Indeed cannibalising units to keep other units afloat is a standard in the navy these days. Guttenberg found some new formula to hide it, calling it I think alternative (or advanced) resource management (I call it "Mängelverwaltung"). That sounds wwell and tells nobody what really is being done.
The Uboats of the German navy since months and months have not been out to sea. One reason is they got new lithium batteries (lithium batteries in a submarine - well...), the other reason is that they indeed cannot be repaired due to lacking money and spare parts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bleiente
I laugh myself dead - the Bundeswehr could not have withstood the NVA even one day.  |
That is indeed what I have read once by a Eastergerman former NVA colonel who after the Wende (=reunificaiton) visited former Bundeswehr station and the army itself. He was shocked by the lack of preparation and the low discipline (he was about the tone in general). This was not the militant major threat that the SED tell them it were. I remember that Martin van Crefeld wrote the same about some NVA officer that he knew. Maybe its even the same.
The defenc budget in germany traditionally gets obscured by manipulating its numbers with varying contributions and substractions. The numbers Catfish gives must be taken with a grain of salt, therefore. It will be even worse from now on, since now major shares of the budget for foreign aid and development aid get counted - by SPD pressure - as part of the military budget, to make it look bigger. Former foreign clown, i mean minster Gabriel said that developing other countries was a militarily relevant contribution to collective defence of the west. Serious, no joke, he said that and he meant it. And nobody objected.
The german military is an impotent paper tiger, plain and simple. A corps of for self-defence armed development aid workers. The self-understanding of the ordinary soldier seems to lack basic key features needed for a warrior, eh, I mean:
Bürgerin und Bürger in Uniform.
Too tame. And a bureaucratic mionster now also plagued by gender politics and PC language.