As of: February 20, 2024, 5:08 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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The fox is leaving, a new transporter is needed.
Boris Pistorius is toying with a Finnish tank;
and gives Rheinmetall the cold shoulder.
Berlin – Armin Papperger lost his way;
but properly.
The
Tagesspiegel
wanted to know from him how he felt about closer cooperation between European defense companies - so to speak, about equipping the individual armed forces almost equally across national borders.
Papperger is skeptical about this: “A European army is only possible if all EU states enshrine in their constitution that a European defense minister can send them to war.
Can you imagine that?
It's a nice dream, nothing more.
Currently, armaments are going in the other direction: renationalization instead of Europeanization.”
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) has now disabused the CEO of the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, as the
Handelsblatt
reports: The Finnish arms company Patria has signed a cooperation agreement with two German arms companies to build a 6x6 armored transport vehicle for the Bundeswehr.
Patria will produce the 6x6 together with Defense Service Logistics (DSL), which is part of the German-French KNDS Group, and Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft (FFG) in Germany.
In the future, it may also be built entirely under license in Germany.
The volume could ultimately amount to up to 1,000 vehicles and result in production by 2037.
A single vehicle should cost one million euros.
The new armaments project: A new mistake is quite possible
According to media estimates, the 6x6 from Patria will replace Rheinmetall's Fuchs transport tank in the Bundeswehr.
The order has not yet been officially awarded.
With production in Germany, Patria is fulfilling a condition of the traffic light government for the acquisition of the 6x6 for the Bundeswehr.
This would mean that Rheinmetall would be eliminated.
The magazine
Schlacht&Technik
suspects that the price was the deciding factor and warns against a possible mistake with the Finnish vehicle and saving money in the wrong place.
Since April 2023, Germany has been part of the CAVS (Common Armored Vehicle System) program originally founded by Finland and Latvia.
CAVS stands for a development program for the cheapest possible 6×6 vehicle – in terms of procurement and maintenance costs – for the Eastern European region;
or even beyond.
Finland, Latvia and Estonia have been taking part in the program since 2019, Sweden since 2021. Patria produces the 6×6 armored personnel carrier, which is considered the favorite to replace the approximately 900 German Fuchs armored personnel carriers.
Competitors included the Fuchs 1A9 armored transport vehicle from Rheinmetall and the Pandur Evolution from General Dynamics European Land System (GDELS), as the magazine
European Security & Technology
reported.
The new transporter: Bundeswehr needs up to 1,000 units
In fact, the mere fact that a country has joined the program does not mean an automatic purchase decision.
It is also conceivable that the Bundeswehr intends to expand the competition for Fuchs' successor to include a serious candidate and thus put itself in a better negotiating position with the industry.
In January 2023, Boris Pistorius took office as Defense Minister with the aim of equipping the Bundeswehr faster, cheaper and more practicably.
“We will no longer be able to stop ongoing projects unless they fail,” the SPD politician told the
Tagesschau
at the time.
Other projects should therefore continue, “because we are working within the framework of contracts,” as he said.
But “from now on” there will be an end to “golden edge solutions” for the procurement of projects and especially their planning, emphasized the Defense Minister.
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The all-wheel-drive, six-wheeled vehicle fleet based on the Fuchs armored transport vehicle built by Rheinmetall has served in the Bundeswehr for more than 40 years and is now to be replaced by new vehicles.
According to the Inspector General, of the more than 1,400 Fuchs vehicles previously built for the Bundeswehr, 825 vehicles are still in use, in different variants - from NBC detection vehicles to troop transporters.
272 of them in the latest version 1A8.
The new challenges: sufficient protection against drones
In April 2023, Germany officially joined the Finnish-led CAVS program for a new 6×6 transport vehicle.
This development probably came as a surprise to observers.
From the armed forces' plans to also use the vehicle as part of the medium-sized forces,
Soldier & Technology
deduces that the Fuchs successor must have a high level of protection, since the medium-sized forces, in addition to national and alliance defense, also take part in stabilization operations - such as the operation in Mali.
Outside camp walls, at least NATO protection standard 3 must be met - out of six possible levels.
The vehicle must be able to withstand mines of at least eight kilos of explosives.
Soldier & Technology
sees
difficulties looming.
Light, medium, heavy – the new forces of the Bundeswehr
The implementation of the Federal Government's obligations to NATO, which apply from 2025, and the Bundeswehr's refocusing on national and alliance defense, which began in 2014, led to structural adjustments in three categories with different characteristics:
Light forces
(e.g. infantry): poorly protected against enemy action, air mobile and quick to deploy in the air, effective at short range against light enemy forces;
Medium forces
(grenadiers on wheeled tanks): strongly protected against enemy action, self-mobile;
directly and indirectly effective at a distance;
Heavy forces
(battle tank): strongest protection, difficult to deploy, strongest effect.
According to the specialist journal, the extent to which the Patria is able to meet German requirements in terms of protection and mobility could probably only be clarified through tests by the military technical departments.
After all, they believe it is impossible “that the Bundeswehr would introduce a modern combat vehicle without sufficient protection such as fire suppression, NBC protective ventilation or similar.
At least in this area, the Patria would certainly have to be 'Germanized', writes
Schlacht&Technik
and suspects that this would in turn drive up the price, which could then perhaps be close to a Rheinmetall product again.
In addition, according to
Soldier & Technology
, the battles during the Ukraine War showed that the protection of vehicles must be given a higher priority in modern national and alliance defense than was the case during the Cold War: “Direct fire from different small arms and automatic cannon calibers , mines and shrapnel from artillery and mortars as well as weapons dropped by drones - often improvised - are responsible for a significant proportion of the vehicle failures of both warring parties.
“It would be helpful here if the future 6×6 vehicle family was not only protected against fire from simple infantry hand weapons.”
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According to reports, 20 Patria will initially be purchased for testing.
However, this is a cautious estimate, because the modernization of the 6x6 armada of the German land forces was originally supposed to be carried out from the special fund for the Bundeswehr - until the Federal Audit Office thwarted the traffic light's plans and radically changed the economic plan - one of the six projects that are canceled for 2023 the new transport tank.
Whether and how many CAVS tanks the Bundeswehr will ultimately buy remains unclear;
they would then have to be purchased from the normal military budget.
The
Handelsblatt
is at least optimistic: “In defense circles there is talk of an order volume of up to 1,000 units.
Patria plans to produce 90 percent of the tanks for Germany here together with DSL and FFG.”
According to Patria manager Hugo Vanbockryck, the first tank could be delivered to Germany as early as mid-2025.
The first 6x6 to be produced entirely in Germany is expected to roll off the assembly line in early 2026.
From 2027 onwards, Patria expects to reach the planned production capacities in Germany in cooperation with DSL and FFG, then 100 tanks should roll off the assembly line annually.
The list of construction sites for a war-ready Bundeswehr is a long one - also with regard to wheeled vehicles, which will play a central role in NATO doctrine in the future.
Although the Boxer, the Bundeswehr's most modern wheeled tank, has been in service with the troops for ten years, there is no mortar version, for example.
And that's what Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger apparently brings back into play: According to information from
Soldier&Technology
, Rheinmetall has been working on a feasibility study for around two years to determine the extent to which the “Future Short-Range Indirect Fire System” – the Bundeswehr's project name for a 120 mm mortar successor – will be implemented could become;
based on a Fuchs transport tank.
In any case , Papperger is calm about the role that Rheinmetall will play in European armaments in the future when speaking to the
Tagesspiegel
: “Demand has grown enormously, right.
And at the same time we seek dialogue with governments to explain our products.
We do not impose anything on anyone; in matters of war and peace, governments alone decide what they need.
The defense industry has to serve and ultimately deliver.”