The Deutsche Marine Will Join The API In February

When Adm. Ulrich briefed reporters on some of the details of the African Partnership Initiative back in October, he mentioned that "five European nations already have signed on, and “Spain, Italy, France are all very interested,” he said."

France has arrived, with FS Bougainville (L9077) arriving on station last month. We are learning now that one of the unmentioned nations intending to make a stop as part of the African Partnership Initiative is Germany. Kato has the details over at Rear Echelon.

"EAV" is the German Training Cruise Flotilla, setting out yearly to train new officer cadets. This year - leaving Germany on January 15th - the cruise will go a bit further than usual. The EAV for 2008 consists of the Type 124 frigate FGS Hamburg (F 220), Type 122 frigate FGS Köln (F 211), and the Type 702 AOR FGS Berlin (A 1411).

The tour, this year, will first set out for Accra, Ghana to the Gulf of Guinea - where the African Partnership Station Initiative is active - then go on towards South Africa.

Kato outlines the entire EAV training cruise, including stops in South Africa, India, and Oman among other locations. Excellent details. This is an interesting deployment for a number of reasons, but one of the first things that caught my eye was the deployment of FGS Hamburg (F 220), because it was recently pointed out Germany has had a lot of trouble integrating the new Type 124s with allied battlefield information networks.

Since their commissioning, the three Type 124 AAW frigates have been wrought with one little problem - their FCS software is incompatible. This is the result of ordering the ships from three different yards, and splitting FCS installation along with the contract (something that will not be repeated with Type 125). The incompatibility isn't visible at first - each ship funtions perfectly well, as long as it's on its own. However, the three ships are not able to share battlefield information among each other beyond standard Link-11 datalink messaging. Which effectively means that they cannot form a joint AAW battlespace.

The F124s represent an enormous investment of treasure by Germany for the Deutsche Marine, the most expensive warships afloat for Germany. As their primary air defense warship, integration with allies is a critical requirement of the air defense vessel. Has this problem been resolved? It remains unclear, but this EAV deployment represents the first major overseas deployment of the Type 124 and as Kato points out, it will be very interesting to see how the Hamburg integrates with allied forces once it reaches the 5th Fleet AOR during this cruise.

Regardless of the specific technical issues that have effected the new platforms for the Deutsche Marine, involvement by Germany in the African Partnership Initiative is very positive sign. American involvement in Africa will almost certainly hit skepticism at every turn, in fact it has. The broader the cooperation among multiple nations in the US approach to Africa the easier it will be to gain acceptance in the initiatives offered.