vDefense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) is planning a major restructuring of the armed forces, which is intended to strengthen the army in particular. In the future, the Bundeswehr will have four branches of the armed forces: the army, the navy, the air force and, as a new branch, the “Cyber and Information Space” (CIR), each with an inspector at the top.
The goal of the change is a Bundeswehr whose “core mission is defense in a demanding environment,” as it says in a planning paper. Today that means “resolutely opposing attacks from states like Russia that trample on the international legal order. “Defense also means the willingness and ability at all times to conduct consistent and effective military reactions to conventional attacks against us and our allies,” according to the document from the planning group in the ministry.
In a nutshell, the Bundeswehr should be “war-ready” throughout. This is what the ministry's more recent diction says, although it currently stands in greater and growing contradiction to the state of the armed forces. But in addition to massive investments, Pistorius is also planning organizational reforms that should improve this situation. In addition to alliance and national defense, international crisis operations should also remain possible.
Among other things, the land forces should be given command of NBC defense, i.e. defense against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (NBC). The military police force and the guard battalion also join the army, a total of around 4,000 soldiers. In addition, the army is growing to include the so-called homeland security forces, which were previously subordinate to the commands in the federal states.
A new “Operational Command”
Pistorius and Inspector General Carsten Breuer are planning a change in the previous structure by merging two Bundeswehr command commands. This is the operational command in Potsdam-Geltow, which has so far directed the Bundeswehr's foreign operations, including missions such as those in Afghanistan or Mali, each with thousands of troops deployed. This command will be combined with the Territorial Command Command, which was newly established two years ago, to form a new “Operational Command Command”.
The previously independent areas of medical services and the armed forces base, which is primarily responsible for logistics, will in future be merged into a broad area and lose the positions of the respective inspectors. The medical system will have a chief medical officer, the Chief Medical Officer. Both branches of the armed forces had turned against previous reform projects and in this way defended the continued existence of the previous Bundeswehr structure.
With the reform, the Defense Ministry is responding to a changing threat situation that has worsened since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014. The restructuring currently planned follows the basic principles of a reform paper that the then Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) and the then Inspector General Eberhard Zorn had already presented in 2021. It failed due to resistance from parliament and the bureaucracy. Kramp-Karrenbauer's successor Christine Lambrecht (SPD) put it aside without offering alternative suggestions.