
Germany’s soldiers of misfortune - smacktoward
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-biggest-enemy-threadbare-army-bundeswehr/
======
lqet
In case anyone has missed it, Angela Merkel could not attend the beginning of
the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires because her plane, which is operated by the
Flugbereitschaft [0] (part of the Luftwaffe) had to make an emergency landing
because of serious technical problems [1]. It's a sad state of affairs, and
getting increasingly embarrassing.

That being said, you have to be careful. There recently was an insightful
article in the FAZ [2] (in German). Basically, a few years ago, the current
minister of defense Ursula von der Leyen started to reform a department that
may be seen as something between a gentlemen's club of military
traditionalists and a lobby organization of the military industrial complex
with around 250.000 employees. It swallowed up copious amounts of tax money,
and Ursula von der Leyen made herself a lot of enemies among the profiteers of
that system by trying to put this to an end. She then made the mistake of
attacking Bundeswehr traditions which may be seen as politically incorrect and
archaic from the outside, but are important for the troop morale. So, if you
like conspiracy theories, you may argue that there are people inside the
Bundeswehr who are interested in making the army look worse than it actually
is, as long as it undermines von der Leyen's political position.

[0]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugbereitschaft_des_Bundesmin...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugbereitschaft_des_Bundesministeriums_der_Verteidigung)

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/29/angela-
merkel-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/29/angela-merkel-plane-
unscheduled-landing-g20)

[2] [https://www.faz.net/aktuell/ursula-von-der-leyen-gorch-
dock-...](https://www.faz.net/aktuell/ursula-von-der-leyen-gorch-
dock-16021524.html)

------
manfredo
> it sounds like an exaggeration to compare Germany’s Bundeswehr to “The Gang
> that Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” look no further than the army’s standard-
> issue assault rifle, Heckler & Koch’s G36. The government decided to scrap
> the weapon after discovering that the gun misses its target if it’s too hot.

Is this actually indicative of a design flaw? All guns' accuracy degrade as
the barrel heats up. The metal flexes more and expands, thus throwing off the
zero. Weapons like belt fed machine guns mitigate this by having heavy barrels
to soak up heat, and quick-change barrels to swap them out with fresh cold
ones. Internet searches about the G36's accuracy problems seem rife with fudd-
lore. Government studies did not find said accuracy problems:
[https://m.dw.com/en/heckler-and-koch-vindicated-
in-g36-accur...](https://m.dw.com/en/heckler-and-koch-vindicated-
in-g36-accuracy-row-but-lobbying-concerns-linger/a-18781312)

Other firearms like tank cannons get around this by having barrel sag sensors
that adjust the crosshairs to compensate for the effect of the sag.

I get that nit picking the anecdote in the opening statements is kind of
pedantic. But it shapes my senses of the author's technical understand (or
lack thereof) for the rest of the article.

~~~
chrisseaton
It's a funny statement when you think about it

> the gun misses its target if it's too hot

What does 'too hot' mean? Too hot... to do what? How do we define 'too hot'?
Too hot to hit its target? Well that's tautological then isn't it - a rifle
that is too hot to hit its target will not hit its target.

Presumably all rifles at some point get too hot to hit their targets, because
at some point they're going to simply melt. So all rifles miss their targets
when they get too hot. If they're not missing their targets then they're not
too hot are they?

I guess what they mean is that the rifle starts to miss its targets at a lower
temperature than other rifles, but that's not what they said. It's one of
those statements that seems to make sense on first reading but then when you
really think about what it says, it doesn't say anything and you could say it
about all rifles and be truthful.

~~~
scottlocklin
> What does 'too hot' mean?

"The weapon's capacity to hit targets fell to 30 percent when the surrounding
temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) or when the weapon
became hot through constant use, the report said."

[https://www.dw.com/en/german-defense-minister-says-no-
future...](https://www.dw.com/en/german-defense-minister-says-no-future-
for-g36-rifles-in-bundeswehr/a-18399209)

I mean, I guess they could limit their military operations to temperate days,
and not shoot the rifle too much to avoid these kinds of problems.

~~~
elcapitan
> I mean, I guess they could limit their military operations to temperate
> days, and not shoot the rifle too much to avoid these kinds of problems.

It's important to remember that the German army's equipment was originally
intended for NATO defense of western Europe, basically to defend a
conventional soviet attack in Northern Germany. That's true for the tanks and
armored vehicles as well, which also had issues when Germany first took them
to places like Afghanistan. Germany participating in operations externally to
Germany is only a thing since 1999 (Kosovo).

~~~
scottlocklin
I don't think it's important to remember that in context of the G36. The gun
basically doesn't work if you pop a couple of rounds through it, or if it's
hot out. I'm certain it didn't pass any of their mil specs.

~~~
elcapitan
It passed all the military specs. That has been settled in court, the
manufacturer H&K didn't have to pay any damages.

------
rossdavidh
The awkward reality is that, for nations like Germany (and Italy, and Belgium,
and the Netherlands, and...), they have no land borders with unfriendly
countries, and no significant overseas possessions that would be worth the
effort to make a large navy to protect. Poland, the Baltic states, Turkey,
etc. have more reason to be enthusiastic about NATO; western Europe simply
does not.

In fact, one could argue that Germany is _safer_ to have a hapless looking
military, because it causes France, Poland, etc. to all see them as incapable
of being a military threat, and that keeps relations with their neighbors on a
friendlier plane. It seems unfair to the U.S., because many of the wealthiest
nations of NATO spend the least on their defense, but it is simply a
reflection of their actual position.

Not to say that it could never change, but it's not as if the current attitude
towards defense spending in Germany is entirely nonrational.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Germany is very close to Russia. The Russians would have already taken the
Baltic states and probably more of Ukraine (if not all of it) were it not for
American leadership.

Everywhere outside North America is touchy.

------
Guthur
To suggest that Germany or any European country without oversea territories is
threatened military by china is ludicrous scare mongering. China has barely
any capacity to protect power much further than it's coastal waters.

And there is something similar to be said of Russia. The US wants to maintain
a dependency that is being harder to justify.

~~~
cglace
As a US citizen i would love to see Germany pay for their own defense. So sure
have at it.

~~~
kevingrahl
Ah man I hate that so many Americans seem to think they are paying anything
for Germany’s defense. It’s just not true.

Sure there are US troops in Germany but only because you need them to be here
for your own purposes like that Rammstein base for example which is used to
relay data so your drones in the Middle East can work. Of course you’ll have
to pay for something like that one way or another. We even pay a percentage
(~10%) of the construction cost of your bases. But you‘re not here for us. The
majority of Germans is against US troops in Germany btw.

We Germans don’t receive any kind of military financing from the US. In fact
we pay you money in exchange for military equipment ($163.7 million in 2014
for example).

~~~
cglace
I meant that Germany relies on the US for defense. Not that we directly pay
you to defend yourselves.

"We even pay a percentage (~10%) of the construction cost of your bases"

Because that base is the cost of the US military. I think you are focusing too
much on the US assets in Germany as the deterrent.

------
ThJ
This sounds similar to the state of affairs in Scandinavia. The part about
there being little pride in being a soldier rings especially true.
Scandinavians have died in military operations in Afghanistan, but you never
hear about it. No one wants to hear about it, because we don't see ourselves
as warlike nations. Germany probably has that times 100 due to the legacy of
the Nazis.

~~~
Krasnol
Yeah, they try to fight the stigma in Germany by promoting the service as a
fun adventure and to gamers...

[https://www.horizont.net/marketing/nachrichten/spiele-
messe-...](https://www.horizont.net/marketing/nachrichten/spiele-messe-
bundeswehr-verteidigt-umstrittenen-werbe-auftritt-auf-der-gamescom-169190)

------
Shivetya
The US should have pulled out of NATO a long time ago but empires of even that
sort are hard to give up. The EU is more than capable of providing for their
own security and perhaps having to do it all would make some wavering member
states understand that they are truly all in it together.

~~~
jplayer01
I don't understand where any of this comes from. The US has profited greatly
(financially, strategically, (geo)politically) from basically owning Western
Europe as a base of operations in that part of the hemisphere. It wasn't an
act of generosity to form NATO. It was a calculated plan to ensure America's
global hegemony, from which we've all benefited (for better or worse).

~~~
SuoDuanDao
The justification for OP's position I've heard, and must say it kind of makes
sense, is that the US's major benefit to running the empire was having a lot
of nations buying its exports. But the US is no longer a net exporter, so the
benefits of being the global hegemon are similarly in decline.

~~~
polotics
The justification you may have heard less, is that the US hegemony maintains
the place of the dollar as the world's reserve and exchange currency. This is
where the real power lies. For example the owner of the reserve currency can
export its inflation to the rest of the world...

~~~
sonnyblarney
"This is where the real power lies. "

No, it is not. The petrodollar or seignorage as the basis for economic
supremacy is conspiratorial.

The US essentially guarantees the safety of Europe because they _had to_ given
the situation after WW2.

Europeans consistently under invest on this issue largely because they know
the Americans won't fail or back down.

And FYI, US bases in Europe do not guarantee any kind of petrodollar anyhow.

The response that 'America is the one that wins by protecting everyone' is
factually incorrect and borderline hypocritical because it hides the fact that
Europeans are absolutely not doing what they need to do to ensure integrity of
their own nations.

Without US led action - the Baltic states would have already been grabbed by
Russia, and Ukraine would be 100% politically controlled by Russia, if not
occupied. Poland would again be 'the buffer'.

The EU has a gaping hole in this sense - they are a massive, federated economy
who cannot defend themselves with some bad actors nipping at their heels.

China is very rapidly developing the ability to project hard power at least
thousands of km away from it's land, at least in the S. China sea and beyond.
Certainly with the objective of swallowing Taiwan, and maintaining supremacy
throughout East/South Asia. For what it's worth.

The Euros need to do their part and coordinate defence of their own borders,
right now they are behind in this area.

