Packed with combat power, fire and movement: wheeled and tracked vehicles roll across the Lüneburg Heath, muzzle flashes flare from the dust plumes, artillery noise roars, helicopters hover, machine cannons chatter, grenadiers storm buildings – these images look familiar to visitors of traditional information-training exercises.
By Jan-Phillip Weisswange
But the dynamic demonstration taking place here at the beginning of May 2026 on Range 2 of the Munster Nord training area is part of the 2026 Training and Trial Exercise. In recent weeks the German Army, under its Inspector General, Lieutenant General Dr. Christian Freuding, has developed and tested approaches for how it intends to fight in the future to prevail on increasingly transparent battlefields.
And so current satellite images of the battlefield appear on the monitors above the specially erected spectator stand. Drone swarms hover over enemy targets and disable them. Unmanned ground vehicles accompany the larger combat systems on their way to the front, engage enemy combat vehicles, breach minefields with detonation cord systems, and evacuate the wounded. The dynamic demonstration makes clear what lessons the German Army draws from the current conflicts for its land-domain operations.
Disruptive Combat Power Developments
The ongoing wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East show how disruptive technological developments in all domains – reconnaissance, command, networking and effects – have transformed operational command. In all dimensions – land, air, sea, space and the cyber and information space – the rule is the same: highly developed sensors render the battlefield increasingly transparent – nearly glass-like. Precise, long-range weapons systems enable strikes against targets deep in the hinterland. Artificial intelligence or robotics complement traditional combat power. Multidimensional digitisation and networking shorten the sensor-to-effect chains so much that the impact practically follows reconnaissance in real time.
“The result is an operations room where visibility becomes vulnerability—and where speed and networking will determine success or failure,” writes the German Army’s largest service branch in its “Campaign Plan Army 2035+ – how the Army will fight.” And further: “Military decision will no longer primarily be sought through the clash of armored forces to secure key terrain. The ability to prevail requires remaining actionable and operational under the conditions of a continuously networked and sensor-saturated space.”
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