Skybird
09-18-06, 07:24 PM
What you wish and what you get sometimes are two different things. Especially if you do a poor job in preparation.
Germany's Army Feels the Pinch
By Konstantin von Hammerstein and Alexander Szandar
With deployments in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Africa and now the Middle East, Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, is fast becoming the global service provider for German foreign policy. But the force is insufficiently prepared for its new tasks and, as it is about to embark to Lebanon on its next foreign mission, remains underfunded and poorly equipped.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,695528,00.jpg AP
German Defense Minister Josef Jung: The German army's needs are growing faster than its capabilities.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is here to send a message. After climbing on board, she now stands in the brisk morning wind on the deck of the frigate "Saxony" to address a group of sailors. It makes for good TV imagery on Thursday evening, imagery dominated by a chancellor who clearly has a special place in her heart for Germany's troops. Why else would Merkel be paying a visit to the German navy at its base in the Baltic seaport of Warnemünde?
After Merkel had spoken with the Lebanese prime minister by telephone the day before, it now seems clear that a German naval fleet will sail for Lebanon in the next few days. About 1,800 soldiers from the German air force and navy will likely take part in the mission, provided the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, approves the measure this week, as it is expected to do. Here in Warnemünde, Merkel tells the assembled sailors that she is confident that "the navy is prepared to assume responsibility."
Out at sea the navy was showing off the capabilities of two of its speedboats, the "Zobel" and the "Frettchen." One of the two craft shot magnesium flares into the air to demonstrate the navy's latest method of distracting enemy rockets. Germany has promised to send three or four of these boats to Lebanon as part of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent being assembled there.
It's a daring promise on Germany's part, given the problems the boats have experienced on previous missions in the Mediterranean. At high speeds, the crafts' ribs broke in the Mediterranean's heavy swells. Since then, the ships are no longer permitted to travel with full fuel tanks and have been forced to reduce their weapons payloads while in the region. Higher water temperatures have wreaked havoc on cooling systems for the vessels' electronic systems and diesel engines, forcing the speedboats to travel at reduced speeds.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,695613,00.jpg DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: International comparison of military spending
The journey to the Levantine coast will be a long one. Because the boats cannot be operated without their full 34-man crews, they'll be forced to put in to port every two days. The trip for these so-called "speedboats" will be everything but speedy and will take an estimated two weeks. But no one is likely to care much about the delay, because these are not the types of ships that will be needed for one of the peacekeeping force's key tasks in Lebanon, which is to search other vessels. The rocket launcher on the afterdeck takes up so much space that there is no room for a rubber dinghy that would enable the German sailors to board a suspicious ship. The two frigates' "Sea Lynx" helicopters, which will also be redeployed to the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, will handle the task instead. But even these helicopters are not designed for such use and will have to make two flights to carry a complete twelve-member search and inspection team.
The equipment difficulties the Lebanon mission highlights are symptomatic of the Bundeswehr's overall condition and of the fact that Germany's armed forces have not been properly equipped for their changing duties for some time now. This chronically underfunded, poorly outfitted and physically exhausted force is now embarking on a new foreign mission, with ten others already underway.
German troops are helping secure the peace in Bosnia and Kosovo, are stationed in Afghanistan, Congo and Sudan, are patrolling the Horn of Africa and serving as military observers in Georgia and in the border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sixteen years after the end of the Cold War, the German government is increasingly using the armed forces as a global service provider for Berlin's foreign policy. Germans themselves are reluctantly getting used to the fact that their reunified country is now also assuming the military role of a medium-sized power.
EXPENSIVE AND SUPERFLUENCE: PLANNED BUNDESWARE PROCUREMENT
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,10827,00.gif Eurocopter
Tiger Combat Helicopter Number: 80; Cost: €2.6 billion
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,416978,00.jpg DDP
Eurofighter Fighter Jet Number: 180; Cost: over €21 billion
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,619277,00.jpg REUTERS
Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle Number: 410; Cost: €2.1 billion
But the demand for the Bundeswehr has grown faster than its capabilities. While countries like Australia, France and Great Britain have increased their military spending in recent years, Germany's defense budget has declined almost continuously since reunification. "Germany is among the countries that spends a relatively small percentage of its budget on defense," says the chancellor, succinctly summing up the problem.
Indeed, Germany spends just over one percent of its gross domestic product of about €2 trillion on defense, which puts it at the tail end of NATO countries in terms of military spending. Although the Bundeswehr's €24 billion budget will increase by €480 million next year, its own costs will rise by €300 million as a result of the increase in the value-added tax later this year that has already been approved by the Bundestag.
The defense minister is virtually the only prominent politician willing to stand up for the Bundeswehr. "Many members of parliament have lost interest in the Bundeswehr," says former Defense Minister and Social Democrat Hans Apel. "Supporting the military does nothing for their careers."
Despite its growing importance internationally, the German military continues to play the role of a stepchild in German domestic politics. Despite opinion polls that show the armed forces, together with the Federal Constitutional Court and the police, enjoying the highest level of public confidence among all government institutions, this hasn't convinced politicians to open the national pocketbook when it comes to military spending. Besides, two-thirds of German citizens say that Germany has plenty of problems of its own that should be addressed before turning to problems in other countries.
This apathy within the public and the legislature means that experts are the only ones who are currently addressing key defense issues. How big should the country's armed forces be? Is compulsory military service still appropriate today? Which of Germany's national interests urgently require the deployment of its armed forces? What should the army of the future look like?
The last of these questions has been systematically ignored for years. Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's last defense minister, Volker Rühe, dragged his feet when it came to transforming the Bundeswehr into an intervention force, because he wanted to avoid the domestic political controversy he feared such a change would trigger. Only his successors, Rudolf Scharping and Peter Struck, both Social Democrats, launched the overdue reforms starting in 1998.
Germany's security "also needs to be defended in the Hindukush," said Struck. "Our field of operations is the whole world." Struck envisioned the new intervention force replacing the old Bundeswehr, which was still designed to repel the powerful armies of the former Soviet bloc, by 2010.
The current defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, continues to stand by his predecessor's goal. In the draft version of his new "White Paper on Germany's Security Policy," Jung, a Christian Democrat, proposes a rigorous restructuring and re-equipping of the military to suit its "more likely tasks" -- international crisis control instead of tank battles on the northern German plains.
But there is hardly any other political sphere in which ideas and reality are so far apart. A study by the government-aligned German Institute for International and Security Affairs is consistently critical in its assessment of the results of reform efforts to date. According to the study, the Bundeswehr has failed to structure its arms planning to suit the "requirements of the current situation in security policy." The military, the study concludes, still has a tendency to "hone the capabilities it needed during the Cold War."
The conclusions are obvious. The Bundeswehr is spending its already stretched budget on yesterday's projects. For example, it's been 16 years since the end of the Cold War and yet the air force continues to insist on acquiring the MEADS missile defense system, at a price tag running into the billions, a system that dates back to a 1980s initiative by former Defense Minister and Christian Democrat Manfred Wörner.
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Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday. (http://service.spiegel.de/backoffice/newsletter-service.do?product=spon-en-newsletter)
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In recent years the army, loath to be outdone by the air force, has purchased 188 "Howitzer 2000" tanks with a range of 40 kilometers (25 miles). Acquisitions like these have prompted Germany's military leadership to brag that it has "the world's most modern artillery." But rivals within the air force promptly ridiculed their army counterparts, saying that the new short-range weapons are of little more use than for "shooting into the sky on New Years Eve in Uzbekistan." The air force, for its part, can't be dissuaded from pursuing its plan to purchase 180 Eurofighter jets for about €21 billion.
To his credit, former defense minister Peter Struck ordered a reduction in Germany's inventory of heavy Leopard 2 tanks from almost 2,000 to 350. But the generals were so upset over Struck's decision that, in order to placate them, he approved purchases of the "Puma" armored personnel carrier. As it turned out, the giant steel vehicle, weighing in at 43 tons when fully loaded with battle gear, was too heavy to be carried by the newly developed A400M transport aircraft.
Military leaders didn't see this as a problem. The "Puma" will now be constructed as a modular vehicle and assembled upon arrival in its deployment region. In its report, the Institute for International and Security Affairs acerbically notes: "The extent to which it makes sense to conduct such assembly work in acute crisis regions where armed conflict may already be underway merits further investigation."
Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, only recently approved the Bundeswehr's planned purchase of new antitank missiles for its "Tiger" combat helicopter. The original plans for the missiles stem from the 1980s and the German military's efforts to be prepared for a Soviet tank offensive in the "Fulda Gap" region near the then-border between West and East Germany.
Despite efforts by Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the inspector general of the Bundeswehr, to convince the Defense Ministry to approve fewer than the planned 80 Tiger combat helicopters and 180 Eurofighters, officials there rejected his proposal out of fears that it would prompt the defense industry to demand compensation for the reduction in order volume. Despite the fact that the two systems will consume about one-third of the Bundeswehr's purchasing budget in the coming years, defense ministry officials decided to keep their orders at the original levels.
Photo Gallery: Merkel's Day at Sea
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,692755,00.jpg (http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,PB64-SUQ9MTYwMzcmbnI9MQ_3_3,00.html)
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http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,692734,00.jpg (http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,PB64-SUQ9MTYwMzcmbnI9MQ_3_3,00.html)
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 Photos)
Germany's defense planners continue to order away, seemingly ignorant of their troops' more urgent needs. This year the Bundestag will be called upon, once again, to approve many new acquisitions that shouldn't be given priority, including equipment for the MEADS system, high-tech frigates priced in the billions, submarines and the "Boxer" wheeled multirole armored vehicle (MRAV). At three meters (about 10 feet) wide and almost eight meters (26 feet) long, and weighing in at over 30 tons, the Boxer is so disproportionately large that its usefulness in places like Afghanistan and Kosovo is severely limited.
Coupled with the obviously erroneous investment in unnecessary major projects is the defense bureaucracy's equally obvious inability to successfully implement projects that actually do make sense. As a result, the "powerful force" the Bundeswehr calls itself in its promotional materials still lacks much of the equipment it so urgently needs to perform its new tasks: state-of-the-art information and communications technology, lightweight vehicles instead of heavy tanks, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles for fast and precise reconnaissance and large, long-range transport aircraft. Bureaucrats at the Defense Ministry have spent the last five years negotiating with various suppliers to agree to the transfer of about 300,000 telephone connections and 100,000 computer jobs to a private firm the federal government plans to establish with a consortium of companies.
The "Hercules" project is estimated to cost more than €6.5 billion over a ten-year period, and yet not a single member of parliament has submitted the draft legislation needed to approve the project. The defense administration's efforts to combine the separate computer systems of the army, air force and navy into a single efficient network have been just as futile. Such "leadership systems" are urgently needed to make it possible to coordinate troops abroad. Faced with the helpless efforts of military officials, Egon Ramms, the commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast, decided to take matters into his own hands. Following extensive comparison studies, the German general recommended purchasing a computer system from new NATO member Poland. Unlike the German military's "Heros" system, says Ramms, the Polish equipment allows for the seamless transfer of data among departments within NATO and the European Union.
Given these levels of poor management and waste, many important projects simply lack the necessary funding. While Germany plans to launch its first spy satellite next year, the Bundeswehr has only four "Luna" unmanned aerial vehicles for near-range reconnaissance in places like Kinshasa and Kabul. The cameras mounted on the small aircraft are capable of delivering live, close-up images that enable German forces to detect potential assailants. Although the military has a considerable need for such aircraft, only four additional systems have been approved -- with the fourth scheduled for purchase in 2012.
The money is apparently also lacking for urgently needed "Dingo" armored patrol vehicles. Although the Bundeswehr recently ordered 149 of the vehicles, it won't have the funds to pay for the last of the vehicles until 2011. The military's economizing even extends to personal equipment for its soldiers. Although it recently purchased 166,000 new G-36 assault rifles, only 14,000 came equipped with night vision scopes.
The Bundeswehr's ambitious "Infantry of the Future" project has all but fizzled. So far only two companies have received the mini-computers, GPS navigation equipment and night vision scopes that are part of the planned effort -- though this may not necessarily be such a great loss. The wireless equipment doesn't work, which means that Germany's supposed high-tech warriors still lack the capacity to transmit critical data such as an enemy position's target coordinates.
The Bundeswehr has apparently "set the wrong priorities," complains Rainer Arnold, a defense expert and Social Democrat. Bernd Siebert, a defense politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, is also convinced that the Bundeswehr is putting its money in the wrong places. In his opinion the defense budget ought to be increased by €1 billion euros in what he calls an "immediate investment program." The CDU's defense experts plan to discuss Siebert's proposal this week.
Politicians within the conservative CDU/CSU coalition, in particular, are increasingly calling for a boost in defense spending. "It's an unavoidable debate," says Andreas Schockenhoff, the deputy head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. "The gap is widening every day between the military's mounting tasks and its declining funds." The chancellor, on the other hand, has taken her customarily noncommittal approach to the issue. Of course, she says vaguely, an additional deployment such as the one in Lebanon "will play a role in the 2007 budget debate."
The chancellor also avoided the sensitive issue during her tour of naval maneuvers in Warnemünde last Thursday, instead praising the navy's "highly motivated" sailors. After the visit, Merkel said that it was her impression "that the navy operates with state-of-the-art technology." The chancellor was apparently impressed by her small excursion on the new high-tech frigate "Saxony."
No one told her that the software on the Saxony's firing control system still doesn't work. Apparently the manufacturer installed three different software systems on the frigate and its two sister ships, systems that are unable to communicate effectively with one another. Fixing the problem will take months, which means that the navy's three new super-ships won't be taking part in missions anytime soon.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Germany's Army Feels the Pinch
By Konstantin von Hammerstein and Alexander Szandar
With deployments in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Africa and now the Middle East, Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, is fast becoming the global service provider for German foreign policy. But the force is insufficiently prepared for its new tasks and, as it is about to embark to Lebanon on its next foreign mission, remains underfunded and poorly equipped.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,695528,00.jpg AP
German Defense Minister Josef Jung: The German army's needs are growing faster than its capabilities.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is here to send a message. After climbing on board, she now stands in the brisk morning wind on the deck of the frigate "Saxony" to address a group of sailors. It makes for good TV imagery on Thursday evening, imagery dominated by a chancellor who clearly has a special place in her heart for Germany's troops. Why else would Merkel be paying a visit to the German navy at its base in the Baltic seaport of Warnemünde?
After Merkel had spoken with the Lebanese prime minister by telephone the day before, it now seems clear that a German naval fleet will sail for Lebanon in the next few days. About 1,800 soldiers from the German air force and navy will likely take part in the mission, provided the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, approves the measure this week, as it is expected to do. Here in Warnemünde, Merkel tells the assembled sailors that she is confident that "the navy is prepared to assume responsibility."
Out at sea the navy was showing off the capabilities of two of its speedboats, the "Zobel" and the "Frettchen." One of the two craft shot magnesium flares into the air to demonstrate the navy's latest method of distracting enemy rockets. Germany has promised to send three or four of these boats to Lebanon as part of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent being assembled there.
It's a daring promise on Germany's part, given the problems the boats have experienced on previous missions in the Mediterranean. At high speeds, the crafts' ribs broke in the Mediterranean's heavy swells. Since then, the ships are no longer permitted to travel with full fuel tanks and have been forced to reduce their weapons payloads while in the region. Higher water temperatures have wreaked havoc on cooling systems for the vessels' electronic systems and diesel engines, forcing the speedboats to travel at reduced speeds.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,695613,00.jpg DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: International comparison of military spending
The journey to the Levantine coast will be a long one. Because the boats cannot be operated without their full 34-man crews, they'll be forced to put in to port every two days. The trip for these so-called "speedboats" will be everything but speedy and will take an estimated two weeks. But no one is likely to care much about the delay, because these are not the types of ships that will be needed for one of the peacekeeping force's key tasks in Lebanon, which is to search other vessels. The rocket launcher on the afterdeck takes up so much space that there is no room for a rubber dinghy that would enable the German sailors to board a suspicious ship. The two frigates' "Sea Lynx" helicopters, which will also be redeployed to the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, will handle the task instead. But even these helicopters are not designed for such use and will have to make two flights to carry a complete twelve-member search and inspection team.
The equipment difficulties the Lebanon mission highlights are symptomatic of the Bundeswehr's overall condition and of the fact that Germany's armed forces have not been properly equipped for their changing duties for some time now. This chronically underfunded, poorly outfitted and physically exhausted force is now embarking on a new foreign mission, with ten others already underway.
German troops are helping secure the peace in Bosnia and Kosovo, are stationed in Afghanistan, Congo and Sudan, are patrolling the Horn of Africa and serving as military observers in Georgia and in the border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sixteen years after the end of the Cold War, the German government is increasingly using the armed forces as a global service provider for Berlin's foreign policy. Germans themselves are reluctantly getting used to the fact that their reunified country is now also assuming the military role of a medium-sized power.
EXPENSIVE AND SUPERFLUENCE: PLANNED BUNDESWARE PROCUREMENT
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,10827,00.gif Eurocopter
Tiger Combat Helicopter Number: 80; Cost: €2.6 billion
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,416978,00.jpg DDP
Eurofighter Fighter Jet Number: 180; Cost: over €21 billion
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,619277,00.jpg REUTERS
Puma Infantry Fighting Vehicle Number: 410; Cost: €2.1 billion
But the demand for the Bundeswehr has grown faster than its capabilities. While countries like Australia, France and Great Britain have increased their military spending in recent years, Germany's defense budget has declined almost continuously since reunification. "Germany is among the countries that spends a relatively small percentage of its budget on defense," says the chancellor, succinctly summing up the problem.
Indeed, Germany spends just over one percent of its gross domestic product of about €2 trillion on defense, which puts it at the tail end of NATO countries in terms of military spending. Although the Bundeswehr's €24 billion budget will increase by €480 million next year, its own costs will rise by €300 million as a result of the increase in the value-added tax later this year that has already been approved by the Bundestag.
The defense minister is virtually the only prominent politician willing to stand up for the Bundeswehr. "Many members of parliament have lost interest in the Bundeswehr," says former Defense Minister and Social Democrat Hans Apel. "Supporting the military does nothing for their careers."
Despite its growing importance internationally, the German military continues to play the role of a stepchild in German domestic politics. Despite opinion polls that show the armed forces, together with the Federal Constitutional Court and the police, enjoying the highest level of public confidence among all government institutions, this hasn't convinced politicians to open the national pocketbook when it comes to military spending. Besides, two-thirds of German citizens say that Germany has plenty of problems of its own that should be addressed before turning to problems in other countries.
This apathy within the public and the legislature means that experts are the only ones who are currently addressing key defense issues. How big should the country's armed forces be? Is compulsory military service still appropriate today? Which of Germany's national interests urgently require the deployment of its armed forces? What should the army of the future look like?
The last of these questions has been systematically ignored for years. Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's last defense minister, Volker Rühe, dragged his feet when it came to transforming the Bundeswehr into an intervention force, because he wanted to avoid the domestic political controversy he feared such a change would trigger. Only his successors, Rudolf Scharping and Peter Struck, both Social Democrats, launched the overdue reforms starting in 1998.
Germany's security "also needs to be defended in the Hindukush," said Struck. "Our field of operations is the whole world." Struck envisioned the new intervention force replacing the old Bundeswehr, which was still designed to repel the powerful armies of the former Soviet bloc, by 2010.
The current defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, continues to stand by his predecessor's goal. In the draft version of his new "White Paper on Germany's Security Policy," Jung, a Christian Democrat, proposes a rigorous restructuring and re-equipping of the military to suit its "more likely tasks" -- international crisis control instead of tank battles on the northern German plains.
But there is hardly any other political sphere in which ideas and reality are so far apart. A study by the government-aligned German Institute for International and Security Affairs is consistently critical in its assessment of the results of reform efforts to date. According to the study, the Bundeswehr has failed to structure its arms planning to suit the "requirements of the current situation in security policy." The military, the study concludes, still has a tendency to "hone the capabilities it needed during the Cold War."
The conclusions are obvious. The Bundeswehr is spending its already stretched budget on yesterday's projects. For example, it's been 16 years since the end of the Cold War and yet the air force continues to insist on acquiring the MEADS missile defense system, at a price tag running into the billions, a system that dates back to a 1980s initiative by former Defense Minister and Christian Democrat Manfred Wörner.
NEWSLETTER (http://service.spiegel.de/backoffice/newsletter-service.do?product=spon-en-newsletter)
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday. (http://service.spiegel.de/backoffice/newsletter-service.do?product=spon-en-newsletter)
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In recent years the army, loath to be outdone by the air force, has purchased 188 "Howitzer 2000" tanks with a range of 40 kilometers (25 miles). Acquisitions like these have prompted Germany's military leadership to brag that it has "the world's most modern artillery." But rivals within the air force promptly ridiculed their army counterparts, saying that the new short-range weapons are of little more use than for "shooting into the sky on New Years Eve in Uzbekistan." The air force, for its part, can't be dissuaded from pursuing its plan to purchase 180 Eurofighter jets for about €21 billion.
To his credit, former defense minister Peter Struck ordered a reduction in Germany's inventory of heavy Leopard 2 tanks from almost 2,000 to 350. But the generals were so upset over Struck's decision that, in order to placate them, he approved purchases of the "Puma" armored personnel carrier. As it turned out, the giant steel vehicle, weighing in at 43 tons when fully loaded with battle gear, was too heavy to be carried by the newly developed A400M transport aircraft.
Military leaders didn't see this as a problem. The "Puma" will now be constructed as a modular vehicle and assembled upon arrival in its deployment region. In its report, the Institute for International and Security Affairs acerbically notes: "The extent to which it makes sense to conduct such assembly work in acute crisis regions where armed conflict may already be underway merits further investigation."
Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, only recently approved the Bundeswehr's planned purchase of new antitank missiles for its "Tiger" combat helicopter. The original plans for the missiles stem from the 1980s and the German military's efforts to be prepared for a Soviet tank offensive in the "Fulda Gap" region near the then-border between West and East Germany.
Despite efforts by Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the inspector general of the Bundeswehr, to convince the Defense Ministry to approve fewer than the planned 80 Tiger combat helicopters and 180 Eurofighters, officials there rejected his proposal out of fears that it would prompt the defense industry to demand compensation for the reduction in order volume. Despite the fact that the two systems will consume about one-third of the Bundeswehr's purchasing budget in the coming years, defense ministry officials decided to keep their orders at the original levels.
Photo Gallery: Merkel's Day at Sea
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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 Photos)
Germany's defense planners continue to order away, seemingly ignorant of their troops' more urgent needs. This year the Bundestag will be called upon, once again, to approve many new acquisitions that shouldn't be given priority, including equipment for the MEADS system, high-tech frigates priced in the billions, submarines and the "Boxer" wheeled multirole armored vehicle (MRAV). At three meters (about 10 feet) wide and almost eight meters (26 feet) long, and weighing in at over 30 tons, the Boxer is so disproportionately large that its usefulness in places like Afghanistan and Kosovo is severely limited.
Coupled with the obviously erroneous investment in unnecessary major projects is the defense bureaucracy's equally obvious inability to successfully implement projects that actually do make sense. As a result, the "powerful force" the Bundeswehr calls itself in its promotional materials still lacks much of the equipment it so urgently needs to perform its new tasks: state-of-the-art information and communications technology, lightweight vehicles instead of heavy tanks, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles for fast and precise reconnaissance and large, long-range transport aircraft. Bureaucrats at the Defense Ministry have spent the last five years negotiating with various suppliers to agree to the transfer of about 300,000 telephone connections and 100,000 computer jobs to a private firm the federal government plans to establish with a consortium of companies.
The "Hercules" project is estimated to cost more than €6.5 billion over a ten-year period, and yet not a single member of parliament has submitted the draft legislation needed to approve the project. The defense administration's efforts to combine the separate computer systems of the army, air force and navy into a single efficient network have been just as futile. Such "leadership systems" are urgently needed to make it possible to coordinate troops abroad. Faced with the helpless efforts of military officials, Egon Ramms, the commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast, decided to take matters into his own hands. Following extensive comparison studies, the German general recommended purchasing a computer system from new NATO member Poland. Unlike the German military's "Heros" system, says Ramms, the Polish equipment allows for the seamless transfer of data among departments within NATO and the European Union.
Given these levels of poor management and waste, many important projects simply lack the necessary funding. While Germany plans to launch its first spy satellite next year, the Bundeswehr has only four "Luna" unmanned aerial vehicles for near-range reconnaissance in places like Kinshasa and Kabul. The cameras mounted on the small aircraft are capable of delivering live, close-up images that enable German forces to detect potential assailants. Although the military has a considerable need for such aircraft, only four additional systems have been approved -- with the fourth scheduled for purchase in 2012.
The money is apparently also lacking for urgently needed "Dingo" armored patrol vehicles. Although the Bundeswehr recently ordered 149 of the vehicles, it won't have the funds to pay for the last of the vehicles until 2011. The military's economizing even extends to personal equipment for its soldiers. Although it recently purchased 166,000 new G-36 assault rifles, only 14,000 came equipped with night vision scopes.
The Bundeswehr's ambitious "Infantry of the Future" project has all but fizzled. So far only two companies have received the mini-computers, GPS navigation equipment and night vision scopes that are part of the planned effort -- though this may not necessarily be such a great loss. The wireless equipment doesn't work, which means that Germany's supposed high-tech warriors still lack the capacity to transmit critical data such as an enemy position's target coordinates.
The Bundeswehr has apparently "set the wrong priorities," complains Rainer Arnold, a defense expert and Social Democrat. Bernd Siebert, a defense politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, is also convinced that the Bundeswehr is putting its money in the wrong places. In his opinion the defense budget ought to be increased by €1 billion euros in what he calls an "immediate investment program." The CDU's defense experts plan to discuss Siebert's proposal this week.
Politicians within the conservative CDU/CSU coalition, in particular, are increasingly calling for a boost in defense spending. "It's an unavoidable debate," says Andreas Schockenhoff, the deputy head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. "The gap is widening every day between the military's mounting tasks and its declining funds." The chancellor, on the other hand, has taken her customarily noncommittal approach to the issue. Of course, she says vaguely, an additional deployment such as the one in Lebanon "will play a role in the 2007 budget debate."
The chancellor also avoided the sensitive issue during her tour of naval maneuvers in Warnemünde last Thursday, instead praising the navy's "highly motivated" sailors. After the visit, Merkel said that it was her impression "that the navy operates with state-of-the-art technology." The chancellor was apparently impressed by her small excursion on the new high-tech frigate "Saxony."
No one told her that the software on the Saxony's firing control system still doesn't work. Apparently the manufacturer installed three different software systems on the frigate and its two sister ships, systems that are unable to communicate effectively with one another. Fixing the problem will take months, which means that the navy's three new super-ships won't be taking part in missions anytime soon.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan