Actually this is just the first kill the mainstream media got their hands on.
According to the reservist magazine "loyal", Fallschirmjäger had two major firefights this year in which they killed Taleban. In one, it was nine KIA, the other five or so.
Strangely, this never made it into the mainstream media.
"Loyal" is not an army newspaper, but rather a semi-official reservist's association magazine, but it is not sold publically, but is distributed via subscription to reservists.
Normally it is dead boring.
The problem in Afghanistan is the "ROE card", which states that an enemy is not to be engaged as soon as he "visibly gives up the fight", that means as soon as he runs away. Weapon use is restricted to self defense.
In legal terms, the Bundeswehr is at peace in Afghanistan and all laws for the peacetime military apply there.
This often leads to such fancy pieces of brainwork that you almost can't believe it.
A problem with the Bundeswehr is the civilian oversight.
Basically, soldiers are restricted to soldiering, everything else is done by civil servants. Administration, procurement, research.
However, the administrative overhead is simply far too large for the downsized Bundeswehr.
Also, the Bundeswehr managed to downsize itself quite strangely.
The overall number of soldiers is roughly half the cold war level, while the overall number of combat troops is only 1/27th of cold war level!
Navy and air Force are better off, but the army has dozens of logistics and communications battalions and only a few tank battalions now.
Another problem is the retention of conscription. The term is nine months now, but due to the short service period, posts where conscripts can serve are so rare that fewer and fewer people get called up.
There are fewer and fewer actual combat units that have conscripts.
And those who do, mostly have volunteer conscripts serving for 2 years.
Another problem is leadership.
Basically, any officer above the rank of brigadier general can be cashiered by the ministry without reason, which has led to rather opportunistic officers in top positions.
A reason for this is also the highly erratic behaviour of the ministers themselves.
In the last years, the defence ministry was a post mostly assigned to political lightweights as a reward.
In some ways, Hellmut Schmidt was the last defense minister of any format, and that was in the 1970s!
The last defense ministers were mostly disastrous. Under Kohl, Volker Rühe caused many of the current problems, disbanded units if he could not fire their overly critical COs and was generally regarded as a bully (Volker Rüpel "Volker the Bully").
Schröder's first, Rudolf Scharping, was simply a dimwhit who should never have held any public office. He even failed as president of the german cycling association.
Peter Struck, the second Schröder defense minister, was somewhat the best of the bunch, no military experience, but Struck was a political animal that knew his way around in german politics and at least he tried.
Franz-Josef Jung, Merkel's defense minister, is simply a coward and a political lightweight. Not to mention he is most likely corrupt as well.
He got this office because he's close to one of Merkel's sharpest rivals in her own Party, Roland Koch. His whole credentials are being close to Koch, and his minister post was a political concession to Koch. Jung is simply a disaster, even if he should have more military experience than average, as he is a reserve officer.
But it really does not show.
Merkel should've given defense to Manfred Schönboom, who's an ex General, but he has no standing in the federal CDU and is too caught up in Brandenburg.
But sometimes I suppose the whole german armed forces should be abolished and reestablished again, in order to start with a clean slate.
There is simply no political will, and the civilian oversight bureaucracy seems to be more interested in limiting the effectiveness of the military than to increase it.
That said, there are bright spots. Officer training is as good as it always has been and the new (post 1990s) generation of officers are totally different from the current. Today's generals come from the 1980s cold war army and tend to see their position as "just another job" while younger officers and career soldiers are just as patriotic and dedicated as US or british soldiers.
Problem is, most of them quit early because of sheer frustration.
Socially, I think the military is more popular than most soldiers think. Germans do not oppose the Afghanistan mission because of antimilitarism or pacifism, but because they question the political and military sense of the operation, especially due to those moronic ROEs.
Bundeswehr soldiers often indulge in self-pity ("nobody loves us") but that is not the case anymore.
Political extremists from left and right have a problem with the military, but the mainstream mostly sees it quite positively.
Ironically, leftists often criticize the Bundeswehr for being too close to the Wehrmacht, while rightists criticize the Bundeswehr for not being close enough
