engine (LAS) including in-flight validation. So far a LAS has never been fired in-flight, their demonstrator would be the first one (and yes, firing it in-flight). NASA mounted one on a SR-71 for cold-flow tests in the 90s.

for progression of Polaris demonstrators:


For this new contract Polaris has built another two demonstrators, MIRA and the scale model MIRA-Light. MIRA-Light is meant to test the flight control systems and for this had 15 flights in a two-week span in August and September.

MIRA is the planned demonstrator for the live LAS hot tests and apparently sufficiently along that there's a standing airspace exclusion zone around Peenemünde for those tests already in place (between September and December, with NOTAMs issued 48 hours before flights). Ground tests like rolling and emergency termination with MIRA were actually completed this week.

[kato]

Updated the previously published OrBat for the Army showing some changes in planning now:



Basically, in June the MoD announced that Germany will be permanently forward-stationing a brigade in Lithuania. This will be a new brigade in addition to the ones that had previously been planned out.

So in recent months they had to find compromises on how to field this brigade without any significant impact on personnel or finances. And of course they had to work against all kinds of internal lobbyism that set boundaries. The new brigade, Panzerbrigade 42, will be fielded in 2025, the brigade-level forward commands will be established during 2024.

PzBrig 42 will get the 203rd Armoured Battalion from PzLBrig 9 and the 122nd Mechanized Battalion from PzBrig 12. Its third battalion will be the German-led eFP Battlegroup in Lithuania, which will be fielded rotating from other brigades and currently includes some artillery. It is likely that the brigade will get additional units in the future, in particular for combat support, but those aren't planned out yet (at least publicly).

Those two battalions now announced will be permanently moved to Lithuania, including their equipment. Their current bases in Germany will be reused to host some of the new artillery battalions for brigades, for which basing was considered a bit problematic anyway (originally requiring building entirely new bases in some cases).

PzBtl 203 was likely chosen because it is the one battalion that had its Leopard 2 stripped from it recently to deliver them to Ukraine; i.e. the battalion will need an entirely new equipment set (Leopard 2A8) yet to be built, and in the meantime does have the opportunity to restructure its personnel anyway. The battalion had only been switched over to PzLBrig 9 last April anyway. It'll basically be going straight to Lithuania with the new tanks and new personnel in 2025.

PzGrenBtl 122 is fully equipped and trained up on Puma IFV.

[kato]

first female officer on a submarine was posted in 2014..

Came across it randomly : Apparently this October the Bundeswehr got its first female submarine commander.

Corvette Captain Claudia N. (full names no longer publicized for security reasons by Bundeswehr) has been serving on German submarines for a while, and became XO of Delta Crew - the same submarine crew she now commands - in July 2020 as the first female submarine XO in the Bundeswehr.

Submarines tend to be traditionally an area where internationally women tend to be "rare". In the USN the first women starting serving on submarines in 2010, in Germany in 2014. As i understand it there hasn't been a female submarine commanding officer in the USN yet - only in August 2022 a woman became XO of a submarine for the first time there.

[kato]

The Federal Parliament exactly one year ago unanimously (!) gave its okay to reintroducing the office of a military rabbi in the Bundeswehr. It's planned that the first rabbi (who has been selected by now) will be formally installed on June 21st this year.
[...]
Historically the German Military only had rabbis during WW1, when numbers of German Jewish soldiers were much higher at around 100,000 total.

Rabbi Konstantin Pal has now become the first rabbi deployed by the German military since over 100 years. He joined the crew of tender Donau yesterday, the flagship of SNMCMG1 deployed in Norway.

Pal is notionally the Rabbi for Bundeswehr forces stationed in five eastern-central states with his office situated at the Bundeswehr Training Command in the area.

[kato]

The newest thing in procurement shenanigans:

The Bundeswehr is now procuring medium caliber guns for future vehicles separately. In total this is about a fixed contract for 153 guns with an option for another 162.

The tender is written in such a way that only the Oerlikon KBA can fulfill the requirements.

Requirements are:
- 25x137mm calibre
- ITAR-free (excludes Bushmaster M242)
- maximum 36cm vertical height mounted (excludes Nexter M811, which is ... 37cm)
- fixed delivery in batches of 61 guns per year
- must be introduced in a NATO military
- must have been previously integrated into an air-transportable ground vehicle (Oerlikon KBA fulfills this with the Turkish ACV-300 qualified for C-130 transport)

Specifically the guns are for the future "Korsak" reconnaissance vehicles and the LuWa airmobile fire support vehicle (the replacements for Fennek and Wiesel respectively). "Korsak" is planned at 2 prototypes + 90 regular + 162 options, LuWa is planned at 56 units total.

The Bundeswehr intends, for these two projects, to procure separately:
a) the guns
b) the turrets/weapon system
c) the vehicles

The main idea behind splitting the procurement this way seems to be to force suppliers into a specific solution process using pre-supplied MOTS products, and thus mitigate supplier-side delays and cost overruns stemming from integration.

[Albany Rifles]

I can see some of the logic behind all of this but...man, the the government is accepting ALL the risk! And as I am sure there is software involved in each assembly which will have to be integrated...well, that can be ruinously difficult. See the F-35. If this passes legal muster I imagine a long teething period for the system.