Bundestag Clears €2.4 Billion for 32,000 Soveron Radios to Digitise Germany's NATO Division 2025

The Haushaltsausschuss cleared a seventh amendment (7. Änderungsvertrag) to the D-LBO command-radio contract — formally the Führungsfunksystem within the Digitalisierung Landbasierter Operationen programme — at a volume of about €2.4 billion, of which roughly €2.0 billion equips newly fielded platforms. The radios are software-defined sets of the Soveron family built by Rohde & Schwarz, drawn on a framework contract for more than 30,000 units that has been running since 2022, with deliveries under way since 2023. The committee did not attach a named statement to the approval; it was one of four procurement items decided the same day, alongside a separate D-LBO IT-integration order, a Boxer option and a mobile-workshop framework.

The purpose is to give Division 2025 — the division Germany has committed to NATO at full readiness — digital, encrypted and jam-resistant communications across more than 10,000 vehicles and platforms, with the army aiming to complete the equipping by the end of 2027. The €2.4 billion is not additional to the programme but sits within a D-LBO effort costed at about €11.5 billion overall. Because more than ten thousand vehicles cannot be converted at once, the contract funds “Mischbetrieb,” the mixed operation in which already-upgraded, not-yet-upgraded and non-retrofittable platforms — down to digital handheld radios — must still interoperate through the transition.

The proprietary read. This is the rearmament that never makes a headline: not a tank or a missile but the radio net that lets a division fight as one under jamming. A spearhead division is only as fast as its command links, and the Mischbetrieb line is the honest admission inside the contract — Germany will go to readiness mid-transition, with old and new radios sharing the same battlefield. As Signal No. 90 noted, the procurement headlines track the steel; the harder, slower work is wiring it together by 2027.