Digitization of the Bundeswehr: BWI pays around four billion euros

The Bundeswehr’s most important IT partner, BWI GmbH, intends to place orders worth around four billion euros with industry over the next five years. This emerges from the award roadmap for the years 2023-2028, which the company published on Wednesday at the BWI Industry Days in Berlin and later announced in a press release.

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The BWI Industry Days, the third edition of which was held in 2023 under the main theme “Together for a resilient IT future”, see themselves as a dialogue platform for business and science relating to the digitization of the Bundeswehr. On Tuesday and Wednesday, speakers from the Bundeswehr, BWI and politics discussed current topics and challenges relating to the digitization of the armed forces. “The aim is to make it clear to the industry that cooperation with the BWI is essential in order to actively help shape the digitization of the Bundeswehr,” Frank Leidenberger, CEO of the BWI, is quoted as saying in a company press release.

BWI primary IT partner of the Bundeswehr

In the now published award roadmap for the years 2023-2028, the BWI provides information about planned tenders – “expressly in the form of planning data that are not binding”, as it says. And further: “As an IT system house for the German Armed Forces and a public contractor, BWI GmbH is subject to EU procurement law.”

BWI GmbH claims to be one of the largest IT service companies in Germany and the Bundeswehr’s primary digitization partner. It provides IT services for the Bundeswehr in Germany and abroad.

Since it was founded in 2006, the company has significantly expanded its service portfolio. It advises the armed forces, develops new IT solutions for the Bundeswehr and is a central force in the development and expansion of a resilient partner ecosystem. The company has around 7,000 employees nationwide.

Digitization remains an important task

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The changed security situation poses major challenges for the Bundeswehr. In view of the increasing threat of cyber attacks, IT security and thus digitization are becoming increasingly important issues. Last year, then Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht pushed for faster digitization of the Bundeswehr.

From the 100 billion euro special fund of the Bundeswehr, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz initiated shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February to equip the Bundeswehr, 20 billion euros are earmarked for digitization and communication. In April 2022, the Federal Court of Auditors complained that the Bundeswehr’s cyber situation center was not operational. Until then, it had cost 60 million euros.

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