Germany’s Ambitious Vision: Leading Europe with the ‘Best Equipped’ NATO Army Division by 2025

As nations race to prepare their troops in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Army Chief Alfons Mais of Germany told Reuters that his country is confident it will have the best-equipped army division among European NATO allies by 2025.

Berlin currently lacks a single division, a military formation with more than 20,000 soldiers, that is prepared for combat. Its three divisions are anticipated to begin operations in 2025 with the first, and in 2027 with the second.

In an interview with Reuters that was released on Monday, Mais stated, “I am very optimistic that we will get it (the division for 2025) done. At first, the division would have between 80% and 90% of the people it needed, and NATO had agreed to these plans.

According to the lieutenant general, Germany would send two mechanized brigades first, followed by a medium brigade that was more lightly armed, and would then receive reinforcements from a Dutch company. An average brigade has 5,000 soldiers.

The lieutenant general declared, “This will do. In any case, it will be sufficient to provide the best-equipped division among all European NATO allies in 2025. We at least share this objective with our Dutch partners.

The primary organizational building blocks of the land forces that would be required to manage a conflict with a peer adversary are divisions.

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After decades of fighting minor wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western nations are scrambling to rebuild and re-equip divisions that have been neglected, dismantled, and deprived of weapons and ammunition.

Mais acknowledged that it will be ambitious to supply the division with enough ammunition by 2025 given that Western countries are currently supplying Kyiv with massive amounts of shells, further depleting already insufficient stocks that have been dwindling since the end of the Cold War.

He said that if we send weapons to Ukraine quickly, we won’t have any until new orders arrive. 

You can’t buy weapons at a hardware store, and the ability to make them has gone down over the past 30 years.

The army chief stated that all NATO allies were dealing with this issue. But as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has emphasized, “supporting Ukraine is more important right now than creating a division,” he emphasized.

Mais says troop-level purchases from the 100 billion euro special fund are crucial to fully equipping the second German division, which will be combat-ready in 2027.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a “Zeitenwende” (historical turning point) and the creation of a special fund to modernize a German military that had suffered from years of financial neglect.