Germany is reportedly implementing a serious overhaul of the country’s military, led by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
The revamp of the military seeks to ‘make the force more capable of defending Germany and its allies.’
Deutsche Welle reported that the new defense guidelines state: “‘We must be the backbone of deterrence and collective defense in Europe. Our own population, as well as our partners in Europe, North America and the world, expect us to face up to this responsibility’.”
However, in the real world, things are not going so well for the Bundeswehr, as the deploying of the frigate ‘Hessen’ to the Red Sea has made clear.
German paper Bild’s editor Julian Röpcke has written about what he calls the ‘incredible double mishap in the German Navy off the coast of Yemen!’
The drama took place on Monday evening and is ’emblematic of the partly desolate state of the German army under Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’.
BILD reported:
“The German warship’s radar systems incorrectly recognized a drone circling overhead as hostile. The ‘Hessen’ then fired two rockets at them.
But in reality the unknown aircraft was a US MQ-9 Reaper drone (20 meter wingspan, 30 million euros).
A blessing in disguise for the Americans: Both German SM2 interceptor missiles [failed to] reach their target for technical reasons, but instead fell into the sea without achieving anything.”
Germany deployed the frigate Hessen with around 240 soldiers on board.
The Reaper drone flies 40,000 feet high, while the maximum operational altitude of the German SM-2 anti-aircraft missile is over 65,000 feet – so it should have been well within fire range.
“Defense Ministry spokesman Michael Stempfle confirmed on Wednesday that the drone that was targeted and shot at could not initially be assigned to any of the allied nations. The ‘Hesse’ then tried to shoot down this drone, but was unsuccessful.”
Before firing the missiles, the frigate had asked all allied nations about the drone, and no country had reported it in the operational area.
Only later did it turn out that it was an ‘unreported drone’.
US combat drones are reportedly operating in the region in missions that have nothing to do with the operation in the Red Sea.
German opposition MP Florian Hahn says that Olaf Scholz and his dysfunctional coalition hid the problems from lawmakers.
“We have only now found out when asked that some of the ammunition from the frigate ‘Hessen’ can no longer be procured because there is no longer any industrial capacity to do it.
So, when the stocks are depleted, the Navy can no longer restock them – and has to withdraw the frigate. Parliament decided to deploy without knowing that there was obviously an ammunition problem with the class 124 frigate.”
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