Germany’s New Military Strategy Pursues Technological Superiority But Proposes Recruiting More Personnel First

On 22 April 2026 Germany published what has been called the first military strategy in the Bundeswehr’s history. Germany’s military strategy marks a genuine shift in a country that spent 70 years avoiding this kind of document. Julian Pawlak, an international security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, reviews the document’s problematic passages on the website of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The strategy proposes a three-phase buildup plan for the armed forces. It declares maximum readiness by 2029, substantial capability growth to roughly 2035, and technological superiority by 2039. As sounded by Chancellor Merz, this pursues the stated goal of creating ‘Europe’s strongest conventional army’.

To this end, military spending is to be raised – drastically and still continuously. In 2026 it stands above EUR 108 billion, roughly 2.4 percent of GDP (coming from EUR 32 billion in 2014 and 1 percent of GDP, respectively). By 2035, Germany now intends to reach the level of 3.5 percent of GDP, or EUR 150 billion.

In the beginning, increasing the active force’s strength takes priority; this is to be done in three phases. The first one concentrates on rapidly raising defense readiness and personnel availability (until 2029). The second aims at a marked increase in capability across all domains (land, air, sea, cyber, and space) while meeting the personnel goals (until 2035). Together these two phases are meant to reach at least 460,000 combat-ready troops: a minimum of 260,000 active personnel and 200,000 reserve forces.

However, Germany’s capacity to defend itself and allies is constrained by the psychological burden of the past, which makes it slow and heavy work to move not only the armed forces, but the federal budget, the Bundestag, and the public onto the track of hard power.

Words and papers alone are not enough to convince German society that it is being offered a well-equipped and credible force worth joining and serving in. Despite years of declared growth targets, the active force has hovered around 180,000 men and women and has at times even shrunk rather than grown, while the average age of the force has risen. Reaching 260,000 active personnel therefore requires not only a larger intake but also a change in public attitudes.

The new service model rests on volunteering and is supplemented by compulsory registration and screening. It is yet unclear whether that produces the numbers required, since, at the current stage, a substantial share of new recruits mostly leave service already within the first six months of duty.

Will German society follow this plan? The strategy assumes a population willing to serve and to invest, and a political system willing to sustain expenditure through election cycles and perhaps different parties in government. None of these is guaranteed in a democratic system.

Willingness to serve in the armed forces remains the plan’s weakest link. The new defense strategy cannot legislate on is its own political durability. On the trajectory leading to 2039, Germany will traverse at least three federal election cycles. The current consensus on defense spending is fairly broad for now, but it has not yet been seriously tested by competing budgetary demands.

Original publication: https://www.fpri.org/article/2026/08/reading-germanys-rearmament-the-2026-military-strategy-between-ambition-and-accountability/