Replies

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

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?