Germany announces reforms of Bundeswehr to get ‘ready for war’

6 months ago 26

To bring Germany’s ailing armed forces back on track, the government is reorganising its operative command and making cyber and IT a full-fledged military branch on par with the navy, air force and ground forces, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced on Thursday (4 April).

Germany has been undergoing a profound shift since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz promising a ‘turn of the times’ (Zeitenwende) in rebuilding its underfunded defence capabilities.

In a similar vein, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has been pushing to get the armed forces “ready for war”, as he has stressed, ushering in his commissioning of a new structure for the army this autumn, less than a year after he took office.

On Thursday (4 April), he presented his reforms with changes due to be implemented within the next six months.

“The goal is to reconstruct the Bundeswehr in its structures so that it is optimally prepared even for the most serious case, (…) in case of war,” Pistorius told reporters, pointing to the need for Germany to take a leading role in European defence.

“We must ensure that NATO can fulfil its role [in tackling threats]. This also means (…) setting up the Bundeswehr for a new, old challenge, that of national and alliance defence.”

For the minister, Germany has a “special responsibility”, being “NATO’s largest European member and the largest European economy in Europe”.

One of the pillars highlighted by Pistorius is the simplification of the chain of command – and points of contact for allies – through a new overarching Operational Leadership centre (Operatives Führungskommando).

This will collapse separate leadership centres into one, after they have previously been divided between foreign and domestic, and ‘territorial’ defence.

The new joint leadership centre will not only serve as the central operational point of contact for NATO and the EU, but also for German authorities and organisations that perform security tasks at the federal and state levels.

Pistorius also announced that he would promote the cyber and IT department to the status of the fourth, full-fledged sub-force (“Teilstreitkraft”), on par with the navy, air force, and army.

“We have elevated the cyber area to a sub-force so that it is clear what value we assign to it,” said Germany’s Chief of Defence Carsten Breuer on Thursday.

All four branches will be supported by a joint Support Sector (“Unterstützungsbereich”), which includes key functions such as medical services, logistics, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons (CBRN or NBC) defence.

In an early reaction, Joachim Weber, a security expert at the University of Bonn, said the reforms were “going in the right direction.”

“There have not been 27,000 different things that have been announced, but very simply structured, clear reforms,” Weber told German broadcaster Phoenix after the announcement.

He praised the unification of the different chains of command, saying it created “unified armed forces with a unified leadership.”

However, Carlo Masala of the Bundeswehr University Munich pointed out that readying the armed forces for war would ultimately depend on resources.

“Those [new] structures may contribute a little, but that is not decisive,” he told Süddeutsche.

[Edited by Aurélie Pugnet/Rajnish Singh]