Spiegel: Germany’s Disarmed Forces
Ramshackle Military at Odds with Global Aspirations
Summary:
by trueHUEnews staff October 11, 2014:
The German government has reduced the budget for the armed forces by €400 million ($504 million) to €32.8 billion. Spending on the military is expected to drop to €32.1 billion next year.
A recent NATO ranking showed that Germany’s military spending is 1.29 percent of GDP, far short of the 2 percent spent by Britain and 14th overall in a ranking of alliance member states.
SPIEGEL Staff reports:
09/30/2014 04:59 PM
At the moment, if Germany’s allies were to ask it to step up its participation in deployments in the Baltic states or Iraq, for example, Chancellor Merkel would likely have to politely pass, creating a highly embarrassing situation for the country. For the moment, though, most pressure related to the Bundeswehr’s ailments has been directed at von der Leyen. Her critics argue that she has pursued a foreign and security policy vision that goes beyond the Bundeswehr’s actual capabilities. Now she faces additional criticism that she tried to play down the military’s problems to members of parliament even though senior officials in her ministry were well aware of major shortcomings in the armed forces.
In a hearing of the defense committee, the Bundeswehr General Inspector and other senior representatives of the military and the defense ministry presented the state of affairs to members of parliament. The committee had sought additional information after SPIEGEL reported in August about major deficiencies in the operational capability of important German weapons systems. On Wednesday, members of the committee reviewed a paper that provided a color-coded green, yellow and red classifications based on an assessment of the operational capability of the 22 main weapons systems used by the army, navy and air force.
It appears that the paper included a considerable amount of misleading information and that the military might even be in worse shape than that presented by the officials.
Already, the defense minister has been forced to concede that Germany will not reach its 2014 NATO Defense Planning Process targets for its airborne systems. In the event of an Article 5 attack on a NATO member state — in the Baltics, for example — the Bundeswehr has pledged to make 60 Eurofighters available, but it is currently incapable of supplying them. If the allies come knocking at Germany’s door for greater engagement in northern Iraq or Africa, the Bundeswehr won’t be able to deliver there either. Indeed, it’s possible that the world’s fourth largest industrial nation and global leader in exports wouldn’t even be able to provide six fighter jets to a US-led coalition in northern Iraq.
