Re-registering with German plates began in December 2005. In 2005, the US Forces in Germany decided that service members' private vehicles should carry normal German plates for security reasons. Since the change to local German plates (see below) this rule is no longer valid. When traveling outside Germany, US military laws required that USA sticker be displayed on the rear of the car. But in this special matter this law is not enforced in Germany with US Army vehicles. By law the vehicles must carry the "USA" sticker since they are registered by a non-European Union country.
#Military front license plates code
For official vehicles the code "IF" is used with standard-size plates. So they discontinued issuing plates with "AF" and began using "HK" (which is now used by the German district Heidekreis) instead. After some time they realized that AF could be easily interpreted as Armed Forces or Air Force, defeating the purpose of using German-style plates.
#Military front license plates registration
When the US forces began using this system, they chose the first two-letter codes not yet used in the German registration system, namely AD (standard size) and AF (small size). US-market vehicles without proper mounting brackets for European-standard plates received plates made to a small size which is in Germany normally dedicated for light motorcycles or agricultural vehicles. The lower sticker showed the text: "Streitkräfte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in Deutschland" ( Armed Forces of the US in Germany). Furthermore, unlike the German one this sticker is punched to indicate clearly the date. The plates' upper sticker showed the expiry date of the plate, rather than technical fitness as the German one does.
Their plates carried the NATO insignia on a blue background instead of the EU stars, the USA country code, and registration numbers starting with AD, AF or HK, while numbers starting in IF on similar plates were used for official NATO vehicles of all non-German nationalities.