Does NATO need to be improved militarily?

[Waylander]

Why should it be a problem capability wise? It is not as if the canadians operate a tank division down there. We are talking about 20 Leos. That's an overstrength company.

Ok with our tail heavy oversea behaviour we would end up needing 1000 extra men to operate them.

And I know that the DBwV has some lobbying power but this doesn't makes their statements any better.

 

[Falstaff]

In addition to the above post: the Ulrich Speck blog article can be found here (German and I'm too tired to translate; for those who are interested, google-translation?). Couldn't say it better! What do you think?

 

[Waylander]

Jup, he exaxtly hit the point.

 

[contedicavour]

2 remarks.

First of all your economy is taking off, budget deficit is being almost wiped out, and that means that your armed forces will at least get a whole load of new equipment

Secondly, with a more Atlanticist/interventionist Sarkozy as French President (his firs trip abroad was to see Mrs Merkel) we'll probably see an improved rapid reaction corps among core EU countries. These troops will end up being ready for NATO missions as well. What I mean with this is that stronger political will is even more important than military improvements to NATO.

We need both better weapons and stronger will to use them before reviewing UN charters or NATO structure, etc

cheers

 

[Falstaff]

You're a bit optimistic, my friend... With many procurement programmes underfunded already additional money (with a very strong if available) will be spent to get things straight. And there's so much left to do (strategic lift capability, for example).

I believe that Sarko is a very good man but it remains to be seen if he's eager to strengthen the EU or NATO or if he plays the France first card.

 

[Waylander]

I can also not see the Bundeswehr getting any benefits from the boosting economy.
What might be a possibility is that they finally start to pay the oversea mission from a different budget. This might free up some additional money.

In the end new toys are not the real problem but the speed with which they are procured. The procurement of important assets like NH90, Tiger, Puma, IdZ, etc. is just so damn slow...

 

[kato]

The procurement of important assets like NH90, Tiger, Puma, IdZ, etc. is just so damn slow...

Those are actually going fast, in comparison to other, less prestigious, stuff. The NBC Defence Force is expecting completely new equipment, current tentative introduction: 2009-2013. The name of that equipment? TEP-90, originally planned to be introduced around 1995 at the latest. And that stuff only costs like 100 million, so pretty cheap stuff. It's similar for the ZSanKdo, SKB, or certain engineer types. In my unit, in 1999, anything from after 1980 was "brand new", and equipment of all kinds from the 60s, and sometimes 50s, was common.
The combat forces get far better and fancier stuff in general, really, and in my opinion there's not necessarily a warranted need for that. If you look at Bundeswehr papers (eg BwPlan 2005), the lack of money doesn't really impact procurement projects that much - it's the essential stuff like base renovations where Bundeswehr money policy is downright abysmal.
In my opinion, the SKB should get a separate guaranteed budget (eg as a guaranteed percentage range of the overall defence budget). That would be a measure to improve the Bundeswehr itself. The actual mission costs are comparably cheap, we're only talking a few hundred million a year there for Germany, maybe a billion. Even the pure equipment maintenance/upkeep costs are higher.

 

[Waylander]

For sure it is not that much money but it is IMHO the best we can hope for. I really don't see any government raising the defense budget in the near future.

And I agree that there is much stuff which needs to be replaced as well as infrastructure projects (barracks, training areas, etc.) and training but I concentrated on the stuff which may be also known by other people here. The "etc." is for the rest.
One of the problems is not only a small budget but general planning. How many barracks have been renovated and then closed shortly after...

And despite the fact that there are other projects which are even slower the mentioned ones are still slow.
Lets take NH90 as an example. 6 at the WTD in Bückeburg, a small double-digit number at end assembly, a high one-digit number for ground and air tests in Donauwörth.
ECD plans for next year with 1 new NH90 for the Bundeswehr every two month.
Tiger should be a little bit better.

 

[Falstaff]

AFAIK the BMVg (the German MoD) demands a rise of 927 million € for 2008 while the CDU/CSU (one of the governing parties) wants to start negotiations about the 2008 budget with a rise of 1,3 billion €. Their reasoning for 400 million € more is based on the desolate condition of the Bundeswehr caserns. We'll see what happens.

 

[Waylander]

What about a little bet?
How much additional money is the Bundeswehr going to see?

 

[kato]

How much additional money is the Bundeswehr going to see?

They'll give em the 930 million - and then deduct from that the 300 million raise that was planned anyway (maybe the next 300 million raise for 2009 too ).
So they can say "hey we gave you what you wanted" (while the Bundeswehr of course means those 930 million in addition to the planned raise for a total of ~1.2 billion raise).

Something like that.

 

[Falstaff]

My bet is they'll end up with about 1 billion more and fix that for the 2009 budget.
That would be better than nothing, but I read estimates in the "Welt" that in 2009 there will be 900 million € less for procurement (630 million € in 2008) than in 2007 (given no rise in budget at all). So if we have a 1 billion rise it'll almost be spent on maintenance and renovation alone in 2009 already. A vicious spiral, I think.

One remark: Even if the missions abroad don't cost too much money I think they should be paid for from a special (extra) budget. That would make planning much easier.
And hey: 100 million € are 100 million €...

 

[contedicavour]

Well good luck folks... if the German Defence Ministry can't get a strong funding increase with such a strong economy/low deficit, I don't want to know what will happen at the next cyclical downturn...
Btw, a fast question (sorry a bit off topic) : are the German armed forces 100% professional or not yet ? I'm asking this because in Italy whenever the budget goes up, all the increases get gobbled up by salaries of professional soldiers replacing the former draft.

cheers

 

[kato]

Btw, a fast question (sorry a bit off topic) : are the German armed forces 100% professional or not yet ?

85%, about. 35,000 conscript spots in a planned structure of 254,000. conscripts almost only do guard duty and such these days.

Personnel cost is actually expected to go down - BwPlan 2007 reduces the personnel cost by 20-50 million per year over the next 5 years, and that despite increasing the salaries by 1.5% average per year, and increasing the number of professional soldiers by 3,000 in the same space.
The secret? They cut civilian personnel. By about 20,000 in the same time (out of 95,000 at the moment, and an original 115,000 in 2002).

As for the oh-so-strong economy and low deficit:
Germany borrows money every year to an extent that would cover the _entire_ defence budget (in 2006, the Federal Government alone borrowed 31.2 billion euro, with a defene budget of ... 24 billion or so). Total federal debt as of end-of-2006 was something like 930 billion euro; total debt of all governments in Germany ranged around 1.5 trillion euro.
They should see about reducing that first.

 

[contedicavour]

85%, about. 35,000 conscript spots in a planned structure of 254,000. conscripts almost only do guard duty and such these days.

Personnel cost is actually expected to go down - BwPlan 2007 reduces the personnel cost by 20-50 million per year over the next 5 years, and that despite increasing the salaries by 1.5% average per year, and increasing the number of professional soldiers by 3,000 in the same space.
The secret? They cut civilian personnel. By about 20,000 in the same time (out of 95,000 at the moment, and an original 115,000 in 2002).

As for the oh-so-strong economy and low deficit:
Germany borrows money every year to an extent that would cover the _entire_ defence budget (in 2006, the Federal Government alone borrowed 31.2 billion euro, with a defene budget of ... 24 billion or so). Total federal debt as of end-of-2006 was something like 930 billion euro; total debt of all governments in Germany ranged around 1.5 trillion euro.
They should see about reducing that first.

ouch, 254,000 for all 3 armed forces of which 220,000 professional ? That's not much for a country the size of Germany... We (Italy, with 58 million inhabitants) are still at 190,000 (all professional) even if a cut of 30,000 is expected to better fund operations and procurement.

cheers

 

[kato]

ouch, 254,000 for all 3 armed forces of which 220,000 professional ? That's not much for a country the size of Germany... We (Italy, with 58 million inhabitants) are still at 190,000 (all professional) even if a cut of 30,000 is expected to better fund operations and procurement.
cheers

Well, Germany isn't really that large - 83 million people, and declining. We're allowed 350,000 men in peacetime under CFE, if i remember right. In the 90s, the Bundeswehr was cut to accomodate CFE (to about 320,000 iirc by the mid-90s), and since then pretty much only the number of conscripts was cut. Back around 2000, the Bundeswehr still had 100,000 conscripts, so i think the number of professionals has actually risen.
In comparison to Italy, there are also some other differences - for example the Italian Navy has twice the manpower of the German Navy (iirc).

There has been a rather silent restructuring over the last 10 years, in particular when the SKB (Streitkräftebasis) was formed as a "fourth armed force". The SKB replaces all logistics, maintenance, base and other support personnel (for the three regular services), and works with a lot of civilian contract personnel - and outsourcing - in positions that soldiers used to fill. Also, the last two restructuring systems cut down heavily on "auxiliary personnel" in units not deemed as important any more post-Cold-War - like NBC personnel or air defense, which are both more "concentrated" now, or certain engineer types, some of which were absorbed into the SKB as well.
So the professionals - and conscripts - in the regular armed forces are actually sorta concentrated in combat units.

 

[Falstaff]

The BundesWehr-Plan 2008 has just become accessible here (certainly German). It's not exactly a "document of joy". Here's one little table that shows how money needed and money available until 2015 differ a lot. According to the document there is a 15 billion € gap until 2015 for procurement only. And it seems this gap ends because after 2015 there are no new procuremnt programs, it seems.
Let's see, 15 billion € from 2008-2015, that's a little less than 2 billion € per year. Should be possible for Europe's biggest economy.

 

[Waylander]

There is much more possible for europes biggest economy. Could you imagine how the Bundeswehr would look like if we would transform into a full professional army with the a GDP percentage like the Brits or France...

But the Bundeswehr is so low in priority that I don't even really believe that it gets the 1 billion € more per year the CDU is pressing for.

 

[Falstaff]

Well, let's see. GDP (2006) ~ 2,2 trillion €, NATO suggests 2% of GDP, makes 44 billion € for defence. In 2007 we'll actually spend ~ 28 billion €.

Where could we put all the carriers and SSNs?

BTW I'm a big fan of conscript armies (at least to some extent). Brings another PoV into the army IMHO.

 

[swerve]

There is much more possible for europes biggest economy. Could you imagine how the Bundeswehr would look like if we would transform into a full professional army with the a GDP percentage like the Brits or France.......

"Be scared. Be very scared"

That would mean increasing spending by about 80%. Some would go on pay (you'd have to increase it, to replace the current conscripts by professionals, assuming constant numbers - which I think would be sensible - or maybe cut the Heer slightly & hire more sailors), but equipment budget would multiply. Immediate BIIIIGG increase in R&D, acceleration of current development & procurement programmes, increase in training, making up maintenance backlogs & refurbishment of accomodation would mean little difficulty in spending the increase in the short term. In about 5 years, the Bundeswehr should be at tip-top efficiency, well-housed, with plenty of the latest gear in service. Then, it would be a question of maintaining the new level.

Imagine what would happen to Eurofighter development with the Bundeswehr awash with cash? And UCAVs? All those unfunded EADS programmes waiting for money . . . Missiles . . . Ships . . . Aircraft . . . Communications . . .