No 'Bombodrome'
July 9, 2009
"We no longer plan to use Wittstock as an air-to-surface bombing exercise site," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said in Berlin.
He said the defense ministry was dropping plans to appeal against an administrative tribunal's ruling that low-level bombing flights there would be illegal.
The German army and air force had planned to use the forest and scrub-covered land in the northern part of the state of Brandenburg for target practice.
The ground north-west of the capital is in Germany's "empty quarter" where towns and villages are scarce, and where the population has been gradually declining since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Breakthrough for campaigners
“This is a joyful day for the people of this region,” said Matthias Platzeck, the premier of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin.
Local government, as well as advocates of nature tourism for the area said the screaming of jets and thuds of shells would scare off visitors from an already impoverished area.
On July 2, the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, passed a resolution against the military development plans.
Campaigners held a protest this past Easter which drew several hundred thousand people. But they had been demonstrating for 17 years against the project, which they dubbed the "Bombodrome," on 14,000 hectares of the Kyritz-Ruppin heath near the town of Wittstock.
Cost Concerns
The air force and army, which have two smaller bombing ranges in other states, wanted more space to train bomber and artillery crews to improve their accuracy.
The decision may increase Germany's need to use firing ranges abroad. The German military already performs 75 percent of its training flights in NATO partner countries abroad, including the United States, Italy and Canada.
Jung said the Bombodrome flights would now also be conducted outside of Germany, a move he said would incur higher costs that he declined to estimate.
mrh/dpa/AFP/epd
Editor: Chuck Penfold/Kyle James