The German Defense Ministry is planning a significantly strengthened Bundeswehr or army reserve, to include up to 60,000 men and women, a senior official for the army’s reservist affairs told dpa in Berlin.
“I am convinced that we must fully adapt the reserve to current security policy challenges so that it can adequately support the Bundeswehr in carrying out the task of national and alliance (NATO) defense,” said Lieutenant General Andreas Hoppe, deputy inspector general and commissioner for reservist affairs, he said.
His comments were made days before the Defense Minister Boris Pistorius intends to present its proposal for a model of mandatory military service on Wednesday. The project was suspended in 2011 and its reinstitution is controversial in Germany.
“We need military service as a basis for the rapid build-up and resilience of our Bundeswehr in case of defense,” Pistorius said on Friday at an event organized by the family business industry association in Berlin. The reserve should also be increased significantly, he said.
The war in Ukraine made Germany rethink its defense needs
“If we look at Ukraine, we are simply not capable of resisting and growing as we are at the moment. That is why we need a reserve that is capable of completely replacing the forces,” Hoppe said.
The objective is to equip and train reserve companies or battalions so that they can be perfectly integrated into the operational command of a brigade.
It takes fourteen days of training per year to maintain skills, Hoppe said. He plans to do more to get approval from companies that would have to give workers time off for reserve training.
“If people have a high level of training when they leave the Bundeswehr and don’t have a single chance to practice during six years of basic orders, then the value they add will naturally be limited over time,” he said.
Experts are needed, but “simply also masses”, for example for internal security tasks such as securing infrastructure, transport routes and military installations in Germany.
For some time now, volunteers who were not previously in the Bundeswehr have also been trained for this.
“It won’t work without a reservation. We can see that in Ukraine,” Hoppe said. Everyone needs to realize this, he said.
A lot of experience was lost after the Cold War
“All of this existed during the Cold War, but it was neglected for 30 years and simply doesn’t exist anymore. There are still very few who know about it. We are currently exploring them to map the capabilities,” Hoppe added. .
The military expects about 10,000 temporary or professional soldiers to retire each year who could be recruited for this basic call-up. Currently, there are around 44 thousand men and women in basic conscription.
The ministry is also examining the number of people who could be called up to serve in the event of a defense situation.
This includes citizens who previously served in the Bundeswehr but were not recalled to service. Although this group is substantial, it has been decreasing since mandatory military service was suspended in 2011.
“There are different numbers. We assume that there are around 800,000 who can still be called up for military service. In principle, this includes all those who served in the Bundeswehr at some point and have retired and are within the age limits, including last years of recruits,” Hoppe said.
Population aging is a problem for the Bundeswehr
“But if you look at the age problem, you realize that there are fewer and fewer of them every year… This means that we have to take countermeasures and also find and recruit additional personnel into the reserve. ” said Hoppe.
“Keyword internal defense regiments,” he said. “They are essentially made up of non-commissioned officers who enlist and receive appropriate training.”
However, for NATO’s revised defense plans, the Bundeswehr, which shrank to 181,500 soldiers last year despite the so-called personnel offensive, must actually grow significantly.
NATO’s plans mean the personnel target is likely to rise from 203,000 soldiers to “well over 272,000” men and women in the armed forces, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday. Reservation can only be one component of this process.
