Germany

[kato]

Those up to 5800 "Trucks, Offroad, Light" do have the same designation as the Wolf jeeps they're replacing. They'll probably find some new animal name for it.

And it's just an updated Wolf on the current drive frame - a Mercedes-Benz G-class 4.5 Station Wagon. Mercedes-Benz has been trying to pitch that for the Wolf successor for about 2-3 years now. The vehicle frame for the new vehicles (G-class Series 464) is the same as for the up to 2500 Caracal jeeps ordered for German airborne troops (also replacing Wolf there), just with a proper car body placed on it.


Apparently the military refit of the vehicles will be provided by Binz Automotive. They're a specialized vehicle refit company that mostly delivers general emergency vehicles (rescue, police, firefighting, disaster relief - we're talking batch deliveries of hundreds of vehicles per year there). A bit notably they only do "light" vehicles though - their current order of 180 GKW squad trucks for disaster relief agency THW is the first vehicle series of above 15 tons GVW they're producing.

Binz is also currently the subcontracting outfitter for the UVT(gl) unprotected medical vehicles for the Bundeswehr of which about 500 are under delivery (since Q1/23 until 2027). Funnily they don't really advertise that at all, even if they have the pictures of it on their website ... on a page trying to sell their competing offer on a Unimog truck instead of the Iveco truck chosen.
For the Bundeswehr they were the company that provided 1800 Unimog KrKW ambulances from 1984 on - that was before they moved the company to East Germany. In more recent time they mostly seem to have outfitted containerized hospitals for them.


For the 1200 in the initial batch of the "Truck, Offroad, Light" 90 are planned for military police and 1110 as general command/communications vehicles. All vehicles will receive either D-LBO MTN (Mobile Tactical Node) or D-LBO MTC-F4 (Mobile Tactical Client) hardware installed, which is not part of the contract but provided by the Bundeswehr from separate contracts - the cost for this D-LBO hardware plus navigation systems has been stated to be another 292 million, i.e. effectively doubling the price of the complete vehicle.

The procurement is staggered out to 2032 partly since the Bundeswehr was pretty much buying smaller batches of Wolf all the way up till end of production of the old G-class Series 461 frame. The last batch was 700 G300 "Greenliner" in 2020 procured through BwFuhrparkService as "commercial vehicles with special equipment".

First 5 prototypes are planned to already be delivered before end of this year btw.

 

[kato]

Disaster Relief Agency THW is long-term financing a research project for a tactical UGV for transport duties - called ROMATRIS, "robotic material transport in havoc areas".

The project entered the application test stage this year and the current model ("KRATOS") after a number of tests at THW's main training center was field-tested for the first time during an exercise in Bremerhaven port a few weeks ago (it mostly was used to carry sandbags and some heavier equipment, e.g. a 120-kg power generator):

(you may want to skip the first 30 seconds)

The focus of the research project is not on the vehicle capabilities themselves (you can buy that off-the-shelf pretty much, and they've been testing a bunch of vehicles within the project over the last four years), but instead in optimizing its handling for very rough environmental conditions. The vehicle being developed is supposed to support recovery squads working e.g. in debris fields after building collapses and similar.

As a somewhat more ambitious part beyond the now relatively usual UGV movement modes ("remote control", "follow personnel", "learn route and autonomously run it after pressing button") it is also supposed to be able to be directed by nearby personnel without a remote control - by gestures only. And it's supposed to do that under the same rough conditions, i.e. possibly in darkness, with debris in the way etc.

 

[kato]

"several million" rounds of 7.62x51mm ammunition, belted, for machine guns for 452 million Euro. Includes replacement of ammunition delivered to Ukraine.

Contract for this has been signed.

The belted ammunition procured under this is specifically for MG6, i.e. Dillan Aero M134D gatling guns. Apparently M134D only work with soft core / NATO ball ammunition (which isn't used in any other German 7.62mm MGs...).

MG6 are used in the Bundeswehr by special forces (on helicopters, boats, Serval vehicles and from tripods) as well as more recently also with the air force security regiment.

Dillan Europe recently presented an (ITAR-free, German-developed and -produced) upgrade for the M134D that would - among other improvements - allow switching to regular hardened core ammunition.