The Bundeswehr is faced with a new disappointment: the Puma main battle tank, which is supposed to be its pride, is said to still not be operational more than 20 years after it was ordered. However, Berlin had promised to be able to deliver it to NATO from January 1, 2023.
It should be a defining moment for a Germany more confident in its military capabilities. On January 1, 2023, Berlin will succeed France at the helm of NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force, a unit that must be able to intervene in any theater of operations in two or three days. And Germany wanted to take the opportunity to show off its technological know-how by bringing with it the ultimate main battle tank: its Puma infantry fighting vehicle.
Only a few days before this transfer of power, the decision was made to leave the machine in the garage. German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht therefore declared on Monday, December 19, that the German contingent would include Marder armored vehicles, which have been in service for more than 50 years, instead of Pumas.
Eighteen of 18 tanks fell out
Der Spiegel magazine revealed on Saturday that the Bundeswehr – the German army – had just suffered a severe hiccup. The soldiers had recently decided to conduct a firing exercise on 18 Puma tanks to be made available to NATO and found that all the vehicles were defective.
The nature of the problem was not disclosed by the Defense Ministry, which on Monday was content to say it had requested an in-depth investigation to find out the details of this “particularly embarrassing for Germany” episode, the title of an editorial in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In fact, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Berlin has embarked on a massive project to modernize its army, to prove that the country, which has long held a pacifist position, is up to the security challenges of the time. To achieve this, Parliament approved a financial framework of 100 billion euros in June and saw the Puma tank as an example of the transformation of the Bundeswehr. “It’s a nightmare. If the Puma isn’t ready for action, the whole army isn’t ready for action, because this armored car is supposed to be our main weapon,” complained CDU MP Johann Wadephul in an ARD interview.
The “roles” of armored infantry vehicles
Because on paper, this infantry fighting vehicle is “the Rolls of its class and I can’t imagine a single country that wouldn’t want it for its army,” assures Alexandre Vautravers, an expert in security and armaments, also editor-in-chief of the Swiss Military Show (RMS ).
Germany decided to add the Puma to its arsenal in 2002, and it’s a vehicle “about twenty years ahead of other countries’ alternatives,” the Swiss expert sums up. Not only is it very fast, with a lot of power and a high rate of fire, but also a vehicle full of electronics and computers – from the tracks to the turret.
One of its great advantages over other armored vehicles, which is widely mentioned in articles in the German press, lies in its onboard communication system, which allows it to be constantly connected to the units driving around, in order to transmit them in real time: time, all information about the Positions of enemy targets. A device that theoretically makes the Puma “the central element of the infantry concept of the future developed by the Bundeswehr”, emphasizes the ARD daily news program.
But that future continues to be postponed. The Puma’s recent setbacks are far from the first disappointments of this military program. It suffered so many delays, hiccups and budget overruns that this tank earned the nickname “Pannen-Panzer” (the “tank with breakdowns”) in Germany.
It was only in 2021, 19 years after the army’s first and only order of 350 Pumas from industrialists Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, that this tank was declared operational. Meanwhile, over the years, Berlin has had to face issues with: the computer system, the onboard software, visibility, weight… and waterproofing. When the first prototypes were delivered to the army in 2015, the military quickly realized that the rain was coming through the closed hatch. Far from ideal for a vehicle that relies so much on on-board electronics.
The Panther? The hedgehog or the puma?
For the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, the painful delivery of this Puma is “symptomatic of the malfunctioning of the weapons procurement system”. Development programs get lost in endless and complicated administrative and political procedures,” explains Alexandre Vautravers.
A project like the Puma can therefore be revoked and modified countless times. And the devil sometimes hides in the most unexpected details. So the future tank was supposed to be called “Panther” in 2002 … before the Ministry of Defense realized that this name was already used by the Nazis for one of their tanks. He then proposed the name “Hedgehog”, which he rejected after long debates because Berlin did not think it wise to give a combat vehicle the name of an animal “that spends part of the year in hibernation,” according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
At the end of this long process there may only be a handful of engineers who know how to properly assemble the vehicle. “Today, only a few of these armored vehicles are still produced in the traditional way. Logistically, workshops and parts stores and technical staff are scarce and it is difficult to keep these vehicles in working condition.” Unlike older systems [comme le Marder, NDLR] developed during the Cold War and bought in large numbers and for which there are still large stocks of parts and a store of know-how,” emphasizes Alexandre Vautravers.
Until now, these disturbances have remained German-German problems. But this time, this new quack will likely serve Ukraine as well. Kyiv had asked Berlin to deliver some of its old Marder tanks, as the Puma had officially been in use since 2021. But Germany “will probably prefer to keep its martens from now on,” assures the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In order not to end up with very imposing paper cougars.