Getting There First ... and Then What?
I've got a bad feeling about German ground force rearmament
Germany has finally decided to arm up in the face of Russian threats too obvious for even Germany to avoid with their conveniently revived World War II guilt allowed them to abandon a once-potent military. But is Germany rearming correctly? Does Germany's rearmament reflect NATO's vision of fighting in the east?
Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the German Armed Forces have undergone a rearmament program unlike anything seen since the end of the Cold War. Defense spending is set to rise to 152.8 billion euros (about $180 billion) by 2029, thereby meeting the NATO quota of 3.5 percent of GDP. At the time of writing, plans include 35 F-35A Lightning II, 20 additional Eurofighters, 1,000 new Leopard 2 main battle tanks, 3,000 GTK Boxer armored fighting vehicles, 3,500 Patria 6×6 armored personnel carriers, precision weapons with a range of over 2,000 kilometers, and armed drones. The aim is to become the strongest conventional armed force in Europe.
But the army portion is seemingly misguided:
One key modernization project is the establishment of so-called “Medium Forces.” These are intended to bridge the gap between light, highly mobile forces and heavy tank units. At the heart of the concept are wheeled combat vehicles such as the GTK Boxer and the Patria 6×6, which can be quickly deployed to NATO’s eastern flank without rail transport—for example, to secure the strategically important Suwalki Gap between Poland and Lithuania. Their strength lies in their rapid response: they can form flexible lines of defense and slow down or divert enemy advances until heavy forces arrive. They could not hold their own against armored enemy formations but could “conduct deep operations—striking at the enemy’s logistics, command and control, and other critical nodes” in the rear. In that sense, the introduction of the Medium Forces fits into the longer evolution of US and NATO military thinking since the 1980s, inspired by maneuver theory. The primary focus is on rapid power projection and early and decisive action.
The concept of Medium Forces is controversial inside the Bundeswehr itself. Critics point in particular to the lack of firepower and limited off-road capability of wheeled platforms such as the Boxer. This could be problematic, since the terrain in the Baltic region is characterized by dense forests and swamps (however, the same terrain therefore also restricts the movement of heavy armored forces).
How does NATO win the war with such forces, the authors ask.
Mind you, I've very happy that Germany has finally woken up to its responsibilities to defend itself and NATO from the Russian threat:
I keep reading that the Germans hate their militaristic past so much that they don't want to fight.
Let's try applying the clue bat to Germany's collective skull on this issue.
Conquering and setting up death camps under the shield of a powerful military? That's bad. By all means, don't do that.
Having a military capable of fighting death cult enemies or stopping the Russians from moving west? Well, that's a good thing. Try doing that.
Russia’s main threat to NATO is currently on the Baltic States front of Estonia south through Lithuania. Russian forces based in Russia and from Belarus could be the hammers that fall on the Kaliningrad anvil to isolate and conquer those three small NATO states by capturing the Suwalki Gap on the Poland-Lithuania border.
Yet the German focus on Medium Brigades akin to America's Stryker brigades seems like a problem to me.
Not that such forces with ample fire support regardless of what or where it is could help the brigades defend in cities or in restricted terrain that channels Russian attacks and limits Russian heavy forces.
But the German and NATO emphasis on quickly moving toward the east to reinforce the thin NATO line seems to reflect the mistaken lesson of strategic mobility that America learned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War:
Decisive battlefield victory in Desert Storm appeared to give us the luxury of discounting heavy armor. The heavy forces that smashed their way into southern Iraq are now judged dinosaurs unable to reach a theater in time to do any good. Task Force Hawk's lengthy deployment confirmed this lesson and reinforced the trend to lighten the Army. Surely, the theory goes, our vehicles can be lighter and still deliver victory if we compensate with other advances. This lesson assumes overwhelming victory as a constant in the equation and holds that the only thing left to do is speed up the process to get a better result. Victory is not a given. The lighter forces that result will need to replicate VII Corps' clenched fist driving into the Republican Guards with smaller fingers poking the enemy individually as they arrive. We believe technology will allow this to work. We shall see.
But the Germans just have a relatively short land movement to achieve—not a sea or air movement around the planet!
Stryker brigades certainly proved useful in the Iraq War with their mobility and high-infantry component in the counter-insurgency fight. But since then we have had interest in increasing the firepower of the brigades for high-intensity combat. And improving their protection.
The 2nd Cavalry, known as the Dragoons, used Stryker armored vehicles to fight against the Romanian Army’s Soviet-era BTR-80 armored personnel carriers. Thanks to the Strykers’ superior firepower, the Americans neutralized the mock enemy’s home-turf advantage in the central Romanian hills – but not without a fight.
The enemy was assumed to be light mechanized forces! Maybe there you can assume an early Russian threat will be naval infantry. But you’d be a fool to make that assumption in a fight somewhere in one of the Baltic states.
Being capable of rushing to a battle you won't win is stupid. It might encourage Russia to launch a war just to get an early victory over the most ready NATO ground units to inflict a disaster that rapidly arriving medium units will invite:
I don't blame the Baltic NATO states for not wanting to be on the wrong side of a stalemated front between Russian invaders and NATO allies. But we've seen this play out before and it ends in disaster for the free West. NATO must not make the perfect the enemy of the good, and rush into a kill sack.
But I would feel better if the heavy forces that Germany has are the core of an early NATO offensive through Russia's Kaliningrad should Russia initiate a war to directly attack NATO.
The Kaliningrad garrison should face the same fate as West Berlin would have endured if Russia launches a war on NATO. It should fall.
So yes, a counterattack from Poland into the Baltic states would have Kaliningrad on its left flank, but that's more reason to wipe out that enclave first. That cleans up the left flank and paves the way for NATO naval and marine forces to operate against the coastal flank of the Russians controlling the Baltic states.
No strategy without sufficient force to back it would win a war with Russia, forcing the awful choice of using nukes to stop the Russians. So I am pleased that NATO is waking up from the post-Cold War vacation from history. Russia may not be the Big Bad that the Soviet Union was when its best troops stood on the Elbe River a relatively short drive from the Rhine River, but it is still a threat to NATO. Yet if Europeans arm up and prepare to fight—with appropriate American help—Russia is nowhere near the level of threat the USSR posed.
It is unlikely that a war will be over quickly no matter how fast NATO thinks it can reach the front. It would be better to assume a long war. NATO has to know how to use what it has to win that war to protect NATO and avoid escalation to nuclear weapons use—by either side.
NOTE: German not-medium-at-all self-propelled artillery photo from the article.