Michael Hillebrand from Directorate 6 ICT and Cyber said the decision was all about “strengthening our digital sovereignty” and keeping tight control of data.

Speaking to ORF radio, Hillebrand explained that cloud-based processing was a non-starter for the military. The writing was on the wall in 2020 when Microsoft signalled its office suite would shift fully into the cloud.

By 2021 the decision had been made, followed by years of planning, staff training and internal development. Since 2022, employees could voluntarily use LibreOffice, and by 2023 external contractors were brought in to support the rollout. By early September 2025 Microsoft Office had been stripped from all 16,000 military desktops.

The army stresses it is not freeloading on open source. More than five man-years of coding effort have been funded, with new features contributed directly back to LibreOffice. These include upgrades like live slideshow editing, improved pivot table handling, extra formatting options and metadata controls. All LibreOffice users now benefit from these extras.

Hillebrand said: “We are not doing this to save money. We are doing this so that the Armed Forces as an organisation, which is there to function when everything else is down, can continue to have products that work within our sphere of influence.”

The original baseline was Microsoft Office 2016 Professional, which was deeply embedded with Access and VBA tools. While Office has now been purged, soldiers can still apply for Microsoft Office 2024 LTSC modules if absolutely necessary. Microsoft Access survives in a few pockets, and the army has bought specific font licences to cover gaps.

For daily collaboration, the army relies on self-hosted Linux and Samba servers. Curiously, its smartphones are supplied by the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple which strikes us as a little ironic.