by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Ingo Gerhartz, (lead images), 58, was once a conscript in the German Luftwaffe who turned his ambition to be a fighter pilot into a Pentagon-supervised career to the very top of the German Air Force for the past six years.
The skinheaded Gerhartz has never faced combat in the air or even hostile fire from the ground, although for nine months of 2009 he dropped bombs on Afghanistan. He was a colonel then. It took him another six years acting as air force public relations spokesman in Berlin, before he was promoted to brigadier general. He made major general and lieutenant general in three years in a Berlin bunker.
However, Gerhartz has shed his blood. That was last November, when he donated it at a Tel Aviv hospital for those Israel Defence Forces who were hit by Palestinian soldiers defending against the genocide of Gaza.
Frank Graefe, 57, started his Luftwaffe officer’s career at the same time as Gerhartz and was better educated. But Gerhartz got ahead of Graefe in the air and on the promotion list. Both were trained in the US on Phantom fighters; Graefe then did more time at his desk than in the cockpit, and took nine years to get from lieutenant colonel to colonel. Gerhartz managed that promotion in six years. Even in Afghanistan, where Graefe also served, he sat on a chair in a heavily guarded office in Kabul. Graefe has never been in combat.
But he has served under direct Pentagon control at its branch on Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, which is known as the German embassy. Graefe was raised to brigadier general to act as military attaché there. “From Neuburg to the centre of power” is the headline in a Saarland regional newspaper which Graefe arranged to advertise himself in Washington; Saarland is Graefe’s home state; he is the most important figure ever to have been born in the village of Nohfelden, which is a short drive south of Cochem, Gerhartz’s home town next to the Büchel nuclear air base.
From the Pentagon Graefe returned to Berlin to serve under Gerhartz, but it is unclear — or remains secret — on which staff Graefe is serving; he is not ranked at the top of the Air Operations Command nor at the top of the Forces Command, nor on Gerhartz’s headquarters staff.
Graefe’s relationships with the Pentagon and with the US Air Force General Charles Brown Jr., now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been watched and assessed by Russian military intelligence for some time. Graefe’s work, together with Gerhartz, in running the NATO Air Defender 2023 exercise last June was a rehearsal and test run for F-16 attacks on Russia from airfields in Germany, Romania, and Poland to be used for refueling, electronic warfare, command and control, as well as disguise and deception; read the analysis here.
On February 19, when Gerhartz discussed the new operation combining F-16s with the Taurus missile, Graefe repeatedly emphasized how many months of delay would be required to prevent “an erroneous use…a rocket may fall on a kindergarten, and again there will be civilian casualties. These aspects must be taken into account.” Graefe also insisted: “We need to make sure that from the very beginning there is no language that makes us a party to the conflict.”
Gerhartz replied dismissively; the transcript exposes Gerhartz as gung-ho for attacking Russia, the sooner the better. “When we are planning deadlines, we should not overestimate them,” Gerhartz told Graefe. “There is no basis to say that we cannot do this. There is a certain scale where the ‘red line’ lies politically, there is a ‘long’ and a ‘short’ path, there are differences in terms of using the full potential.”
Graefe’s role in exposing Gerhartz’s operational plan to attack Russian civilian and military targets has drawn scrutiny from the GRU.
A report on what the Russians have learned about Graefe and Gerhartz appeared yesterday in Moscow. This is written by Yevgeny Krutikov, a former GRU field officer and one of the leading security analysts publishing in the Moscow internet platform Vzglyad. This is how the German enemy is to be seen.
(more…)