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Radios that cannot communicate with allies; paper-only medical records that need to be mailed; military documents sent by fax, rather than secure email.
The German armed forces’ digital and communications systems are in a woeful state, Eva Högl, the commissioner responsible for overseeing the Bundeswehr, warned on Tuesday. Her comments come a week after a Russian wiretapping scandal embarrassed military leaders and plunged the government of Olaf Scholz into fresh political turmoil.
“This urgently needs to be changed . . . and it has to be done quickly,” said Högl, an independent official appointed by the German parliament when presenting her annual report. “Why are we where we are? Because not enough investment was made in the past . . . we are now realising the seriousness of this.”
Högl warned of a “mammoth” investment challenge still facing the German military two years after Scholz’s promise of a Zeitenwende — a major turning point — in German security policy, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“The Bundeswehr is under enormous pressure,” Högl said, reeling off a list of problems caused by years of under-investment, from “mouldering” and “dilapidated” barracks to a potentially disastrous shortfall in personnel.
The digital problems facing the military, detailed in the 175-page report, were particularly glaring: barracks and training facilities which have no WiFi, and in some that do, soldiers have to pay for its use. On one Nato exercise last year troops were using unencrypted radios from the 1980s that could not communicate with allies. Medical records are still kept entirely on paper — raising the question of how quickly doctors treating seriously injured troops on the battlefield could expect to receive them in a real war.
This year Germany hit its Nato target of spending 2 per cent on defence for the first time since the end of the cold war, thanks to a huge €100bn special fund set up by Scholz’s government to pump urgently-needed funds into military reform.
The fruits of the additional spending are now beginning to be felt — although much has been allocated to long-term procurement projects.
With the fund already due to be exhausted by 2027, military experts are increasingly asking what will come next — and pointing to huge capability deficits which still exist in German’s armed forces.
“Getting the Bundeswehr fully operational . . . will continue to cost a lot of money,” Högl said. “The Bundeswehr still has too little of everything: there is a lack of ammunition, spare parts, radios, tanks, ships and aircraft.”
The commissioner visited 90 different military bases last year in Germany and abroad and received statements and evidence from just under 4,000 troops.
Alongside digital and communications problems, the commissioner cited recruitment and infrastructure as the two biggest challenges for the Bundeswehr.
“On the subject of personnel, I have no good news and no good tidings,” she reported, pointing to the fact that Germany’s armed forces actually shrank in size last year, rather than growing as is urgently needed.
As of the end of 2023, the armed forces employ 181,000 soldiers. Twenty-thousand roles are unfilled, Högl said.
Poor infrastructure hinders military readiness and also adds to the personnel problem, she continued, pointing to how unattractive most bases were as places for people to live.
Money was only part of the problem in both instances, she said. Often German military bureaucracy and “sluggishness” was the more immediate challenge. At least €50bn is needed to be spent on upgrading infrastructure in 7,000 separate projects, for example, but the current military organisation responsible is only able to handle €1.3bn of projects annually.
She praised raising investments which have finally started to arrive and lauded defence minister Boris Pistorius, who she said recognised the problems well and was working to address them.
But, she concluded: “We do not yet have fully operational armed forces.”
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