Leaked BMVg Report Rates D-LBO Digital Radio as Failing After €2 Billion Spent
Berlin, 6 April 2026
Key points
- A confidential BMVg report to the Bundestag, obtained by Welt and published 6 April, shows approximately €1.749 billion spent on the Digitalisierung Landbasierter Operationen (D-LBO) programme plus €299 million in supporting measures — without the system achieving operational status; the total programme is estimated at roughly €20 billion
- The formal technical assessment rated the system as failing; a second operational test in November 2025 was aborted after failures the internal assessment classified as posing danger to life and limb, a first test having already been aborted in May 2025
- Documented deficiencies sit in the radio system itself: voice between Leopard 2 A7V tanks partially untransmitted or inaudible, no reliable indication of an established connection, Friendly Force Tracking showing false or no position data, and the immediate-ceasefire command not reliably deliverable
- Operational readiness by September 2026 is not foreseeable; the 2027 target of digitalising one full division is classified as uncertain
A confidential BMVg report to the Bundestag, obtained by Welt and published on 6 April, rates the Bundeswehr’s D-LBO digital radio system as failing after approximately €2 billion spent without operational status — a second operational test was aborted in November 2025 after failures the internal assessment classified as posing danger to life and limb.
Parliamentarians had requested the test report for weeks; the ministry told the defence committee it was ‘too technical and barely comprehensible’. Welt obtained and published it. The report records that the D-LBO base version has not been cleared even for routine exercises: basic voice communication between Leopard 2 A7V tanks was assessed as deficient, simultaneous data and voice operation succeeded only intermittently, range fell substantially short of requirements, and the order for an immediate ceasefire could not be reliably delivered.
The failures identified sit in the radio layer. Rohde & Schwarz received the radio contract via direct award without competitive tender; Thales challenged the award and lost at the OLG Düsseldorf. D-LBO is otherwise a multi-supplier architecture — ArGe D-LBO (KNDS and Rheinmetall) handles vehicle integration, ArGe ISI (Rheinmetall Electronics and blackned) handles IT system integration, and L3Harris supplies PRC-117G/160 sets separately — but the deficiencies the report documents are in the Rohde & Schwarz radio system: voice, range, connection indication, position tracking.
The interim fleet picture explains the stakes. The majority of Bundeswehr land vehicles still operate the SEM 80/90 — an analogue VHF radio introduced in 1984, NATO-digital-incompatible, with encryption only via external add-ons. In 2021, with D-LBO already years behind schedule, the Bundeswehr ordered up to 30,000 rebuilt SEM 80/90 units from Thales at €20,000 each, planned to serve until 2035; Brigade Litauen runs interim encrypted Thales PR4G and SYNAPS-H sets for its NATO role.
The structural read. D-LBO is the command layer of German land-force regeneration the way Skyranger 30 is the VSHORAD layer — both foundational capabilities without which armoured formations cannot fight as formations, and both now slipping through the window in which NATO’s own planning assumes the Russian conventional threat peaks. Strack-Zimmermann’s question — what the Sondervermögen has actually been spent on — is the one the report leaves open. First tracked in Signal No. 32, 6 April 2026.
Related · Bundeswehr land-forces digitisation
Großwald Systems: D-LBO — Digitalisierung Landbasierter Operationen (updated 4 June 2026)
BAAINBw places €1.04 billion IdZ-ES order with Rheinmetall (27 April 2026)
Sources: Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, Deutscher Bundestag, Welt, Rohde & Schwarz.
First reported in Signal No. 32, 6 April 2026.
