Germany halts purchases of their Puma IFV after 18 out of 18 involved in an exercise break down.

 

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht rides in a Puma IFV. The Guardian/Reuters.

Germany has halted purchases of their Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) after 18 out of 18 involved in a recent exercise broke down. The Guardian. The Pumas were supposed to be ready for combat operations next January but the plans are now on hold as the new IFV's will not be used. Germany will have to rely on their aging Schützenpanzer Marder IFV's. Germany has begun efforts to try and modernize their fighting force but the failure of the Puma will be a major setback in that effort. Germany has 350 Pumas in their inventory. 

My Comment:

The failure of the Puma is a huge embarrassment for Germany and one that could complicate efforts to prepare for a possible war between NATO and Russia. Losing 100% of your IFV's in a military training exercise is pretty much completely unacceptable. 

This doesn't surprise me too much though, I have not been too impressed with German equipment since the G-36 disaster. The H&K G-36 was Germany's service rifle and, if nothing else, it looked cool. But the rifle was found to be pretty much garbage in combat conditions. German troops stationed in Afghanistan reported that the gun would overheat and warp, meaning accuracy was terrible, which was very bad in the long range combat situation. The rifles are being replaced by the HK-416.

It's unclear why all of these new IVF's failed. The Puma's are not old at all, they were introduced in 2015. It's possible it is a maintenance issue. Germany has been fairly neglectful of their military and I wouldn't be surprised if maintenance on these weapons was poor. Still, it's pretty absurd that even with poor maintenance that they would still get 100% failure rate during a military exercise. Russia got better results with their mothballed vehicles they took out of storage to fight in Ukraine.  

My guess is that the IFV's were just poorly designed and built. From what I understand the main focus for German designers on the Puma was survivability and to be fair they supposedly did a good job there. But it's possible that they overengineered the vehicle making it harder to maintain. And it's possible they were just poorly built. 

Germany does not have good options to replace the Puma. The Marder is obsolete and 40 years old. Germany is trying to modernize some of them but that's a stopgap solution at best. Realistically in the short term they will have to try and figure out how and why these vehicles failed and try and fix them. If war breaks out they will have no choice but to use them. Long term I think they will either have to develop a new IFV or purchase ones from other countries. 

IFV's are mostly support and transport vehicles that can support infantry. They aren't tanks because they don't have the survivability that tanks have. They aren't ideal for fighting against tanks and are extremely vulnerable against air power and anti-tank weapons. Without effective IFV's Germany will have trouble transporting infantry and supporting tanks. 

Keep in mind this is all happening during the high tensions between NATO and Russia. War between the alliance and Russia still seems fairly unlikely but it's far from impossible and it's very clear that one of the major allies is no longer prepared for a war. In a sane world this would perhaps make some people in NATO push for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine conflict but I have seen very little effort to do anything like that from any NATO ally...