Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
A military piece of hardware that is designed to suit all situations and conditions, is basically weak and useless in all of them.
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Maybe not necessarily, but the biggest two problems are political dilettantism interfering with the procurement by the defence ministry and too many primaballerina officers taking it as important to add their mustard to the meal as well, and then a totally misled perception and understanding of the role of military forces. These frigates were depleted of solid air defences and all anti-submarine capability because it was weighted as more important that they should serve in migrant-saving humanitarian efforts or releasing small infantry units during landings in the Baltics
Understanding that a warship's purpose is to fight a battle, destroy opponents and survive in a wartime envrionment, was only an obstacle that therefore was scratched off the list.
The example of the also hopelessly misled A400M teaches anoher problem as well: that tiem and again chnages and altered purpose defintions get fed in by politics, exopecting the industry to nevertheless adapoting to these ever changing lists of wishes in zero time, and of course, all new and additional work done for free. This messes up the manufacturing process significantly. And at the end you get a half-baked solution that wants to be a many different things, but cannot master any of these any good, as you just said.
The Bundesmarine should have charted their frigates from Thomas Cook Travelling, I think. Juist a little bit of grey paint, and Germany could have boasted with owning the biggest frigates in the world, ever. Far more space and comfort for those humanitarian mission(i)s(ings).
As I often said: Germans mistake their armed forces with the THW (Federal Agency for Technical Relief).