Waited a bit on this to put it together:
Germany will not purchase any more Puma infantry tanks until they have proven themselves to be reliable, Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Monday after several of the vehicles were put out of service during a recent military drill.
www.reuters.com
The German-built infantry fighting vehicles were reportedly plagued by defects during a recent training exercise. The incidents have jeopardized the vehicle's use in NATO's spearhead force next year.
www.dw.com
I would not be surprised if the entire project is scrapped and Germany opts for further upgrades to the Marder and increased Boxer production.
Conservative newspaper FAZ (no link due to German press law) based on its sources paints the "crippling damage" to the Pumas in a somewhat different light now:
- in one case a monitor no longer worked after someone accidentally kicked it
- in one case a screw was loose on a bracket for storing missiles
- in one case a fuse was tripped
- in one case the crew "forgot" that the heater only works if you put the switch for it to "on".
- other cases supposedly included minor software problems, a "blocked fuel system" and "fouled-up" cameras.
- KMW and Rheinmetall after inspecting the vehicles supposedly consider 80% of the reported damage trivial or non-existant.
- of the 18 Puma two were past their regular scheduled maintenance deadline, eight further were shortly closing up on it
- only in two cases damage was serious:
- in one case there was a cable fire in the driver's compartment.
- in one case the gear ring of the turret was defective (industry in this case suspects a previous vehicle accident) and has to be "readjusted"
- industry representatives are "certain" that they can repair the "damage" on most vehicles (probably all but those latter two) by January 1st.
And yes, most of the above reads rather comical. Possibly according to other reports (non-FAZ) there may have also been one or more vehicles - other than the one with the fire - in which non-descript minor electric equipment or cabling may have "smoldered". There has been some speculation in the last couple days on the net that such damage could have been related to e.g. the cold weather (there was one night at -15°C during the exercise) and/or e.g. possible mishandling of air conditioning/climate equipment on the vehicles after that night.
The FAZ article is generally considered to be somewhat of a "counterattack" by defence industry against the MoD and the Bundeswehr.
It veers off after that into further industry statements that while their technicians may have been present during the exercise (as has been alleged by the MoD) they were not called upon by the troops; in addition they call into question why the troops waited with their damage report until all 18 vehicles were considered "failed". The article speculates on this with a possible "positive variant" that the commander wanted to simulate a frontline scenario without industry support and a "negative variant" that the Army was keeping the industry technicians away from their vehicles to hide neglected maintenance and problems with spare parts supply".
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The scheduled maintenance deadline line above is also a major point of industry, which suggest that
these specific vehicles would not have been part of VJTF anyway as they would have been in industry maintenance in January anyway. There is an underlaying allegation that the unit was using "burner vehicles" of sorts that had been traded among the companies of the battalion for exercise use.
That above "negative variant" scenario seems to be coming from the conservative opposition (i.e. CDU), who is calling for an investigation to "exclude the possibility that maintenance mistakes of the troops were to be covered up". They also want clarification on the exact timeline of the damage report.
Apparently MajGen Butler (10th Armored Division commander) reported the damage to LtGen Langenegger (deputy inspector general of the army) by telephone precisely on the morning of the day that the budget comittee was to decide on upgrading the remaining Puma to the common S1 standard - i.e. on Dec 15th. Langenegger then ordered a written report from Butler - which arrived by encrypted mail by 5:25 the next morning. What CDU wants to know is whether the MoD - or rather others, such as those representing her in the committee meeting - were informed about this oral report before the meeting (the MoD herself was visiting troops in Mali at the time).
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Also, unlike what was initially in reports, the 18 Puma did not fail with "an average lifetime of 4 days on the shooting range" (paraphrased quote of MajGen Butler).
Note: The below is not in the FAZ article.
The unit has been on a longer, successive training deployment of about 4 weeks, during which the 8-day exercise with the failures was the third week-long round on the range. During the first two "rounds" damage or failure was a rather regular 20% of the deployed fleet, the same as it has been for the Leopard 2 company that was deployed alongside them on the third round.
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