German Army Planning Tenfold Expansion of Armoured Fighting Vehicle and APC Fleets

The German Defence Ministry is planing to place several large defence orders intended to transform the capabilities of its ground forces, according to a new report by Reuters, with this including the acquisition of up to 3,000 Boxer armoured personnel carriers and up to 3,500 Patria infantry fighting vehicles. The report follows the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s constitutional reform that paved them way to a tremendous increase in defence spending. The German Army currently fields only approximately 700 armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, with the procurement of 6500 more vehicles expected to increase the size of the fleet more than tenfold. The Army currently fields approximately 350 Boxers, a design which first entered service in 2011 and has been donated to the Ukrainain Army in significant numbers. Germany is by far the largest operator of the class, and has already ordered 551 of the vehicles.

Developed jointly by Germany and the Netherlands, the Boxer is a highly modular 8×8 platform that has multiple configurations including a command post and a medical evacuation vehicle. The German defence giant Rheinmetall has a 64% stake in the venture, with an order for 3000 more vehicles expected to necessitate a very significant expansion of production. Unlike the Boxer, the German Army does not field the Patria fighting vehicle, which is a six wheeled Finnish design that has ben exported to the United Arab Emirates, Sweden, and four Eastern European states. Its introduction would increase commonality with between Germany’s ground forces and those of several of its NATO allies, most notably Poland which has produced over 1000 domestically under license. The Patria’s modular design allows a range of differed turrets, sensors, or communications systems to be integrated, with some of the options including 105mm guns and 120mm mortars. Significant uncertainty remains regarding which configurations the German Army may be most interested in.

German interest in tremendously expanding its fleets of armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles is far from isolated, with the country planning major increase in procurements of a wide range of defence products. The report of interest in very large scale new procurements of Boxers and Patrias closely coincides with the German government’s submitting of a formal Letter of Request to the United States to procure the Typhon mobile missile system, which will provide a cruise missile strike capability against targets as far as the Russian capital Moscow. The country is also reportedly planning to increase procurements of both F-35A fifth generation fighters, and of indigenous Eurofighter combat jets, the former which maintain wartime access to American nuclear weapons under a nuclear sharing agreement.

In early July local media outlets reported that the German Defence Ministry was also considering plans to procure several hundred new Leopard 2A8 main battles tanks, which would effectively complement a surge in procurements of armoured fighting vehicles. This followed the German Army’s inauguration of the 45th Armoured Brigade on May 22 stationed in Vilnius, Lithuania, which provides an elite forward deployed mechanised warfare capability on the territory of the former USSR located less than 800 kilometres from Moscow. Germany has not maintained a permanent military presence so far east since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, raising particularly high concerns in Russia and Belarus which were considered the primary targets of the military buildup.