Over here, after reunification German giovernments used to abuse the military as a fincial reserve they coukd plunder for other puproses, and so the budget dried out. Und defence minister Guttenberg at the latest the manasgment principle became "a few and as little as possible", and "one equipment item for sevcerla troops/units", the item being rotated around". The lack of spare parts was declaqred a management virtue, no stockpiles neededn o warehouse management, and so more cutting of costs.
That for example one NVG cannot be used by several soldiers simultaneously, was not understood. Platforms and carrier system got further cannibalized: "kill two or three to get one functional".
Specific bureaucratic mchnaism in the ministry hinder further reofmrs and improvements: too many cooks spoil the brew. Germany today has more generals than the German Wehrmacht at the height of WW2. All of them want their privileges, their prestige, their pensions, their say in something. Finally came defence ministress
von der Leyen, a little children doctor mummy not knowing anythign about defence and military and wanting to prove the worlds what a tough guy a little girl can be. She introduced even more civilian advuisors form business companies that a fortune get wasted on, and cared a lot for cosmetic mirrors for the troops in their lockers, to make the army attractive for female soldiers. While she was busy with the femenist revolution in the army, severla projects i her house saw no imrovment in amanagement and mi9nisterial surveillance, but even went com0pletely out of hand, for exmaple the restoratipon of the training sialijg ship of the German Navy, the Gorch ****: costs for it exploded from planned 10 million to over 130 million. Its symptomatic for how the defence ministry ticks.
Last year I linked to numbers on how huge the quantity of non-functional carrier platforms in the individual weapon branches is. Its saddening, and ridiculous. May it be the danes, the Poles or the Czechs or Swiss: all these neighbours spend less money on defence, but get so much better numbers in functional systems and combat readiness. SAomething goes terribly wrong in the German system, and its a systemtic, a structural fault. As fearsome as the efficiency of the German army in WW2 may have been - today, its successor has swung like a pendulum from the one extreme to the other. I must say the Germany qualify as the biggest joke in the NATO alliance. And nobody seems to waste its money nicier, than the Germans.
I once red a text by a former Eastgerman officer, who some time after reunification and as a pensioneer went to the Bundeswehr and gave it a privately interested closer inspection, as a hobby historian. He said he was shocked at how bad the status was already back then, during the cold war. He said the WP expected something completely different from the Westgerman forces. Well. He said as a former professional soldier and officer, he found what he saw "disgusting".