The German armed forces ordered 53 A400M transport aircraft from Airbus. The first one arrived in December 2014, years late. In January 2015 the Airbus chief executive, Tom Enders, apologized in public: Wir haben nicht die Leistung abgeliefert, die wir uns gewünscht haben, und ich muss mich dafür entschuldigen. We did not deliver the performance we wanted, and I must apologize for it. In June 2016 Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the armed forces had einen sehr handfesten Vertrag, a very solid contract, in which compensation was clearly set out. Wir werden auch diese Schadenersatzansprüche geltend machen. We will claim this compensation.
military
The Analysis Phase
The Bundeswehr buys its equipment under a fixed procedure for project-based procurement. It begins with an analysis phase. A team analyzes and assesses the possible solutions for a capability gap, and the different options must be compared.
Possible solutions are assessed for performance, time, costs and risks over the whole life of the equipment. The documents include elements of an economic efficiency analysis. The procedure states: “The selection decision concludes the analysis phase.”
The Frigate Sent Back
In December 2017 the German Navy refused to accept a new frigate, the Baden-Württemberg, after delivery. It was the first time the navy had ever done this. The ship had unresolved hardware and software integration problems.
The frigate had originally been scheduled for 2014–15. It entered service on 17 June 2019. The contracts for the four ships of its class were worth 2.27 billion euros.
The Drone That Could Not Fly
In May 2013 the Defense Ministry stopped the Euro Hawk reconnaissance drone. The drone would not receive approval to fly in air traffic. By then about 668 million euros had already gone into the project.
Approval would probably have cost another 600 million euros. The Bundestag’s defense committee formed itself into a committee of inquiry and examined the project.
A Working Week for Soldiers
Since 1 January 2016, German soldiers have had regulated working hours. The Soldiers’ Working Time Ordinance created a legal basis for this for the first time. The regular week is 41 hours, which can be cut to 40 on request in certain cases. Soldiers must receive a minimum rest of eleven consecutive hours in every 24 hours. Samstag, Heiligabend und Silvester sind grundsätzlich dienstfrei. Saturday, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are as a rule free of duty. According to the federal government, troops on exercise usually fall under the ordinance’s exceptions.
Voluntary for Now
On 5 December 2025 the Bundestag passed a new military service law. 323 members voted for it and 272 against. Young men must fill out a questionnaire, and medical screening at 18 becomes compulsory again. The service itself remains voluntary.
Compulsory service would need a separate law. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that if too few volunteers came forward or the situation stayed the same or became worse, partial compulsory service could not be avoided.
Parliament decided the first step and left the second step to a later decision.
When the Minister Called It War
On 2 April 2010, Good Friday, soldiers of the Fallschirmjägerbataillon 373 from Seedorf were ambushed in Afghanistan. Three of them were killed: Nils Bruns, Martin Augustyniak and Robert Hartert. After the battle, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said in an interview that one could speak umgangssprachlich von Krieg, colloquially of war. The Bundeswehr’s own website describes this as plain speaking: Zu Guttenberg spricht Klartext. The plain word still came with a qualifier: colloquially.
War as a Continuation of Policy
Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit andern Mitteln. War is merely a continuation of policy by other means. Carl von Clausewitz wrote this in Vom Kriege, On War, published in 1832.
Clausewitz did not treat war as a separate technical field. He wrote that war is not only a political act but a real political instrument, “eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs, ein Durchführen desselben mit andern Mitteln”, a continuation of political dealings, carried out by other means.
Security in the Widest Sense
On 14 June 2023 the federal government presented Germany’s first National Security Strategy. Its approach, called integrated security, means the interplay of all means and instruments. Its fields range from defense and civil protection to development policy, raw materials, the climate crisis, pandemics and food security.
Experts at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs criticized the strategy. They counted 129 fields of action in 14 chapters and found no explicit setting of priorities.
Not Authorized, but Right
In February 1962 a storm flood struck the North Sea coast and Hamburg. The city’s senator for the interior, Helmut Schmidt, called in army engineers with rubber boats. The Bundeswehr’s own history of disaster relief notes that he did so obwohl verfassungsrechtlich dazu nicht befugt, although not authorized to under the constitution. In 1968 an amendment to the Basic Law closed the gap. A state may now request the armed forces in a natural disaster or a particularly serious accident.