Nonsensical German army structure

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I'll deliver a critique of the nonsensical German army structure. It's the same bollocks as we've had for a long time, they just evolve bollocks. The German army ceased to be serious about conventional warfare sometime in the early 90's and the nonsensical army structure that would have been impossible with the 1960's, 1970's crop of generals is a symptom of this non-seriousness.

I did this before

/2008/12/todays-10-panzerdivision-bundeswehr.html

/2015/10/critique-of-german-army-brigades.html

 

I'll use the easily accessed and easily readable structure graphic from Wikipedia.

(c) Noclador see here

 

I partially checked on the Bundeswehr website whether the Wikipedia graphic is correct and as a result didn't find the Panzerbrigade 45 as part of the 10. Panzerdivision. This brigade was formally founded only days ago, so I suppose the official website is simply out of date. Another deviation is that Panzerbrigade is and always was one word, while Wikipedia calls it "Panzer Brigade", same with Panzerdivision and some battalion names.

Sigh. Let's begin, from the left.

 

1. Panzerdivision, three brigades. two to four brigades is OK for a division. An issue is Panzerbrigade 21 that doesn't fit qualitatively, later more about that. There's no divisional logistics formation.

Panzerlehrbrigade 9. A "Lehr-" formation is traditionally for testing, demonstration and training in addition to being an actual combat formation. That's a German thing. So basically, let's treat it as a Panzerbrigade and ignore the "lehr" part for the purpose of this blog post. Two tank battalions, two mechanised infantry / Panzergrenadier battalions.That's a lot, especially a lot of tanks (nominally) for a brigade. A Panzerbrigade should have a 2:1 ratio between tank battalions and (mechanised) infantry battalions. A 1:1 or 2:2 ratio suits a Panzergrenadierbrigade, but admittedly, the difference should not just be a difference of balance, but also of attitudes and tactical principles (Panzerbrigade being more dashing, while a Panzergrenadierbrigade rather moves from one solid standing to the next solid standing). Here's the big problem with this brigade: It has no artillery and no mortars. It's not a combined arms formation. There is a divisional artillery battalion, but that's no excuse. There's no engineer battalion. The Panzerlehrbrigade 9's structure is simply wrong.

Panzerbrigade 21. It isn't. There's no tank battalion, not even a mechanised infantry battalion. An armoured engineer battalion is the only trace of a mechanised kind of brigade - exactly the battalion that the Panzerlehrbrigade 9 misses! There are three Jägerbataillons (kinda motorised infantry battalions; wheeled APCs, so not really light infantry) in this brigade. So why the heck is it called a Panzerbrigade? It's a Jägerbrigade or Infanteriebrigade! Well, at least it has an artillery battalion (the artillery systems are AFVs, as we have no non-AFV artillery). So this kind of brigade doesn't necessarily belong into a Panzerdivision, but I understand a case could be made for it. A bad, but for defensive missions workable brigade design.

Panzergrenadierbrigade 41. No tank battalion and no artillery battalion, but three (!!!) mechanised infantry battalions. Now we see that the one divisional artillery battalion (a mixed self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launcher battalion IIRC) is not really enough for the two brigades that lack artillery, even if the divisional commander did assign it. The Panzergrenadierbrigade 41's structure is simply wrong.

 

10. Panzerdivision. Five brigades including the 13th Light brigade (Dutch), too many IMO. 

Panzerbrigade 12. Three tank battalions (one of which with a nonsensical 'mountain' designation, but it does use Leopard 2), two mechanised infantry battalions, artillery battalion, engineer battalion. Main criticism: It's way too big, unwieldy. This is more like two brigades in one. That's borderline acceptable for a Panzergrenadierbrigade, but a Panzerbrigade should be agile, and this one is agile only if it separates into at least two parts, for which there's no command and support structure present. A brigade commander should not lead more than four line of sight combat battalions (span of command). Also, this oversizing conceals that there's not enough artillery. There should be two artillery battalions for five line of sight combat battalions. The Panzerbrigade 12's structure is simply wrong.

Panzergrenadierbrigade 37. Four (!!!) mechanised infantry battalions, one tank battalion, one artillery battalion, one engineer battalion. Again too big. The Panzergrenadierbrigade 37's structure is wrong because it has at least one line of sight combat battalion too many, but I understand that some people would argue that today's staff sizes, signals equipment, battle management systems would permit a command span of five.

Panzerbrigade 45, the one to be based in Lithuania. Let's ignore this one, it's being raised. The structure as shown is acceptable, main criticism is the unusually weak (only a company) engineer support and the infantry weakness considering how much woodland is in Lithuania. I generally reject multinational formations (the brigade integrates a NATO multinational composite battalion) and I dislike it being stationed in Lithuania. For one, I reject the concept of tripwire forces and second, being stationed abroad badly hikes the personnel costs due to extra pay.

Franco-German Brigade, a mixed French-German brigade loaded with much symbolic value. As mentioned, I reject the concept of multinational brigades. That being said, it's a kind of infantry brigade and the mix of battalions is OK. 

 

Rapid forces division / Division Schnelle Kräfte. This is basically the Col War cheat of the 12th division promised to NATO being a cheap airborne division, but the current crop of leadership at the MoD probably bought into their own propaganda. A para brigade, a mountain infantry brigade, a special forces command (size-wise a big battalion) and the helicopter forces (extremely shitty due to gold-plated yet extremely bad helicopter designs). A Dutch airmobile brigade actually belongs to this division as well. Marginal support formations.

Luftlandebrigade 1 (paras). Two para regiments, no artillery. The official website does not mention independent engineer and recon companies unlike Wikipedia. Main criticism: Airborne is bollocks, see Hostomel. Secondary criticism; no artillery is bollocks, too. This brigade is crap in conventional warfare. Most likely the brigade would (it certainly should) be reduced to an administrative staff, with the two regiments attached to 1. Panzerdivision and 10. Panzerdivision as divisional light infantry formations for woodland and settlement areas, requiring non-organic artillery support.

Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 (mountain infantry bde). Three mountain infantry battalions, no artillery (Germany doesn't use pack howitzers anymore). The Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23's structure is simply wrong for lack of artillery.

 

Heimatschutzdivision with six Heimatschutzregimentern; this is basically an object security division, not meant for conventional warfare, but rather for guarding locations against sabotage and so on. It's also supporting allied forces in Germany or passing through Germany.  wrong, but this is due to lack of maintaining suitable artillery.

General remark: I didn't comment on the recon battalions so far. German recon is really more observation by now. Actual recon should be at higher echelon. 

All brigades are lacking proper air defence. There's simply no equipment for that in the German army, so it's not a brigade or division design issue, but a long term force development issue.

I understand that shortages of material, shortages of (having maintained) suitable training infrastructure for tank crews in certain areas, restrictions regarding where usable barracks are have influences the brigade layouts. Still, these on average appallingly bad brigade designs are damning for MoD leadership. Most importantly, these brigade designs show that there's no real concept of land warfare behind them.

 

We could have

• three agile tank brigades (tank bde + mech inf bn + arty bn)
• four all-round mechanised infantry brigades (tank bn + 2 mech inf bn + arty bn)
• two infantry brigades (3 infantry bn)
• three light infantry brigades (3 light infantry bn without APCs) 

All these would lack would be additional artillery for the latter five brigades (at 2...4.5 M € per howitzer and minimum 18 howitzers per brigade this would have been affordable; less than 1 billion € including periphery). There would be a clear repertoire portfolio and thus role set for each of these four brigade types. Instead, we have nine brigades, six fo them without proper doctrine / ill-fitted to doctrine.

I believe this continued (I kept complaining since 2008 !!!) failure to set up a sensible army structure is not tolerable, not excusable, not forgivable. The German citizens gave the German armed forces much money during this time. Much of it was wasted on bollocks. Relatively small changes in big ticket procurement would have sufficed to enable a MUCH more sensible army structure, as I laid out above. Instead, we get one abomination after another. The German public doesn't wake up to this, but in my opinion the presumption of competence in favour of the ministry of defence and the top leadership of the army has to be thrown out. Competent people don't produce such abominations. I understand there are restrictions, but those restrictions are not an excuse after 17 years. Every single minister of defence in this period was crap, their ministry bureaucracy was crap, the army heads were crap. The distraction by the idiotic Afghanistan missions are no excuse either. We've left Afghanistan almost four years ago. That's plenty time to reorient an army towards conventional warfare IF COMPETENTS ARE IN CHARGE ! They had enough money, but they are too incompetent to use it well. This is but the structure; personnel system, equipment issues, maintenance issues, training issues abound as well.

related:

/2022/04/an-army-corps-for-germany-revised.html

/2023/04/a-compact-and-agile-exploitation-brigade.html

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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