Bundeswehr's Digital Path to Operational Readiness

Armed forces must combine across all military dimensions. This ensures they are resiliently connected and always have access to mission-relevant data. To exchange information about current information technology projects and technological developments intended to increase operational readiness, the chapter and BWI invited representatives from military and industry to Cologne, Germany, in May. More than 130 participants joined the conference, which took place under the heading: "With Information and Command Superiority To Combat Superiority-the Digital Contribution to Operational Readiness of the Bundeswehr." The focus of the day was the most important technologies and projects for the German military to become digitally fit for war. The topic is not new, as Brig. Gen. Armin Fleischmann, Federal Ministry of Defense and chapter chairman, made clear in his keynote. Since the war in Iraq, there have been requirements for conducting combined operations. Unlike then, today, technologies exist that can improve cooperation, interoperability and responsiveness of armed forces. These technologies offer other reconnaissance options with which troops and unmanned systems can be connected, and decision support based on artificial intelligence combat superiority on the battlefield can be achieved.

To succeed in war, troops must be able to use combined forces and capabilities in all military dimensions-on land, in the air, at sea, in space and cyberspace. Today, a battlefield can be clarified in its entirety using many sensors. That allows branches of the armed forces to aim at the same range of targets, as Frank Leidenberger, CEO of BWI, explained in his keynote. This inevitably results in the need to coordinate and orchestrate units.

Armed forces need artificial intelligence support for such combined operations to record and evaluate the ever-increasing amounts of data on the battlefield in an even shorter time and to provide all mission-relevant information in the form of real-time situation reports. On the other hand, troops must be resiliently connected and require highly available, secure and automated infrastructures in the form of cloud and deployable data centers that provide the necessary storage and computing capacity.

Making technologies such as artificial intelligence available for use as quickly as possible is the challenge the Bundeswehr faces along with its primary digitalization partner BWI and the industry. To Leidenberger, the digitalization of the Bundeswehr remains a joint task with the industry. That is why BWI has been consciously incorporating the expertise of other companies with its partner ecosystem for years to provide the best possible solutions to its clients.

Some of the speakers of the day: Leidenberger; Maj. Gen. Michael Färber, Bundeswehr Cyber Command; Gen. Fleischmann; Col. Bernd Stingl, Bundeswehr Center of Digitalization; Col. Eduard Schnabel, Army Command; and Matthias Görtz, chief technology officer of BWI. The lecture was accompanied by panel discussions and an exhibition.

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