[Skybird]

Der Spiegel:
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Bundeswehr was responsible for Puma total loss - not industry

13 minor, 21 moderate and one serious damage: An internal report analyzes what put Puma infantry fighting vehicles out of action during a firing exercise. The result is unflattering for the troops.

On page nine, the good news finally arrives. By then, the reader has already had to slog through 34 small and medium-sized "damage diagrams" on the Puma infantry fighting vehicle, ranging from A for "failed sensor on the hydro-cooling system" to Z for "two cables with torn insulation".

Only then comes the real message of the confidential Puma report that the Defense Ministry sent to the Bundestag on Monday. In a few days, it says, the first Puma company, which is intended for NATO's Rapid Reaction Force, will be "technically operational again" and, after "completing a supplementary training phase," will be reintegrated into the NATO force before the end of the first quarter. A second company would be "added" as soon as all the necessary conditions, such as the "availability of spare parts," were met.

It's a good thing that Christine Lambrecht is no longer defense minister. Otherwise, things would have been tight for her by now at the latest. After SPIEGEL revealed in mid-December that all 18 state-of-the-art Puma infantry fighting vehicles used in an exercise had failed, the Social Democrat had hurriedly blamed the industry for the debacle. Now the ministry must concede that it was in fact not the industry but its own troops that "were no longer up to the task."

"As a result, the operators' lack of experience in handling the equipment, deficiencies in logistical support from the military maintenance forces and the failure to increase the involvement of industry teams" contributed to the fact that by the end of the exercise, all Puma were no longer operational, according to the report, which involved troops, army maintenance, industry and the ministry.

For two and a half weeks in early December, armored infantrymen had practiced with the 18 Puma at the armored forces' firing training center in Munster, Lower Saxony. After an "initial wave of failures," the Bundeswehr technicians succeeded for a few days in getting the tanks up and running again, but then "the maintenance capacity was overloaded. In this case, it was not the "severity but the number" of failures that had "overloaded the logistical system available on site."

The report lists 13 minor, 21 medium and one serious damage. These include "worn chain elements" and an "incorrectly mounted main gun," "a defective limit switch on the periscope," a "malfunctioning drive cooling system" and a "defective electronics unit in the MELLS weapon system."

The smoldering fire on a wiring harness, which was apparently improperly fought with a powder extinguisher, is classified as severe damage. Now the tank must be disassembled in parts to remove the extinguishing powder. The exercise showed "that even technically supposedly minor and easily repaired damage could negatively affect the operational usability of the system," according to the statement.

The commander of the 10th Armored Division had reported the Puma debacle in writing to his superiors on the morning of Dec. 15. Since then, the ministry has been driven by the question of how this confidential mail could have been published by SPIEGEL just two days later.
"An outflow into the public network could not be traced."

"Regarding the outflow of information in this matter," the ministry's legal department had been tasked with "conducting an indiscretion search," the report said. Although the original mail had only gone to ten recipients, it had then been distributed to "various organizational mailboxes" in the ministry, so that more than 100 people had had access to it. "An outflow into the public network could not be traced," write the ministry officials, who now want to file criminal charges.

The Bundeswehr does not want to be put off by the difficulties with the Puma. The infantry fighting vehicle is a "highly complex, state-of-the-art weapon system" that represents a "quantum leap in tactical superiority in terms of firepower, mobility and networking," the report concludes. All parties involved agree "despite the surprising setback" that the Puma is the "future for the Army."
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I still maintain that the thing is too complicated and prone to failure. The fact that the massive involvement of the civilian industry in day-to-day maintenance work seems essential already to the operation of the system in peacetime conditions, is a clear indication of this and does not inspire much confidence in the robustness required in a war scenario.


The handling errors also point either to the high complexity of the system, or to massive deficiencies in the quality of troop training. Or both.

I don't like the whole "infantryman of the future" concept. Too remote, a single failure can already put the entire - already small - unit at a severe handicap, because every soldier is so networked and highly specialized that he is practically indispensable. That may be great for SWAT and in small special commando operations - but in "primitive" brute force battles like we are seeing now in Ukraine with massive ongoing shelling from heavy weapons?

Higher troop numbers and slightly lower complexity also has an argument: redundancy.

However, there is no longer any material alternative to the Puma."Doomed to succeed".