Germany Is Arming Itself for the Wrong War

Clouds of dust hang over the Lüneburg Heath. Tank tracks cut through the soil. Leopard 2 tanks race forward and fire their cannons. A drone flies overhead. Armoured and unmanned vehicles roll across the ground. Soldiers move between them. The roar of gunfire drowns out the noise of helicopters.

This, the German army says, is how it will fight in the future.

Army chief General Christian Freuding, speaking on a military training ground in Munster in May, described a combination of new and proven systems, unmanned and manned, a new kind of combined arms warfare. The whole display of steel on tracks and wheels is certainly impressive. But apart from the drones and robots, nothing is particularly new. The demonstration was called "How the Army Will Fight." Exactly how it will fight is described on the Bundeswehr's website and social media pages, and repeated by defence ministry officials: networked, fast, data-driven. Reality, however, tells a different story.

A few weeks earlier, the real picture emerged. Once again, ministry officials had to brief the Bundestag on a project that has caused considerable frustration and incomprehension, reaching all the way to the defence minister. The project is called "Digitalisation of Land-Based Operations" (D-LBO). Its aim is nothing less than the comprehensive digitalisation of the army: networking of units, voice and onboard radio for soldiers and vehicles, data transmission, satellite connections, and encrypted, secure internet. Industry has been working on it for years.

But again and again, the companies involved have had to ask the Bundeswehr for more time to get the technical problems under control. Rumours of the project's cancellation have repeatedly surfaced. Its estimated volume is between 12 and 15 billion euros. Meanwhile, the Bundeswehr still communicates partly with radio equipment from the 1980s.

The gap between ambition and reality remains wide. Four years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and one year into Friedrich Merz's government, the German military is still far from the goal of becoming the "strongest conventional army in Europe" – a phrase used by both former chancellor Olaf Scholz and his successor Merz. The question is whether the right course has even been set.

On the positive side, the Merz government has produced more strategic groundwork in a short time than any of its predecessors. This includes a military strategy, a defence industry strategy, and a reserve strategy. But strategies and concepts do not make a combat-ready army, no matter how large the military budget. The question is what follows from them.

The sheer number of million- and billion-euro procurement projects approved by the Bundestag suggests Germany is on the right track. Tanks, artillery, ammunition, air defence systems, warships, fighter jets, helicopters, AI drones – even experienced budget experts lose track. Not since the 1950s, when West Germany built its army from scratch, has there been so many procurement projects in such a short time. Many decisions are correct. The strengthening of air defence through systems like Arrow and Iris-T is a direct response to the threat from Russian missiles and drones. Artillery has become a central instrument of warfare again, as seen in Ukraine. Germany is acquiring new howitzers and ammunition. And with investments in satellites and digital systems, the country is responding to the fact that modern warfare depends on information and networking.

But these answers remain incomplete. And that is largely due to German rearmament logic.

Large parts of German military procurement, especially the expensive parts, still follow the pattern of classic platforms: tanks, fighter jets, frigates. These systems have their military justification. But they represent a model based on long development cycles, high costs, and limited quantities. It is the logic of the industrial military of the late 20th century, as the Kiel Institute for the World Economy recently confirmed. One example is the Leopard 2A8 battle tank, a further development of earlier versions. The procurement contract was signed in 2023. The first public presentation took place in Munich in November 2024. The Bundeswehr has so far ordered 123 units at a price of 25 to 30 million euros each. Full introduction will take up to seven years.

Given the procurement pace of previous years, that is fast. Nevertheless, the quantities, procurement time, and costs collide with today's reality – and possibly tomorrow's. War, as shown in Ukraine and also in Iran, has become an industrial contest: whoever produces, repairs, and replaces faster and cheaper gains the advantage.

How is production supposed to speed up when industry is not expanding its capacity? How are material losses to be replaced immediately when the Bundeswehr cannot build reserves? No answers exist yet.

The logic of a war against a Russian-style opponent can be summarised in four points. First, mass matters – not a few highly complex systems, but large quantities of simpler ones: tanks, armoured vehicles, air, land, surface, and underwater drones, ammunition, and sensors. Second, speed counts – weapons systems must be developed, adapted, and deployed quickly. Third, networking becomes the central capability – integrating sensors, effectors, and command systems best creates a decisive advantage. Fourth, unmanned and AI-supported systems increasingly shape combat in all dimensions: land, air, sea, space.

Measured against this, German rearmament remains piecemeal. Defence contractors do consider drones and AI in their planning, but classic systems still dominate procurement. The Bundeswehr's procurement strategy lags behind developments in military technology and combat.

Strategic gaps also remain. These were revealed again when US President Donald Trump announced he would not station deep-strike weapons in Germany for the time being. European industry is working on its own systems, but development takes time and production capacity is limited. Personnel is another problem. The Bundeswehr leadership is aiming for a long-term strength of around 460,000 soldiers and reservists. At the same time, Germany relies on voluntary military service and has ruled out reintroducing conscription. Military mass without the political and social consequences – many experts from academia, the military, and politics consider this a mistake.

The logic of peacetime still dominates politics. The government avoids hard decisions, whether on introducing conscription or reallocating resources. If the country is really as threatened by Russia as Berlin has been saying for four years, then rearmament should be financed from the federal budget as a society-wide task – at the expense of, say, social spending. Instead, the government is taking on hundreds of billions in debt and shifting the cost to future generations. Germany is thus following a misguided path common to many Western societies: security, yes, but please not at the cost of social welfare. Guns or butter? The black-red coalition government is trying to avoid the question.

A year after Friedrich Merz took office, the German government has begun to strategically reorient the Bundeswehr and rebuild key capabilities. But so far, it is modernising the military for a war it knows – not for the war that is likely coming. A true military Zeitenwende is still not in sight.

Written by Andreas Hofer