Status: 01/13/2023 8:30 p.m
After the summit on the future of the “Puma” armored personnel carrier, the armaments industry and the Ministry of Defense demonstrate unity. The manufacturer wants to improve the “Puma” – the government continues to rely on him.
There was a lot of homework that needed to be done, better coordination, communication. And it was about demonstrating: We don’t accuse each other of anything. The Bundeswehr and armaments industry are pulling together when it comes to “Puma”, that was the message. Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht emphasized: “The troops would like to continue to hold on to the ‘Puma'”.
18 “Puma” armored personnel carriers failed during a target practice. In the meantime, 17 of the tanks have been repaired, which, as promised by the industry, worked until the end of last year, said Lambrecht. Nevertheless, she now stuck to her decision to suspend the purchase of further “cougars”. It had also activated the older “Marder” tanks for participation in the NATO Rapid Reaction Force (VJTF) rather than the “Pumas” as originally intended.
“It’s missing in too many places”
“The problem seems to me to be the lack of resources for reliable operation of the entire Puma system,” says Frank Sauer, who researches “International Security” at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich:
Too many places are missing – from a sufficient body of personnel in the Bundeswehr who knows the system well and can use and maintain it accordingly, to knowledge management. You just need well-rehearsed crews and repair workers, then you can also operate the tanks safely.
Defense Minister Lambrecht also drew this conclusion. In concrete terms, it is about making the soldiers even better able to deal with damage reports in special situations. In plain language: better training and more practice. Industry has to do the rest of the homework.
Industry wants to improve the robustness of the “Pumas”.
Ralf Ketzel, head of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, which developed and produces the “Puma” together with Rheinmetall, said the industry was surprised by the reports of the failures. However, it is well established practice to transfer experience from the troops into constructive improvements. One has learned from the exercise that the robustness, which is already good on the “Puma”, can be brought to a level that is then appropriate for a VJTF.
Childhood illnesses are not uncommon
All this is not surprising, says Niklas Schörnig from the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research. New, ambitious systems often have to struggle with teething problems. Based on publicly available information, there is no reason to assume that the “Puma” has such a fundamental design flaw that the problems cannot be solved.
What is difficult, however, is that the Bundeswehr often has to put undue strain on functioning systems because many teams share a system. And the “Puma” was planned from the start as an extremely complex system with networking options:
The more complex the system, the more errors can go undetected because not every operational situation could be tested. It is difficult to say from the outside whether the Puma is overly complex in the end, but a great many requirements were placed on the project
Political will to preserve the German armaments industry?
It’s no surprise that they want to stick with the “Puma”, says Schörnig. After all, there is also the political will to at least partially preserve the German armaments industry. Moving away from a German project in favor of another product is very unusual.