Broken fighter jets, grounded helicopters and idled tanks:

[Gerald]

...Germany's military is ailing.

There are so few German army helicopters available for the troops that pilots have been forced to train in bright yellow civilian choppers leased from the German Automobile Club.

A chronic shortage of spare parts and assorted technical woes have grounded 29 of the Bundeswehr's 130 camouflage-green helicopters. Acute shortages of parts have also left only 39 of the Luftwaffe's 128 Eurofighter jets combat-ready — idled along with nearly half of the armed forces' 224 Leopard tanks and five of its six submarines.

No country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance has savored the "peace dividend" as much as Germany, which slashed military spending in half after the Cold War. And no country in NATO has drawn more criticism from President Trump for not carrying its own military weight than Germany.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/...516-story.html

Not many countries come up in the alliance goal of 2% on military in NATO.

[Skybird]

Hey, there are kindergardens now ijn German garrisons, and the lockers of troops in their rooms got equipped with cosmetics mirrors. Finally, the military budget is steeply climbing in the next years, because development aid and military budget in parts get counted together in the numbers.


Somebody said, but I am not sure whether it is true,t hat if development aid gets substracted again from the defence budget, net defence budget indeed is shrinking in the coming years.



I also question the self-understanding of the German "military" (I am not sure one should call it that), and the attitude both of low rank troops, and high ranklinging officers and the bureauracy. The density of generals in the Bundeswehr now is I think 30 times higher than it ever was in the decades before, inclduing the world war. Impossible that there are so many important jobs and posts that need - costly - generals assigned to them.



Politicians are no warriors, and see these things through the eyes of clueless apparatschiks: the more generlas you have, the better your army must be. These generals must not even have done something in their career that earned them a - by competence rightly deserved - rank of general, because as we all know with age alone already comes wisdom.



The Bundeswehr is a bureaucratic stage actor, not a warrior's army. And I have read some former Eastgerman officers who after the German unification studied the Bundeswehr and were shocked by the light tone and fighting inability of the force, compared to what they used to do in drill and establish in standards in the East-German Volksarmee.



Niemandem jemals bloß kein Weh. They even have wihch-hunted pictures of former chancellor Helmut Schmidt in barracks and garrisons, because in his youth he was a Flak-Helfer in the Wehrmacht.



Recommended it before, recommendign it again:


https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-War...ds=John+Keegan



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Culture-War...in+van+creveld



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pussycats-R...in+van+creveld


Apply any of these books to a comparison with the present, and you will easily realise how deep the crisis is and how weak the Western armies are. Money and underfundign is just one problem. The greater threat is an unfit mentality and unsuited self-understanding of sodliers that do not want to be warriors, and military organisations that do not want to be connected with "war".



One thing is clerar. Russia has o reason to be worried abotu the Germna kilitary, its deterring effect is almost zero.


When the sun of politics is setting, even dwarves throw huge shadows. But they remain to be dwarves only, their spirit and mentality tiny.



I can only warn of trusting the Germans.

[Gerald]

I remembered in the sixties and seventies how strong Germany's defense force was.

[Skybird]

Well, was it really? In no other country more Starfighters F-104 fell from the sky. The Luftwaffe bought bigger numbers than they could maintain. Maybe that was symptomatic - not just for the Luftwaffe.



However, since those times the Bundeswehr certainly has not grown in credibility. And as I said, I deeply question its self-understanding of today.



Or when you think about attacking Germany, would you think twice when seeing our top level barracks barbie in action?





Aren't you scared, aren't you deterred now?

[Reece]

Yes I'm shaking in my boots!!

[Gerald]

Aren't you scared, aren't you deterred now?

LOL