Not gonna comment much on ZVM 2035+ here as all official publication on it has been pulled with a reference to it being "not finalized"
The unclassified brochure for ZVM 2035+ has now been officially released (on March 15th, on website about two weeks later).
In a comparison to the "not finalized" version it is somewhat clear why they had to pull that one - the "final" version is heavily reworded in many places, mostly removing sentences that would have suggested "preemptive strikes" and similar military actions, as well as pulling back on focusing the navy on NATO's northern flank and heavily sanitizing suggestions of the navy intruding on areas under purview of other federal agencies.
In many cases this rewording included entirely removing paragraphs and subsections. There are also some very minor changes here and there with contextual impact, such as replacing the wish for a "hardened" second HQ with a second HQ with "protected buildings"; those are often controversial individual items where expressing favour for a particular solution (here: keeping the Cold War bunkers in Glücksburg as a second HQ) had to be toned down.
The
ZVM - Zielvorstellung Marine, or "Objective Navy" - is a document that is published about every 10 years and serves as a planning concept for what the Navy suggests it wants in numbers for a force model 10 years in the future in order to face expected geopolitical events.
It is
not - unlike how many see it - any sort of commitment to the exact numbers presented in it, but instead presents a model of what the Navy both considers itself able to operate then, and what it considers possible technologically. Political and industry concerns, finances and operational changes tend to impact on to what extent it is realized. ZVM2025+ for example contained LHDs, which as a project were entirely zero-funded a bit later.
With that as preface: Derived numbers for a future force model haven't changed from the non-finalized version.
The planned force model - and, as said earlier, treat that as a wishlist - is mostly based around introducing Unmanned or Optionally Manned systems in the Navy. This is sort of a focus of the current ZVM, intended to lower manning requirements and operational costs.
- Future Combat Surface System : up to 18 vessels that supplement corvettes, non-finalized version had these for maritime strike roles
- Mine Countermeasure Toolbox : undecided number of systems supporting MCM platforms
- Unmanned Aerial System : up to 22 units that supplement onboard (ASW) Sea Tiger helicopters
- Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle : up to 6 units that supplement submarines
The numbers intended would depend on how many of the supplemented systems are in the fleet. They can also be seen somewhat as a
"in lieu of more of the real thing which we don't have the sailors or finances for".
Outside those there are minor adaptions in fleet numbers; these are reasoned for as shifting to a basic 3.0 rotation factor without much explanation here - the "non-finalized version" had a sentence on moving away from intensive use operational models and multiple crew manning models, which is reflected in these numbers.
These adaptions also reflect a wish within current navy leadership to move away from current low-intensity overseas engagements, or rather move away from modeling the Navy to service those. This results in ship numbers in the adaption to a 3.0 RF being preferably rounded down for systems primarily used in such operations (F125 frigates and K130 corvettes), and ship numbers being preferably rounded up in other systems (U212CD subs, future MCM vessels and A707 fleet tankers).
As a note on the chart above:
In discussion in Germany the symbols used for ship classes were somewhat hotly discussed with claims derived from them, to the point of pixel-counting to derive sizes and inferring functionalities. I personally wouldn't give much on that. For vessels that do not currently exist they simply used "similar" vessels in other navies; the icon used for MCM vessels for example is fairly clearly that of Dutch-Belgian MCM motherships, that for FCSS is a USN MDUSV vessel.
www.bundeswehr.de
news.usni.org
www.abeking.com
www.scheepvaartwest.be
www.navalnews.com