Hans-Peter Bartels has held the position of Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces in Germany since May 2015 and, like the others before him, the SPD politician presents an annual military report: What is working, what is not? Where are there grievances? What do the soldiers complain about? What solutions would they like to see?
While he had already voiced numerous points of criticism in his report in previous years, Bartels’ current summary is almost devastating. Above all, Bartels castigates the “bureaucracy monster” that is the Bundeswehr and calls for the IKEA principle, i.e. “choose, pay and take away” instead of “customized and individual” solutions. According to Bartels, instead of buying off the shelf, procurers are still relying too much on solutions that are adapted and customized to the requirements of the troops, but which are much slower to procure and ultimately arrive with the troops in the form of not-so-new equipment.
He also refuses to accept that it should take seven years to modernize 100 Leopard A7 tanks, while the same manufacturer can deliver 50 new A7s to a third-party customer in the Gulf within two years. Other points of criticism include the Tiger combat helicopter, which was delivered 134 months late and cost 1.3 billion euros more, as well as the state of the navy, which currently only has nine combat ships instead of the 15 planned. There is also a need to catch up in terms of personnel, with 21,000 positions currently unfilled. As a result, only 53% of the particularly critical technical posts in the air force can be filled, while the figure for the artillery is 70%.
