The New German Army

United Press International ^ | January 14, 2004 | Martin Walker

[quidnunc]

Most of the attention on Germany's sweeping cuts in its defense budget has focused on the money. That's understandable, with Germany now on track to be spending a bare 1 percent of gross domestic product on defense (Britain spends nearly 3 percent and the United States almost 4 percent). But the real story lies in the transformation of the still-formidable German military.

Defense Minister Peter Struck's announcement noted that 100 of Germany's bases (about one in five) will be closed and the current armed forces of 285,000 troops, sailors and airmen will be cut back to 250,000. Moreover, the present organization of the German army into three armored and two mechanized infantry divisions, with 2,400 Leopard tanks, is being subjected to the most-dramatic change in the Bundeswehr's history.

Still broadly configured for that great Cold War clash of tank armies in Central Europe that never came, the Bundeswehr is being transformed into the world's first post-modern military force. If ever the revived Red Army were to come sweeping through the North German plain, Struck's new army would probably be in no shape to do much more than hand them speeding tickets as they sweep past to the English Channel.

-snip-

[Prodigal Son]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Most of the attention on Germany's sweeping cuts in its defense budget has focused on the money. That's understandable, with Germany now on track to be spending a bare 1 percent of gross domestic product on defense (Britain spends nearly 3 percent and the United States almost 4 percent). But the real story lies in the transformation of the still-formidable German military.

Defense Minister Peter Struck's announcement noted that 100 of Germany's bases (about one in five) will be closed and the current armed forces of 285,000 troops, sailors and airmen will be cut back to 250,000. Moreover, the present organization of the German army into three armored and two mechanized infantry divisions, with 2,400 Leopard tanks, is being subjected to the most-dramatic change in the Bundeswehr's history.

Still broadly configured for that great Cold War clash of tank armies in Central Europe that never came, the Bundeswehr is being transformed into the world's first post-modern military force. If ever the revived Red Army were to come sweeping through the North German plain, Struck's new army would probably be in no shape to do much more than hand them speeding tickets as they sweep past to the English Channel.

The army is to be divided into three distinct forces. There will be an intervention force of 35,000 troops for tough international missions that are likely to involve fighting. There will be another stabilization force of 70,000 troops for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, like the ones the German army currently undertakes in the Balkans and Afghanistan. There will be 137,000 troops designated as "support," and the remaining 10,000 will be a ready reserve, available to be flexibly deployed where needed.

This is an army designed for the new realities of the post-Cold War world, Struck argues. There is no real prospect of a major conventional war in Europe, so the need now is for agile forces trained for both peacekeeping and peacemaking. It would allow Germany, if the politicians were to agree, to conduct its current peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and the Afghan hills, while also having a credible, expeditionary force available for missions like the war on Iraq. But given Germany's opposition to that fight, it would more likely be devoted to coalition operations, whether under NATO or European Union or U.N. banners. It is not big enough to achieve much alone.

But this is a classic example of that old rule that when a committee starts out to draw a horse, it produces a camel. The hands of committees of politicians are all over this. Struck had initially spoken of scrapping the German draft, but this plan retains it, pleading that the next election of 2006 should precede such a decision. The reality is that the Health minister, whose hospitals depend on the 90,000 young Germans who choose voluntary welfare service rather than a military uniform for the conscription term, blanched at the thought of the costs of replacing them.

Moreover, Struck's new force should have little need for the 180 new Eurofighters on order, which were initially designed to hold the skies against a Soviet invasion. The new missions need combat helicopters, ground-support fighter-bombers, military transports and electronic warfare aircraft, rather than air superiority fighters. But because the Eurofighter (already criticized as semi-obsolescent since it is not a Stealth warplane) is a joint production with the Brits, Italians and Spaniards, the Germans are stuck with it for political reasons.

Equally, political reasons may lurk behind the decision to cancel the planned purchase of U.S.-built Patriot missiles, for which there is a compelling military need. The Navy also loses its planned pilotless reconnaissance drones. Struck claims the cuts of some $30 billion over the next 5-7 year budget period "will open up room for targeted weapons investment from 2012." That is a long time to wait for the high-tech weaponry that has been commonplace in the American and British arsenals for years.

Struck said his project was "about switching military planning from unrealistic projects back to realism," and he has a case. Under-funded for years, with aging equipment and too many semi-trained troops, the Bundeswehr is barely able now to accomplish the territorial defense task which was its Cold War mission. The once-proud German military is the classic example of that unimpressive European defense system, which claims to keep 2 million troops under arms, but had a terrible job in deploying even 40,000 of them into the Balkans with the Kosovo war.

Now at least it might be able to make a decent job of the post-Cold war missions that Struck has defined as the Bundeswehr's future. But bear in mind that retooling the German military for small wars and peacekeeping carries one massive political implication. For serious defense of its homeland, Germany will now be dependent on friends and allies that can deploy heavy force, which means NATO, which in turn means the United States. For all Germany's diplomatic sniping at London and Washington over the Iraq war, the German homeland will in future depend -- just as much as during the Cold War, on the American taxpayer continuing to pay for Europe's security.

[.cnI redruM]

They are going the way of The Canadians.

[JerseyHighlander]

Sounds like the same old same old for the last 13 years. These German soldiers will be trained to repress civil uprisings, be it abroad or home. The Germans are willing to sacrifice their youth to the thrashings or war to save their pensioners medical system, while the French have given up on both. Conscript candy striping in Europe will avoid the collapse of their social services welfare programs for boomers, while US taxpayers continue to foot the bill to supplement (replace?) Europe's lack of deployable force. How much longer can NATO survive under these imbalanced terms of cooperation?

[marron]

Here is what will happen. At a certain point a military becomes too small to take on any kind of mission at all. At that point it becomes just a kind of welfare program.

I am already seeing reports that we have to withdraw from Iraq because the military stretched too thin to actually fight a war. At which point you have to ask, if the army is too small to fight a war, then why have it at all?

You either have to be big enough to fight and win, or you may as well close it down all together. Somewhere in between is just spending money for no purpose. If you spend not quite enough to win a war, you may as well have spent nothing at all.

The Euro armies are already incapable of warfighting, except with another major power providing logistics. And the only major power capable of providing those logistics is the US.

Which means that separate from the US, their only purpose is as a backdrop for Hollywood blockbusters. And in fact, Euro armies are competing with one another for Hollywood roles.

[KantianBurke]

took the words out of my mouth. No wonder those nations are such fans of "international laws" and the UN.

[.cnI redruM]

But what happens when all of them together have the equivalent of three non-interoperable combat divisions?

[PAR35]

They are going the way of The Canadians.

Sounds like a large enough force to take Paris.

an intervention force of 35,000 troops for tough international missions that are likely to involve fighting.

[AngryJawa]

Someone please tell me why the 'Rats want us seek permission to drag these non-functional armies along with us into battle. The fact that they ridicule the contributions of the Poles, the Spanish, etc. as being too small just boggles my mind.

[Michael81Dus]

Interesting comment on the current reforming process of the German Armed Forces. Personally, I consider the changes going the right way - but only regarding the future missions, not regarding the budget and equipment.

I have spoken to fellow-officers of the active personnel, and most - like me - criticize the double standard of the socialist government: making Germanys army ready for the future by cutting the budget and decreasing the spendings on the military.

It is not realistic to say that Europe will face a continental conventional war again. Any attack on Paris, London or Berlin would be answered with a nuclear strike. It´s logical to reduce our tank arsenal. Who needs thousands of tanks when fighting Taliban, Iraqis or whoever will host terrorists?

We need a better equipped air force, and light infantry, with anti-mines-vehicles, light armor. We need medical personnel, we need supply forces.

The German armed forces need more money, and, 250,000 men and women are not enough. We need to increase our size up to 300,000. That´s what most of our officer corps considers to be realistic to keep an acceptable number of soldiers in the homeland while we´re able to contribute contingents to smaller wars like the Iraq war for instance.

Michael
Lt. (Res), Deutsche Luftwaffe

[Prodigal Son]

Hmmm. The Germans have boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

I've read somewhere recently that the Germans had troops deployed to more countries than any other nation except the US.

Something to think about. They do make contributions.

[.cnI redruM]

They've never been the same since their retreat from Stalingrad in 1943.

[Michael81Dus]

RETREAT? Stalingrad was no German retreat. 150,000 German soldiers died in the streets of Stalins city, 91,000 became POW´s - 6,000 of them survived. More than double that many Russians are supposed to have died in that battle, too. Hitler is directly responsible for these deads.

[.cnI redruM]

I was actually discussing the Whermacht's very unpleasant walk home, where they lost over 60% of their functioning tanks and howitzers, rather than the battle itself. I will agree with you that the tactical stupidity of both Hitler and Stalin reared its ugly head and caused 100's of thousands of totally needless deaths on both sides of that horrific battle.

After 1943, Germany lost its appetite to develop or display military excellence of any sort in particular. It became seen as a societal curse. I think the later part of the Eastern WWII campaign hammered that home.

[Michael81Dus]

Uhhm... [thinking] .. you´re right that Germany is not willing to wage war if not unavoidable. But military technology "made in Germany" sometimes is excellent - after all. I think of the Heckler & Koch G3 earlier, and now the G36, the Leopard II A6, the Panzerhaubitze 2000, the Subs of the Dolphin class - every one leading in its class. It´s actually the money we lack... and the political support from our government.

[Billthedrill]

Hah! A fly-boy! Prepare for a thousand Air Force jokes to come at you (and they all translate...) ;-)

Seriously, thank you for your service to your country and to ours.

I think the general trend in these post-Cold-war days is away from the big iron and toward more mobile, deployable forces. So far so good. But maintaining the Euro-fighter for political purposes is appallingly expensive - critics have made similar statements about maintaining the F-18, F-22, and Joint Strike Fighter programs in the U.S. You can feed a lot of troopers for the cost of one of those machines.

There is, of course, nothing so unremittingly political as the acquisition of new military hardware - that was true even in the old Soviet Union. It's true internally and externally, and is one reason the U.S. Army ended up with a 9mm service pistol (a rather hot topic on FR among us gun nuts). But at some point the troopers' needs have to become paramount or they end up permanently short-changed and the defense contractors end up rich.

I wonder - do you think an all-volunteer German army is feasible at the moment, or have all these years of vigorous anti-military propaganda on campus taken its pool of potential volunteers away?

[.cnI redruM]

I'll grant you that German R@D is badly underfunded and as a result, undercuts the performance of the scientists and engineers in the Wehrmacht's civil service and acquisition corps. I was reading a recent issue of The Army Times. In it, our army's lead C3 specialist voiced concern that the US Army will not be able to interoperate with NATO forces 15-20 years from now.

Europe will have to reach a decision as to whether they really want to be able to operate completely with US forces or as seperate forces in the same theater. It doesn't mean the US is even particularly resentful towards NATO over recent diplomatic arguments.

We just have gotten to the point where non-digital commo gear is too obsolete to interoperate with. This leaves us less able to avoid situations where friendly fire incidents and other forms of tragic miscommunication become more prevalent.

[Michael81Dus]

A fly-boy!

Since I´m only doing some weekend service and 4-8 weeks per year, I consider myself more a student at the University of Hamburg. ;-)

Btw, I´m one of those guarding AF facilities, the infantry of the Luftwaffe (the only soldiers within the AF, lol).

Sure, there may be reasonable criticism concerning the EF-2000 (Typhoon). Nevertheless, there´s a need to get a fighter jet for CA and AI. I don´t think that the EF-2000 will be used for TASMO, although the Navy will loose its own fighter jets (Tornado).

What´s wrong with pistols? They can be pretty helpful to keep your guys in the battle, lol. Just kidding. Our weapons are ok. I cannot complain about our personal equipment, ok, a GPS for everybody would be great, but .. you know how it is.

The draft is nearly at an end here. The government gets us ready to draft the last recruits in 2010, thus will mean the end of civilian service for hospitals, retirement homes, etc too. I´m not content with that. The current status of volunteers being sent to the foreign missions and making out the largest part of our army and the other part being soldiers of compelling military service for 9 months wasn´t bad at all. The draft makes sure that we have a fast and large Reserve for disasters like floods, or even WMD´s used against our population. Even the permanent protection of critical points like power and water supply stations would be possible with a relative strong Reserve force. And, we don´t know what will be in 10 years. Maybe Russia turns out to get aggressive and hungry for more land, despite the nuclear deterrence.

It´s not that bad to have a sizeable Reserve... it´s also a contribution to our homeland defense, which is a necessity according to our constitution.

My last hope is that a new government will rethink the whole issue. Once that the draft has ended, it´ll be difficult to re-establish it.

Respectfully,

Michael

[Michael81Dus]

I fully agree. This decision needs to be made. And I fear it already has been decided... I never suspected the US military to resent recent political decisions. I know that the US military is very supportive for NATO. Europe has come to the point to decide wether its military should be kept on the level of 1990, or to go along with the US to develop new technologies. The parliamental budget committees in Europe seem to think that there´s no threat against our societies out there.

[marron]

Once that the draft has ended, it´ll be difficult to re-establish it.

That is true. There is some pressure here on the part of the Democratic Party to reestablish the draft, primarily because if Bush did it, it would resurrect the antiwar violence of the sixties. Since most of the Dems now in office are of that era, they would love to relive their youth.

Bush isn't stupid enough to give them their wish, of course. I would say there is no chance politically of setting up a draft system unless there were some really dramatic event to occur, and if such a thing were to occur, there would be so many volunteers that the draft would be unnecessary.