11 Projects for the Germany’sNew Defence Reform

Germany’s defense secretary has set up 11 project groups to fill in the details of the military’s planned restructuring, which follows his May unveiling of defense policy guidelines.

“We really take up quite a lot there,” Thomas de Maizière said at a June 10 kick-off presentation in Berlin.

The groups will work independently, but a steering committee will control the process, along with the task force on structural reform. The committee will include state secretary Rüdiger Wolf, Generalinspekteur general Volker Wieker and states secretary Stéphane Beemelmans.

All projects will have to make decisions relevant to the future basing by this fall, when defense secretary de Maizière wants to present the final concept.

In order from one to 11, the projects will:

• Reshape the Bundeswehr’s structure to a maximum of 185,000 personnel, including reservists; and a leaner command structure with new roles for the Generalinspekteur and the chief of staffs of the individual services.
• Write the new basing concept of military and civilian elements.
• Shape the German defense department’s reduction from today’s 3,100 military and civilian employees to 2,100.
• Organize staff management and create a recruitment branch.
• Plan a quick and socially acceptable reduction of the military and civil personnel to reach the final personnel headline goals.
• Make coherent the Bundeswehr’s education and qualification sector.
• Create the new materiel and utilization management. Its goal is a new
  procurement process with an optimized IT.
• Adjust the structures and optimize the processes in the infrastructure
  and service sectors.
• Devise a new concept for the Bundeswehr’s reserve force.
• Works on governance and control.

By ALBRECHT MÜLLER