Every campaign the Heeresfliegertruppe has flown, 1991 to today
Newest first. Kosovo is still open as a command commitment; the flying ended in 2011.
Seven campaigns, newest first, from Kurdistan to Gao. Open a row for what the flying was actually like, every type used, and where each figure comes from — including the ones Germany has never published.
| Conflict | Years | Against | Main aircraft | Sorties | Aircraft lost | |
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| Mali: MINUSMAUnited Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in MaliHeeresfliegertruppe | 2017-2023 | Armed groups in northern Mali | Eurocopter Tiger UHT, NHIndustries NH90 TTH | 181 | 1 | |
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Armed escort and forward medical evacuation for a United Nations stabilisation force, covering blue helmets, Malian troops and civilians across a desert area the size of France. Germany agreed to send a mixed army aviation detachment to Gao after the Netherlands withdrew its AH-64 Apaches, and it was the branch’s first deployment with its own attack helicopters in the escort role. Three NH90s for medical evacuation and three Tigers to protect them went out, each with one more as a reserve; the aircraft and the crews came from Transporthubschrauberregiment 10 at Faßberg, Transporthubschrauberregiment 30 at Niederstetten and Kampfhubschrauberregiment 36 at Fritzlar. The first two NH90s were flown to Bamako by Antonov An-124 on 27 and 29 January 2017 and went on to Gao on 31 January; the first two Tigers arrived on 21 March. The NH90s took over the medical evacuation watch from the Dutch on 2 March 2017 and flew their first mission the same day, recovering two wounded United Nations civilian staff after a roadside bomb. Full operational capability was declared for the NH90 on 24 April and for the Tiger on 5 May 2017. By February 2018 39 wounded had been flown out on German NH90s. Two Belgian NH90s joined on 11 February 2018 and the two nations flew as one detachment. On 26 July 2017 a Tiger lost its main rotor blades near Tabankort shortly after entering a steep descent. It burned out and both crew were killed. German Tigers were grounded and released to fly again on 23 September 2017 with limits on speed and autopilot use. The final report of 11 December 2018 found that the flight controls had been wrongly adjusted during a repair by Airbus mechanics at Fritzlar, and that the crash was then unavoidable. The state prosecutor opened an investigation. The NH90 element was withdrawn on 3 July 2018 and Canada took the task on 1 August. German army aviation went back to Gao in 2022 with an NH90 detachment from Transporthubschrauberregiment 30, and left with the rest of the contingent on 12 December 2023. Outcome Closed. Germany left Mali on 12 December 2023 after ten years and roughly 20,000 personnel on the mission in all. The 181 operational flights and 43 people evacuated are figures for the binational German and Belgian NH90 fleet to 3 July 2018, not for the whole German commitment. Germany has published no sortie, hour or weapon-release total for the Tiger detachment and we give none.
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| Afghanistan: Resolute SupportResolute Support MissionHeeresfliegertruppe with the Luftwaffe | 2015-2021 | Taliban | NHIndustries NH90 TTH, Sikorsky CH-53GS and CH-53GA (Luftwaffe from 2013) | — | 0 | |
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Forward air medical evacuation and transport for the train, advise and assist mission, and cover for the final withdrawal. Resolute Support replaced ISAF on 1 January 2015 and the German helicopter commitment continued with a smaller detachment under the Einsatzgeschwader Mazar-e Sharif. The CH-53s were by then Luftwaffe aircraft, transferred in 2013, but the type had been an army fleet for the first eleven years of the war and the crews and engineers largely came from the same community. In November 2018 the ministry announced that three army NH90s plus a reserve and one Luftwaffe H145M LUH SOF would relieve the four CH-53s at the end of 2020, to give the Sikorsky fleet and its crews some rest after nearly twenty years of continuous deployment. In August 2020 it emerged that only the NH90s would go. The first two were flown to Mazar-e Sharif on 12 November 2020, and Transporthubschrauberregiment 30 provided the air medical evacuation element for the 18th and 19th German Resolute Support contingents and for the withdrawal. The cumulative record for the CH-53 across both mandates and both services is 22,500 flying hours and about five million kilometres from April 2002 to 28 January 2021, when the last aircraft left. Between 2010 and 2017 they were fired on seventeen times with small arms and machine guns; no confirmed hit by a surface-to-air missile was recorded. Outcome Ended with the withdrawal. The last German CH-53 left Afghanistan on 28 January 2021 after almost nineteen years. The 22,500 hours and 1,750 missions are cumulative for the whole 2002 to 2021 CH-53 deployment. The reporter who published them noted that the statistics are incomplete because the fleet changed service in the middle of the war. Attributing any part of them to the army alone would be a guess and we do not attempt it.
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| Afghanistan: ISAFInternational Security Assistance ForceHeeresfliegertruppe | 2002-2014 | Taliban | Sikorsky CH-53G and CH-53GS, Eurocopter Tiger UHT, NHIndustries NH90 TTH | — | 1 | |
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Troop and freight transport, medical evacuation and, from 2013, armed escort and close air support for German and allied forces in the northern regional command. German CH-53s arrived in April 2002, four months after the mandate began, and were the German contingent’s only means of moving people and freight across a country with no usable roads. They stayed for nineteen years. On 21 December 2002 one came down near Kabul airport after a reconnaissance flight and killed seven German soldiers; investigators blamed the gearbox. It was the worst day the Bundeswehr had had on any operation abroad. The Tiger came late. Four aircraft of Kampfhubschrauberregiment 36, fitted with the ASGARD-F hot-and-high modification, were flown out in December 2012 and placed under the Einsatzgeschwader Mazar-e Sharif; two flew as the operational pair and two were held as technical reserve. Operational readiness was declared on 30 January 2013. The first publicly known combat use was on 4 May 2013 in Baghlan province, when seventeen German special forces soldiers were ambushed near a river crossing at Zaman Kheyl and called for close air support; two Tigers fired rockets on the positions around them. The detachment ended on 30 June 2014 after eighteen months and 1,860 flying hours, and the last aircraft came home through Leipzig on 29 July 2014. The NH90 arrived in April 2013 for forward air medical evacuation. A pair from Transporthubschrauberregiment 10 at Faßberg — one rescue aircraft and one armed escort — stood the permanent alert, with two more as technical reserve. That commitment ended on 1 August 2014. Outcome ISAF ended on 31 December 2014 and became Resolute Support. The German helicopter commitment continued without a break. Germany has never published a weapon-release count, a casualty-evacuation total or a sortie count for its Tiger or NH90 detachments in Afghanistan. The 1,860 Tiger hours are the only published performance figure and we give nothing beyond it.
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| Kosovo: KFORKosovo Force, Operation Joint GuardianHeeresfliegertruppe | 1999-2011 | — | Sikorsky CH-53G, Bell UH-1D, MBB Bo 105 | — | — | |
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Transport, liaison, observation and medical evacuation for the German brigade in the southern sector of KFOR, and lead helicopter unit for the multinational sector. The helicopters of the mixed army aviation detachment moved into a former agricultural airstrip at Toplicane near Suhareka in the autumn of 1999, a few months after KFOR entered Kosovo, and stayed on that piece of concrete for twelve years. The German sector was the south-west, run from Prizren, and the work was the unglamorous business of a peace-support deployment: freight and people over bad roads and worse weather, observation for the brigade, casualty evacuation, and liaison across a multinational sector that at times held soldiers from eleven nations. Heeresfliegerregiment 30 from Niederstetten was the lead unit from November 1999, providing the light transport helicopter component of the mixed detachment and the German contingent’s contribution for the third KFOR and fifth SFOR contingents. From 2001 to 2011 the regiment was the standing lead unit. It flew its last Kosovo mission in 2011, and the airfield site was dismantled by August 2011. Kosovo mattered to the branch out of proportion to its drama. It kept army aviation continuously deployed through the years between the Balkans and Afghanistan, and it was where a force designed to shoot Soviet tanks in the Fulda Gap learnt to be an expeditionary one. Outcome The flying ended in 2011 after twelve years. Germany remains committed to KFOR and the Kommando Hubschrauber still names a KFOR lead role among its tasks. Germany publishes no cumulative aviation figures for KFOR. The Bundeswehr left Prizren in 2018 and the camp is closed; the helicopter site at Toplicane was dismantled in 2011.
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| Bosnia: IFOR, SFOR and EUFOR AltheaImplementation Force, Stabilisation ForceHeeresfliegertruppe | 1995-2004 | — | Sikorsky CH-53G, Bell UH-1D, MBB Bo 105 | — | — | |
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Air transport of troops and freight, casualty evacuation and liaison for the German contingent of the NATO implementation and stabilisation forces. The first German army contingent for IFOR was built around an army aviation detachment based at Zadar on the Croatian coast, with engineers at Benkovac, supply and repair at Šibenik, transport at Camp Solaris, a field hospital at Trogir and military police at Primošten. It was the first time since 1945 that a German army formation had deployed on operations outside NATO territory. The lead unit of the first contingent, to May 1996, was Heeresfliegerregiment 10 from Faßberg with about 380 soldiers, flying CH-53Gs drawn from the regiments at Rheine-Bentlage, Laupheim and Mendig and UH-1Ds from Faßberg and Niederstetten, with a guard company from the mountain infantry. The lead unit of the second contingent, to October 1996, was Heeresfliegerregiment 6 from Hungriger Wolf with about 380 soldiers, reinforced by a further 400 for the first free elections in October and November 1996. The flying was transport, freight and medical evacuation across a ruined country in a hard climate. It ran on into SFOR from 1996 and, at a much reduced level, into the European Union’s EUFOR Althea from 2004. For the branch it was the first serious test of whether Cold War transport regiments could sustain an expeditionary rotation, and the answer was that they could. Outcome Closed. The NATO stabilisation force handed over to the European Union’s EUFOR Althea in December 2004, and German helicopters were no longer required. Germany published no cumulative aviation statistics for IFOR or SFOR, and the German-language accounts we could reach describe the contingents rather than the flying. We give no totals.
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| Somalia: UNOSOM IIUnited Nations Operation in Somalia IIHeeresfliegertruppe | 1993-1994 | — | Bell UH-1D, MBB Bo 105 | — | — | |
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Transport, liaison and medical evacuation for the German logistics contingent supporting the United Nations force. Somalia was the first deployment outside NATO territory that the German parliament had to argue about, and it was settled in the constitutional court in July 1994. Army aviation went with the contingent: Heeresfliegerregiment 30 contributed to the Somalia force in 1993, and helicopters did transport, liaison and medical evacuation for the German logistics element at Belet Uen. It was a small commitment, and it looks small beside what came afterwards. What it did was establish that German helicopters could be deployed abroad at all, which two years earlier would have been a political impossibility. Outcome Closed in 1994 when the German contingent withdrew. German accounts of UNOSOM II say little about the aviation element. We give no aircraft numbers, sortie counts or hours.
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| Kurdistan and Iraq: Operation Kurdenhilfe and UNSCOMOperation Kurdenhilfe, United Nations Special CommissionHeeresfliegertruppe | 1991-1996 | — | Sikorsky CH-53G, Bell UH-1D | — | — | |
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Relief flying for Kurdish refugees after the Gulf War, and helicopter support for the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq. This was the branch’s first work abroad, and it was humanitarian. After the Gulf War of 1991 hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled into the mountains of Iran and eastern Anatolia, and German CH-53s flew relief into places that could not be reached any other way. It was the first time German army helicopters had operated outside NATO Europe. Helicopter support for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq followed and ran from 1991 to 1996, carrying weapons inspectors around a country that did not want them. It is the least remembered of the branch’s deployments and the one that changed the politics: after Kurdenhilfe it was no longer arguable that the Bundeswehr could not fly abroad. Outcome Closed. UNSCOM support ran to 1996 and the weapons inspection mission itself collapsed in 1998. Germany published no aircraft numbers, sortie totals or hours for either operation, and neither do we.
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Nothing matches that search.
Every figure, checked
- Bundeswehr: Die Bundeswehr bei MINUSMAGerman MINUSMA dates, strength, helicopter contribution and fatalities
- Augen geradeaus!: Nazgul meldet sich ab — die CH-53-Hubschrauber verlassen Afghanistan22,500 flying hours, about 1,750 missions, five million kilometres and seventeen engagements by small-arms fire, 2002 to 2021
Figures verified 2026-09-20. Back to the German Army Aviation.