The restructuring initiated in 2012 by the then Federal Minister of Defense Thomas de Maiziére under the name “Realignment of the Bundeswehr” also included the Federal Ministry of Defense itself. These changes affecting the ministry essentially included the outsourcing of the command staffs of the military organizational areas (army, air force, navy, armed forces base and central medical service), the dissolution of the planning staff and the merging of armaments and utilization tasks. As a result of this last measure, the new “Equipment, Information Technology and Utilization (AIN)” department was created from the former ministerial Armaments Department, which was transformed again a few years ago by spinning off information technology to form the Equipment Department.
With the first reorganization step carried out last summer, which essentially involved the creation of a new planning and command staff, one of the measures taken in 2012 was at least partially reversed. The main task of this new staff unit is to initially consolidate the decision papers prepared in the various ministerial departments and to create a coherent basis for decision-making for the Minister. Further measures were planned for September and were to be announced at the Bundeswehr conference. During the Bundeswehr Conference on 9 September 2023, the Federal Minister of Defence announced a further, comprehensive reorganization step intended to better prepare his ministry for the new security policy reality and the resulting new tasks and cooperation requirements both internally and with other ministries.
In contrast to the changes made around eleven years ago, the new measures will primarily affect the ministry itself. This avoids a fundamental problem of the last reorganization by first trimming the political management and control level of the Bundeswehr in the direction of an effective, efficient and agile organization and making it capable of acting before the urgently required measures for a Bundeswehr geared towards alliance and national defence as a whole are introduced. As the example of eleven years ago has shown, this is only possible to a limited extent with a control element that is itself undergoing its own change process. The measures now announced will lead to changes in almost all ministerial departments.In future, these will only comprise a maximum of three subdivisions. This will make it possible to save three subdivisions and free up around 200 posts, which will be made available for improvements in the subordinate area. At the same time, the aim is to achieve greater overall resilience. However, it remains unclear how increased resilience is to be achieved with a simultaneous reduction in posts. Implementation of the decided measures is to begin in January 2024.