[Skybird]

Yesterday I saw a 30 minutes documentary about the Bundeswehr, and they illustrated quite well why so many leave it, early if they are recruits, or bitter and frustrated when they are already with it since many years. A women that was a Eurofighter pilot (honestly said I did not even know or remember we had female fighter pilots in service) just has left the cockpit after 14 years, frustrated and anything but at peace with the Luftwaffe. She quoted miserable personnel policies and lousy leadership as well as an extremely poor ready-status of equipment and unavailable equipment, often leading to situations that training flights were cancelled since no working Eurofighter was available again, and I have read a few years ago that many pilots cannot even get the mandatory minimum of flight hours (how they keep their license then they did not write...).


In mid-June, Germany will see parts of its airspace closed for NATO's biggest military exercise since decades. Civilian flight traffic will be massively affected in the closed air zones (will be cancelled). Hundreds of aircraft of NATO members are currently shuttled into Germany.



Today I read this:

For motorcycle rockers, it's part of the ritual: at a red light, the throttle is turned up to idle. The engine howls, the exhaust smokes, the audience watches a spectacle that could be described as a frenzied standstill. The simulation of motion is also widespread in politics.

The motorcycle rockers of the traffic light coalition look like Boris Pistorius and Eva Högl. With their loudly stated thoughts about reintroducing compulsory military service (Högl: "We have to start the debate now.", Pistorius: Discussion about compulsory service would be "valuable"), they have increased the torque of the debate, admittedly without shifting into gear.

Nothing moves, but it smokes and rattles. The practiced idling politician doesn't change the world, but the next morning's headline does. The advantage of this political simulation is obvious: the only one who really has to make an effort is the paperboy who carries the hot air through the housing estate.

The matter of compulsory military service, which all three parties in today's traffic light coalition voted to suspend in 2011, is well suited for such maneuvers. The demand is risk-free. There are five solid reasons why the federal government and also the business elite are not seriously thinking of re-deciding this issue.

Reason 1: Military justice not guaranteed

Draft justice - that is, the fairness in conscription mandated by the Constitution - was not guaranteed even in the past. Conscription was like a lottery; even in the good old days of the Bundeswehr, only 30 to 40 percent of a cohort found their way into the barracks.
To this day, the Two-Plus-Four Treaty stipulates that the absolute ceiling for German armed forces is set at 370,000. Equality is now causing additional problems: Young women would also have to be conscripted today - in barracks that don't even exist for them.

Reason 2: Bundeswehr currently unable to absorb new personnel

The Bundeswehr in its current state is dysfunctional and cannot absorb new personnel at all.

The report of the military commissioners meticulously records the deficiencies. At the Klotzberg barracks in Idar-Oberstein, for example, 90 men and women have access to only two toilets. The mountain troops report inadequate ski equipment, boat crews complain about a lack of cold weather gear. A large part of the war equipment cannot be used - in the case of helicopters, around 60 percent of all machines.

Reason 3: Compulsory military service would have serious consequences for the labor market

With a shrinking work force that will lose 400,000 workers a year from now on to retirement demographics, it would be madness to draft entire cohorts into the barracks.

In the event of general compulsory military service, an entire cohort - i.e. around 700,000 young people - would be deliberately kept out of the labor market - with serious repercussions also for tax and social security revenues. Germany would wilfully slow down its economic growth.

Reason 4: No capacity for hiring and training recruits

The personnel capacities for recruiting and training recruits no longer exist. With the abolition of compulsory military service, the Bundeswehr has been reduced from 225,000 soldiers to 185,000, and many Bundeswehr sites have been handed over to local authorities, which use the space for housing construction. The district military replacement offices, once responsible for recruitment and mustering, have been dissolved.

Reason 5: "We need professionals"

The most important difference between the conscript army of yesteryear and now is the innovation in military technology. It requires professionals, engineers, software developers, not military unskilled workers. Carlo Masala, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, says that today one would have to plan for a training period of 18 months "because the military equipment is so complex." His dictum: "We need professionals."
Conclusion: the "citizen in uniform" is a memory item from the poetry album of the early years. Today, he is only good as an extra in a historical drama. And the compulsory military service that legitimizes it belongs not in the law gazette again, but in the Museum of Contemporary History.


[Focus]