home to a second A400M wing of the German Air Force. This was planned to be a German-led multinational wing for NATO partners, but was canceled in March 2022 due to little interest and cost. Furthermore, the Air Force has a presence at three civilian airports incl. the Airport Berlin Tegel which has been closed in November 2020: Personnel In 2012, the Air Force had an authorized strength of 44,565 active airmen/women and 4,914 reservists. The civil personnel within the Air Force is being reduced to 5,950 officials and employees. Most of the civilian employees work in maintenance and the Air Force Fire Department. On 20 September 2011 defense minister Thomas de Maizière announced that the Air Force would shrink to 23,000 airmen/women. Training The has set up a total of 5 training institutions, namely the , , , and , for training catering both personnel in active service and civilians willing to enter the . Symbols, emblems and uniform Roundel and serial number Originally German Air Force aircraft carried an Iron Cross—appearing to be closely modeled on that used by the 1916-17 era Imperial German through the spring of 1918, but no longer having the white border around the crosses' "ends" (thusly resembling the orthogonal white "flanks" of the earlier, 1918-1945 era national marking)—as an identifying feature on all four wing positions and on both sides on the rear of the fuselage and a small tricolor German flag painted on the vertical stabilizer. Each aircraft also carried a serial number consisting of two letters, which identified the service and combat wing, followed by three numbers identifying the squadron and the number of the plane within the squadron, almost graphically resembling the USAF's own buzz numbers of the same period. This system was changed in 1968. The large Iron Cross and serial numbers have since been replaced on all aircraft by a four number registration code, appearing somewhat in the manner of the earlier alphanumeric combat wing code characters used by their World War II predecessor—separated by an Iron Cross in the middle: the first two numbers identify the type of aircraft and the second two numbers are a sequential for each type. When writing the registration number the Iron Cross is written as a "+". I.e. the Tornado IDS of the Air Force are numbered from 43+01 to 46+22, while the Tornado ECR of the Air Force are numbered