The war in Ukraine demonstrates daily the importance of long-range, precise artillery fire and sets new standards for the need for weapons systems and ammunition. The Bundeswehr has therefore supported the Ukrainian armed forces by providing 14 self-propelled howitzers 2000 (PzH 2000), five MARS II rocket launchers and insufficient quantities of ammunition and will continue to support them by purchasing ammunition in the near future.
This resulted in equipment gaps in the German artillery. While the PzH 2000 will be replaced virtually 1:1 between 2025 and 2030, the PULS rocket launcher system has been selected to replace the MARS II. A time and cost plan for this is not yet known. The procurement planning should be submitted to the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag for approval before the 2024 summer break as part of a 25 million proposal, according to the answer of the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defense Thomas Hitschler to a small question from members of the CDU parliamentary group / CSU from January 10th, which is available to ESuT.
MP Jens Lehmann, rapporteur on the army for the CDU/CSU faction in the Defense Committee of the German Bundestag, was shocked by the fact that the structural scope of the army is still being investigated. “We are in year two of the turning point and there are still tests and investigations going on at every turn. This shows that the ministry and the Bundeswehr are still too caught up in the peacekeeping business and that the budgetary constraints prevent a concrete determination,” writes Lehmann in a statement.
The fact that the Bundeswehr's capability profile describes the gradual expansion of the artillery force in 2027, 2031 and 2035 is a declaration of security policy bankruptcy today, Lehmann continued. That is far too late. “We must have a clear picture of the growth of the artillery force with the 2025 division.”
The five PULS rocket launcher systems are to be procured together with the Netherlands - based on their testing and evaluation. This is intended to avoid technical risks and establish interoperability with the Netherlands, writes Hitschler. The five systems serve as an introduction to the future long-range indirect fire system (ZukSysIndFgRw) and are intended to become part of the future division and corps artillery. They should cover the range of ten km to 300 km and, in the long term, even beyond that.
After the integration of the German command and weapon deployment systems, the PULS systems will initially be used at the training facilities.
“The final replacement of the five systems being discontinued will be the Future Long-Range Indirect Fire System. However, only from 2028. By the time the systems arrive in the troops, it will be well after 2030. That cannot be our aim,” says Lehmann, assessing the planning. He sees this as confirmation that the federal government is not taking the changing times seriously and is now making the mistake of making savings at the expense of the Bundeswehr. Otherwise it would equip the troops with more resources, so that troop sizes and the required number of large equipment can be determined today and the systems required for this can now be procured in the required quantities. “The priority of the traffic light must be on Germany’s future security, not on its ideological projects,” concluded Jens Lehmann.
Gerhard Heiming
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