Bundeswehr builds its own soldier systems

Bundeswehr builds its own soldier systems

By Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 1:12 pm
Posted in Land

PARIS — U.S. Army officials have expended plenty of resources to build their next generation communications system. Germany’s Bundeswehr has built a similar system to outfit each of its soldiers with a scope of the battlefield and radio systems with push-to-talk buttons built into their rifles.

Germany wants to buy 10,000 of each system called Gladius built by Rheinmetall Defense. In October, 300 soldiers will receive prototypes to later deploy with in 2013 to Afghanistan. Rheinmetall displayed the system here at the Eurosatory land warfare conference.

Get the details and specs on the system over at Defense Tech.


U.S. Army officials will keep an eye on the system as the Germans test it in Afghanistan at the same time the first pieces of the Army’s Capability Set 13 also arrives in Afghanistan.

It’s a surprise the U.S. and Germans didn’t work closer to develop the systems. Many pieces of each system share the same technology. Both faced major hurdles to build the expensive systems. However, Olaf Aul, Rheinmettal’s Head of System Engineering Soldier Systems, said the respective country’s armies only observed each other’s work from a distance.

Join the Conversation

Lance June 13th, 2012 at 2:57 pm

I bet they will do better than we will. Instead of wasting money like we are on ICC, they stick with current weapons but improve intel network and other awesome systems to make the German solder more lethal. Meanwhile the US will argue and stall in congress.

saladin June 13th, 2012 at 4:00 pm

If they refuse to serve in a combat zone who the hell cares ,

Technoweapon June 13th, 2012 at 5:18 pm

Cool beans. Germany trying to keep up. It’s cute.

ltfunk June 14th, 2012 at 12:14 am

The germans just want solidly engineered equipment that does the job, quite different to our fixation on marketing glitz that is overpriced and dosent work well. Very few of the tactical advances are comming from us these days, we dont have the people, dont have the concentration and ae too easliy distracted by sales hype.

But maybeit dosent make any difference, its noticeable that recent army exercises are starting to change. Insead of assuming vectory they end assuming a quagmire. We have gone past pretending to win to embracing defeat. No doubt the army sees a lot of value in being able to tell the president no matter what scenario we’ve wargamed that we lost we and dont want to go.

Zak June 14th, 2012 at 12:38 pm

As usual you’re in la la land. If you want to see over hyped engineering then look at German cars as the cost two or three times what they’re actually worth, even Mercedes. Having been stationed in Germany I can tell you they aren’t two to three times more reliable than a well made US car. The big difference in longevity for vehicles is maintenance and people who buy low end cars tend not to maintain them while people who spend a lot of money on a car do tend to maintain them. My father (a mechanical engineer) worked in Germany for a while and he noticed that their engineers were very good at following patterns laid out by someone else but very poor at coming up with new solutions. So all this hype about German engineering is bogus.

ltfunk2 June 14th, 2012 at 11:06 pm

20 years ago we used to say if you wanted something complicated done you gave it to a German engineer if you wanted something simple done quick you gave it to an Americans engineer.

But now if you want something simple done quick you give it to a Chinese engineer, if you want something complicated done you give it to a German and if you want the best excuses you give it to the American.

Zak June 15th, 2012 at 8:47 am

I haven’t seen anything that supports that but I’m sure the Chinese are doing all they can to support that myth.

From what I’ve seen of Asian workers (mostly Indians and Chinese) in my own line of work (software development) they are decidedly inferior to US workers both in quantity and quality. If I had my own software development company I would be very picky about hiring foriegn workers.

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