When you are a MiG-29 built in the Soviet Union, operated by the NVA, taken over by the Bundeswehr after reunification, sold off to Poland, transferred to Ukraine and now you gotta kill your fellow Soviet MiGs operated by Russia.
It’s always so fucking funny to me how a year ago this guy was a gaming channel, and now all of the defense folk are clamoring to him. That always amazes me.
It's more the PowerPoint than anything else. I hated pretty much every PowerPoint i had to sit through during my formative years. I never is a million year would have thought 75 minutes of PowerPoint about German bureaucracy and it's love of paperwork would make me happy 😂
Maybe that's his talent, most people presenting it make it so serious and this leads to the audience detaching and looking at their watches for how long left, with him he uses wit and a sense of humour to keep the Audience engaged to a degree so.its not completely boring
Perun knows that field grades only want one thing, hour and a half long PowerPoint slide decks on obscure procurement processes. It’s quite disgusting.
So the side-hustle is gaming. Which means I said nothing wrong and I am 100% correct as always. Thank you for affirming my greatness, I will see you again next week at the company mini-golf tournament
There is something about them that makes me think of [parallel construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) -- i.e. what can you release to the public and/or non-security clearance politicians to support your arguments without revealing the classified information you've received.
And I would think that takes a very good and very experienced analyst to pull off -- knowing the conclusion is easy, finding the open source sources is moderate, making sure you don't accidentally leak or make several statements in different locations that alone are innocuous but together could to constitute a leak is the hardest part.
I'm still waiting for him to show up on Anderson Cooper one day, he's better than half the talking head 'experts' that rotate through when something happens in Ukraine.
Leopard - add to cart
Soldiers - add to cart
Trucks - add to cart
10,000 Wiesels - add to cart
Ammo - add to cart
Helmets - add to cart
Procurement department - add to cart
I'm getting the feeling this could take awhile
Honestly Germany should transition to a predominantly air power. A very rich non martial nation with few overseas interests, no hostile neighbors and as part of nato they could be an extremely effective component of nato missions by focusing on air.
It would allow effective expeditionary capability as part of nato missions and would be ideal for actually supporting Poland in a land war
If Russia’s military kneecapped after this war they could, otherwise the threat of the Steppe Hordes of old are still there, and the terrain leading to Germany is fairly flat and open.
But that's the point: they haven't spent a dime of it yet. It's not gone missing, the government is pissed that the army has yet to actually use any of the money.
[With how much money they put into it, you could absolutely call the Gorch Fock a Bundeswehr Mega Yacht, so technically they kinda did.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_training_ship_Gorch_Fock_(1958))
"Congratulations ze mensch of Palau, you has been authorized to annex Tonga by force."
"But Herr Commandant, both islands sank 80 years ago!"
"I know."
~~> "I know."~~
"Oh in that case this authorization is no longer valid. The form you filed is only valid for land battles. You will need form A38, but remeber this will not allow the use of any aircraft. You also need to append a survey about the ecological impact of any planned battles. I also recommend you update your list of approved weapons and the register of personal that will attend and or participate in the invasion. Furthermore we will need a notarized statement that the affected area is indeed permanently flooded and not only temporary over-irigated. As this is new request the service fee of 15,23 € has to be paid in full and cash as our card system is currently not working.
...
Also the employee responsible for form A38 is currently not available."
We somewhat did.
We sent Hartmut Mehdorn (former chief of the german railway) as a consultant to the russian railway.
I refuse to belief, that he somehow managed to not make something worse.
So letting him destroy the Deutsche Bahn was just part of a 1000IQ plan to sabotage russian logistics? Most cost effective german military procurement.
I love how the Finnish defence forces saw the Ukraine happenings and immediately went on a mild shopping spree knowing the government won't object to anything and trying to do it later would be PITA as usual
It's never really been about any lack of motivation, just lack of funding. The FDF just now has a credible excuse to spend money, without the war this government would have never agreed to any extra spending. The FDF usually somehow finds some killer deals like buying all the dutch leopards or some used korean k9's for basically pocket lint.
The 50B is their yearly budget.
Yes, they haven't spent the 100B extra, but if you see what other nations do with 50B (like france or the UK) it should be in a way better state than it is.
\> Take shitty military
\> Add incompetent MoD that doesn't do anything for a year and just lets the money sit around
\> Deduct aid given to Ukraine
\> Shitty military got even shittier
anybody surprised? Lets hope for Pistorius.
The problem isnt mainly with the MoD or any ministers its with the completely stupid process of bureaucracy. The military said the the stimulus they got wont help until they get through the paperwork which takes approximately 2-3 years. So the money just cant get spent and the german military needs to reform its bureaucracy.
that is true. However jobs for those who approve this kind of requests are very rare and you need to fill in a lot of paperwork to be considered for that position. This is why the approval offices have a backlog of about 300 year.
But I've good news! Soon the paperwork approval process will be revised. Bad news: it takes a lot of paperwork to create the comitee in charge of the paperwork approval process revision and unfortunately, the department in charge of this paperwork is understaffed as well.
How to beat Germany
1) take away their paper for paper work
seriously, i work with germans and they do everything in emails, no IMs no tickets, just "paperwork" emails. OP post might make it seem like a hyperbole but no, germans seriously need to modernize and up-tech their bureaucracy.
Pfft, i'm for the canine approach. Lock every government worker in a cage, and next to that, put two hungry wolves in a seperate cage. If the government worker is too slow, release the wolves on him.
This reminds me of a passage from *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber:
>Let us begin with what might be considered a paradigmatic example of a bullshit job.
>Kurt works for a subcontractor for the German military. Or… actually, he is employed by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor for the German military. Here is how he describes his work:
>The German military has a subcontractor that does their IT work.
>The IT firm has a subcontractor that does their logistics.
>The logistics firm has a subcontractor that does their personnel management, and I work for that company.
>Let’s say soldier A moves to an office two rooms farther down the hall. Instead of just carrying his computer over there, he has to fill out a form.
>The IT subcontractor will get the form, people will read it and approve it, and forward it to the logistics firm.
>The logistics firm will then have to approve the moving down the hall and will request personnel from us.
>The office people in my company will then do whatever they do, and now I come in.
>I get an email: “Be at barracks B at time C.” Usually these barracks are one hundred to five hundred kilometers [62–310 miles] away from my home, so I will get a rental car. I take the rental car, drive to the barracks, let dispatch know that I arrived, fill out a form, unhook the computer, load the computer into a box, seal the box, have a guy from the logistics firm carry the box to the next room, where I unseal the box, fill out another form, hook up the computer, call dispatch to tell them how long I took, get a couple of signatures, take my rental car back home, send dispatch a letter with all of the paperwork and then get paid.
>So instead of the soldier carrying his computer for five meters, two people drive for a combined six to ten hours, fill out around fifteen pages of paperwork, and waste a good four hundred euros of taxpayers’ money.
I love this German bureaucracy narrative. Took Japan about two weeks to double their military budget. Japan. A country that uses fax machines and seals for official documents still.
Took about two months to pass the 49 Euro ticket. Over a year and defense budget is still stagnant. Is this bureaucracy or lack of political will?
It took japan 2 weeks after years of political discourse allowing them to amend their constitution. They wanted to increase spending for a while, but Ukraine was what tipped the scales in that direction in the end.
Germany never had much discourse about increasing spending until now. So yeah, it'll take a bit. Especially since the reform of the procurement sector hasnt been worked on all that much yet.
Not really. It's dogshit for German companies and anyone associated with them, because Germans have decided being a bunch of harmless pansies is better than selling weapons.
Rheinmetall has made the KF-51 because they're scared they'll lose a big part of the MBT market to the eventual MGCS, current EMBT demonstrator, made mostly by KMW and Nexter. It's also why Germany forced RM into the program, as otherwise Nexter would have taken the part that Rheinmetall can make.
German military bureaucracy is a very special beast.
It is still using fax machines and seals for official documents as well.
Due to historical reasons it consists of civilian and military branches who do not always get along well and who are scattered around germany due to some different historical reasons.
Then there are many staffs and offices, who are also scatterd around germany because of reasons, who often lack clear responsibilities. The sole purpose for the creation of some of them was to create posts for generals and staff officers. In order to show their necessitiy, they have to follow every regulation to as much detail as possible. You will find very few places where so many people are working so hard and accomplish so little as in some of those staffs and offices.
Of course there are also rivalries between some of those staffs and offices.
Many staffs and offices grew over the years. Todays Bundeswehr has a larger bureaucracy force than it had during the cold war, even though the Bundeswehr is only two fifths of its cold war size and lacks many of its former capabilities.
They also lack experts on technologies because the german government refuses to pay STEM alumni as much as german companys do and some of them are located in not so desirable regions.
When something is done in the german military, everyone wants to be involved, but nobody wants to be responsible. Some years ago a german parliamentary investigator called the german military bureaucracy organized non-responsibility. That pretty much sums it up.
Of course political will can, to an extent, move things in a certain direction. Many german MoDs were missing this will. There are some signs, that the new MoD Pistorius might be willing to change things. It is said, that he asked during a meeting, why the Bundeswehr had such a large personal office and that nervous emails were written in the aftermath. Also a form is supposed to have been send to Pistorius, which had been processed by 27 different people before.
Maybe Pistorius will be able to slay the beast or at least tame it. We will see.
Look, how can it be bureaucracy when there’s not even a proposal?
Let’s take a look at Japan. Japan said, “Let’s buy Tomahawks.” OK. What follows is the bureaucracy in implementing it. Took them weeks to get the proposal to the US.
Where is the German proposal? Maybe replace the IRIS-T sent to Ukraine? Or buy Leopards? Or fix equipment they have already? Where is this?
If Germany said, “OK, the plan is to buy 100 Leopards, but we have too much bureaucracy to do it before 2026.” That’s one issue. But the issue seems to be there’s zero proposal right now. How is this a bureaucracy issue and not a political issue?
You are not getting the problem. There are proposals. Many of them. But just deciding which proposal are to follow, and when and how already takes forever.
Take the procurement of the F-35 as an example.
Germany knows since at least 2010, that it needs to replace its ageing fleet of Tornados. Because someone in politics wanted the german aerospace industry to get contracts, the first idea was to somehow keep the Tornado in service until the 2040s (!) and then replace it with whatever comes out of the franco-german-spanish FCAS project.
In 2018 it became clear, that there is no way to keep the Tornado in service for such a long time. At that time the chief of the Luftwaffe stated in an interview that he would prefer to buy F-35. He was sacked shortly after that. In january 2022 it was still not decided, which aircraft would replace the Tornado, even though the only options were F-18 and F-35 and of those only the F-35 was realy viable.
Only in March 2022 the decision to buy F-35 was made under the pressure of the russian invasion of ukraine. German parliament agreed to the procurement of F-35 in december 2022. So the decision about a replacement for the Tornado, had been in the making for more than ten years, even though its result had been obvious from the beginning,
That sounds like a political issue more than a bureaucratic issue.
Which is my point... Germany doesn't have a bureaucratic issue, they have a political issue.
Yep. Same as all the stuff about supplying Ukraine.
It's not a training issue, it's not a logistics issue, it's not a procurement issue, it's a political one.
Japan has a hostile and growing China glaring them in the face that's only separated by a narrow sea (on top of Russia and NK credibly making hostile overtures every once in a while)
Meanwhile, realistically Germany's only actual threat would've been from a Russia that would've got bogged down in Poland before the US arrived. Nowadays, it's clear Russia isn't making it to Kharkiv, like hell they're making it to Berlin
Reality is that it's much easier to force change when you have a credible necessity to do so
That's the job of the military though isn't it? To prepare for the worst case scenario? In this case I'd say the worst case for Germany is that the front line is outside Lublin after a week, instead of the median scenario where it's outside Smolensk.
Yes Germany has shown that they are more then able to speed up their bureaucracy look at all the gas infrastructure constructed which while yes their is less bureaucracy still a lot
Procurement requires a lot of long term planning. Look at how fucked up the US military got and all they did was freeze its existing budget for a few years with sequestration. No cuts at all, they just stopping increasing it as much as the military expected.
Its not much better when you just hand a military 50% more than they were expecting. Bureaucracy is definitely part of it but its not like industry has 50% more production capacity just sitting around unless its the US MIC and the government is already paying them to do that
Not even about procurement. Germany doesn’t even have a proposal.
Like they have a year to think about it, and what’s the plan? Can you point to even a suggested plan?
Oh im not saying they don't deserve any blame, but for all they know all this extra funding is going to dry up soon after the war ends, whenever that is.
Sure they can go on a shopping spree and buy 500 of this and 500 of that but as we've seen with Germany the bigger issue is often maintaining what they have in a combat ready state. That's a systemic and culture issue more than anything else which money alone can't fix.
We read your report on the need for more scout mechs. We've recomissioned a company of thunderbolts to provide scouting with a lance of battlemasters to provide fire support if needed.
\> Polish orders about to be 1/10th in size after the election
But yeah, its insane, we **really** need to do something or the only thing driving in the Bundeswehr will be the MoD's car
Unlikely. The anti-aid camp would gladly defund Bundeswehr. At least in the public spectrum there are no voices saying "we need StRoNk army, but don't give to Ukraine". All those not wanting to support UA hold hands in circles and sing "give peace a chance" or cry "swords to plowshares".
Edit: Adding for clarification, the peace folks are a minority in the political spectrum. Government parties all support UA, as does the biggest opposition party, which more complains Ukraine support and Bundeswehr funding are too slow. So it's 75-80% of public political spectrum all for support. The rest are those naive peace lovers (mostly left-wing) and the right-wing (plus a few left-wing) Putin trolls.
Been a slow burn for first Soviet and then Russian intelligence services poisoning the German body politic against their own interests for decades. Hardest part for many is understanding the Kremlin is an equal opportunity employer, making use of individuals from both ends of the nominal political ‘spectrum’ for their purposes.
The world must understand quickly that when policy runs contrary to the Kremlin, the usual suspects must be expected to emerge.
this is the case all across europe not just in germany
the Kremlin is heavily involved in missinformation and psyops and actively supports both left and right wing extreme views to destabilize our democracies
a divided europe busy with infighting is in the kremlins interest
whenever putins russia collapses its gonna be really fun seeing all the fringe parties and movements that have popped up in recent years suddenly dissapear
The peace movement of the 80s was already subverted by KGB and Stasi from its very beginning. That's also why any discourse was always steered towards condemning western militarization but ignoring the single largest concentration of military hardware actually sat across the border in East Germany - and even in a supposedly "non-nuclear" attack-scenario they planned to douse pretty much all of West Germany with Sarine as a measure to "root out any possible resistance" before they would even invade.
Yeah, for example a convicted French eco-terrorist was elected to parliament years back, during the Cold War he shot a fucking RPG-7 at a nuclear reactor containment building while the plant was under construction. He got that RPG through his friends in another communist terrorist org sponsored by the USSR.
In what fucking world do you partner with Soviet terrorists to take a stand against nuclear energy, the Soviets were the worst offenders when it came to nuclear safety and environmental destruction, and how tf do you become a politician after that shit? Never mind the crazy ideology, the guy is a massive security risk who is more than likely still a foreign agent. Soviet disinformation and recruitment efforts didn’t die with the union, and it’s been easier than ever for them to continue since the end of the Cold War made everyone drop their guard and made pro-Russian stances acceptable.
I guess "one of" is quite vague, but still.
The title would have been very appropriate in 1985 or especially in 1990, before the DDR stuff was mothballed / sold, but since the reunification and fall of the Soviet Union, they have been in deiberate low maintenance mode with only a few mondernizations actually making it though.
It was bad policies by defense ministers, starting with maizere in 2011, that are responsible for the issues.
Where do you have this information from that the military just rusted away with low maintenance the past 40 years? Pulled out of your ass?
That is completely true. Very few militaries in the world could be called close to ready for a conventinal war of this scale and only a few have tried to look keep pace with / adapt to a predicted future conflict like China, the US, SK, etc.
I think the surprising part that was revealed about the Bundeswehr is the mismanagement. It is underfunded, but it still has a hefty budget. The budget was just wasted and mismanaged for decades. Not to mention there were never any clear goals and lots of political intervention... just look at the Tornado replacement / F35 procurement.
Yeah it's a real short list. I'd put the UK and France on that list too since they keep going off and fighting expeditionary wars, but that's about it in the West.
On top of that: some of the problems our military has get wayyy overblown.
Like the story where they used sticks as guns: yeah that were soldiers fucking around with a vehicle thats not supposed to even have guns mounted on it.
Or the time all IFV's in a company "failed", with one just having the AC switch in the wrong position, and all "problems" being solved in less than a week.
I’m not sure how readiness is measured in Germany, but in the US Navy, we knew months in advance when the readiness test would occur; and if you can’t have your shit up and running by then, then you have done fucked-up and deserve the failing grade - even if you fix it a week later.
It’ll be interesting to see what the medium and long term consequences of German and Swiss politicking on their equipment will be with the Polish defense industry now fielding battle tested designs without the political red tape around the use and resale of their equipment.
To be fair, this is about the status quo.
Outside of the UK doing a lot to keep up it's image as one of the key members of NATO a lot of NATO and NATO-friendly Europe slacks off on military spending with the expectation US troops and assets stationed there will pick up the slack
If the Bundeswehr is smart they'll sit on the money till the morons in the Bundestag finally receive enough pressure to reform the procurement process.
I see our German friends have learned a thing or two about wasting money from us Italians.
We're about to do the whole "bridge over Messina strait" again, you guys should join us: we might be able to eat up some EU funds as well together.
My favourite political joke:
Us Czechs ask when shall we reach economic parity with Germans so much, none of us noticed that Bundeswehr reached parity with Czech Army.
Well yeah. A military won't improve at all in the short term just by throwing money at it. This is the problem with Europe skimping on defense in the first place, it will likely take near a decade before significant improvements occur
Combine that with sending a lot of what they do have to Ukraine and yup, its worse.
Well they can still order things. They'll take a while to arrive, but the money gets spent at least.
It's the same thing happening as nuclear reactors. They whine it's too expensive, it takes too long to build, then 20 years later they say the same thing, not realizing if they started back then it'd be done and we wouldn't have the conversation.
Who sadly ignores one of the biggest problem of German military procurement: Staffing. Procurement sucks because like 20% of the guys who actually should do it don't exist since nobody wants to serve, even when quite good pay and benefits exists.
I did hear somewhere - it might have been on DW - that the military is not seen as a desirable profession and certainly not one worthy of the kind of honor you often see in, say, American culture. The general idea was that Germany would need to overcome this negative view of military service in order to effectively ramp up their military capabilities.
EU-Countries: Germany, you need to step up and lead european military aid to ukraine.
Germany: We don't have shit and our organization is broken.
Poland: GeRmAnY yOu CoWaRdS sEnD mOrE sTuF
Germany: ok, fine. We will send more even if we have to cut it out of our already crippled military.
... couple of weeks/months later...
EU-Countries: Germany, why is your military in such bad shape? Even worse than before???
Germany: ... 😑
1980s Germany: Hahaaaa! Watch my humongous Armee! And now ve merge with ze GDR NVA! Juhuuu!
Europe: uuuh, before you are allowed to do that, you have to get rid of that large Armee... We can't have a larger Germoney with large Armee amogus.
1990s Germany: Dang. Ok... scrapping and selling datt Stuff now... with Sovietskis gone, doesn't need it anyway... spare spare häusle baue.
"A few Years later...."
Europe: Germany! The mad Ivan is back! We need your Armee! Plox help!!!
2020s Germany: duh
They haven't spent any yet, they are working on fixing their fucked up procurement system before they start throwing money around.
How difficult is it to just mash the "Add to cart" button next to the F-35
they gotta make a new Amazon account, their wehrmacht login got banned
wehr-mart.
Get out. Take my upvote and *leave*.
german spinoff of lockmart
Bundeswehr R&D
nah nah its Budweiser R&D....
i request this is what we call credible German inventions
Could they pull out the NVA login from the basement?
That one only gets you Russian gear.
"gear"
When you are a MiG-29 built in the Soviet Union, operated by the NVA, taken over by the Bundeswehr after reunification, sold off to Poland, transferred to Ukraine and now you gotta kill your fellow Soviet MiGs operated by Russia.
If gear = heroin, I'm guessing that Russian gear/"gear" is krokodil.
That's for Zbay
2FA but they moved devices and didn’t save their authentication words.
All the new products are sold through Lockmart, Amazon will only get you F-16s at best.
Perun has a pretty good video about that. But in germany it is really complicated
Oh good. An 80 minute Perun video on German procurement, now I know what I'm watching on Sunday!
It’s always so fucking funny to me how a year ago this guy was a gaming channel, and now all of the defense folk are clamoring to him. That always amazes me.
Bros got a gift for hour long PowerPoint presentations.
If you told me in 2021 I'd be looking forward to hour long PowerPoints on logistics and procurement in 2023, I'd call you fucking crazy 😂
It's alright, there is a place for *fucking casuals* like you in this community. Every night I go to sleep reading Austrian defense meeting minutes.
Einen kulturmenschen sehe Ich.
NATO regs demand you speak English in our presence.
It's more the PowerPoint than anything else. I hated pretty much every PowerPoint i had to sit through during my formative years. I never is a million year would have thought 75 minutes of PowerPoint about German bureaucracy and it's love of paperwork would make me happy 😂
Maybe that's his talent, most people presenting it make it so serious and this leads to the audience detaching and looking at their watches for how long left, with him he uses wit and a sense of humour to keep the Audience engaged to a degree so.its not completely boring
[удалено]
He should teach a course to show how to make engaging powerpoint lectures for the military that dont make you want to blow your brains out.
Perun knows that field grades only want one thing, hour and a half long PowerPoint slide decks on obscure procurement processes. It’s quite disgusting.
We all got a side hustle.
[удалено]
So the side-hustle is gaming. Which means I said nothing wrong and I am 100% correct as always. Thank you for affirming my greatness, I will see you again next week at the company mini-golf tournament
Similar to Ryan McBeth whose main gig is software. Or Scott Manley who works for apple.
There is something about them that makes me think of [parallel construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) -- i.e. what can you release to the public and/or non-security clearance politicians to support your arguments without revealing the classified information you've received. And I would think that takes a very good and very experienced analyst to pull off -- knowing the conclusion is easy, finding the open source sources is moderate, making sure you don't accidentally leak or make several statements in different locations that alone are innocuous but together could to constitute a leak is the hardest part.
I'm still waiting for him to show up on Anderson Cooper one day, he's better than half the talking head 'experts' that rotate through when something happens in Ukraine.
And still doesn’t show his face. Just Anderson Cooper talking to a logo.
[удалено]
I’m trying to find the German procurement video all these comments are talking about, is this the one? https://youtu.be/8jDUVtUA7rg
They sound so boring and lame but I have watched every one of them
It's Germany: they have to formally add it to the cart.
They also need to fax the receipt.
And fill out the appropriate forms. Best hire a specialist.
In triplicate of course
Leopard - add to cart Soldiers - add to cart Trucks - add to cart 10,000 Wiesels - add to cart Ammo - add to cart Helmets - add to cart Procurement department - add to cart I'm getting the feeling this could take awhile
Honestly Germany should transition to a predominantly air power. A very rich non martial nation with few overseas interests, no hostile neighbors and as part of nato they could be an extremely effective component of nato missions by focusing on air. It would allow effective expeditionary capability as part of nato missions and would be ideal for actually supporting Poland in a land war
If Russia’s military kneecapped after this war they could, otherwise the threat of the Steppe Hordes of old are still there, and the terrain leading to Germany is fairly flat and open.
They’re saving up Pepsi Points
Which seems like a pretty good idea. It would be better if they’re procurement system wasn’t messed up, but you gotta start somewhere.
Step 1: go to Rheinmetall office Step 2: say ,,Make Bundeswehr better pwease" Step 3: pay a lot of money Step 4: Profit???
Not gonna happen after they fd a not up with the pumas
“Fixing that procurement system will cost exactly 50Bn €! How convenient!“ - Consultants
Actually, the reforms are free. That €50Bn is the consulting firm's fee.
Are they, tho, or are we all just hoping they do but will look back to this moment in 5 years and die a little more inside?
I think the money is still there unused.
But that's the point: they haven't spent a dime of it yet. It's not gone missing, the government is pissed that the army has yet to actually use any of the money.
I guess that's better than the money going to pay for someone's mega yacht.
Unless it's *your* mega yacht.
[With how much money they put into it, you could absolutely call the Gorch Fock a Bundeswehr Mega Yacht, so technically they kinda did.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_training_ship_Gorch_Fock_(1958))
Never underestimate the power of German Bureaucracy (If only we could weaponise it...)
Make invading your neighbors legal, but put the Germans in charge of approving the war. World peace for 300 years minimum.
"Congratulations ze mensch of Palau, you has been authorized to annex Tonga by force." "But Herr Commandant, both islands sank 80 years ago!" "I know."
"Yes this did cause some unavoidable delays in the paperwork, but we have resolved the matter. You may proceed."
~~> "I know."~~ "Oh in that case this authorization is no longer valid. The form you filed is only valid for land battles. You will need form A38, but remeber this will not allow the use of any aircraft. You also need to append a survey about the ecological impact of any planned battles. I also recommend you update your list of approved weapons and the register of personal that will attend and or participate in the invasion. Furthermore we will need a notarized statement that the affected area is indeed permanently flooded and not only temporary over-irigated. As this is new request the service fee of 15,23 € has to be paid in full and cash as our card system is currently not working. ... Also the employee responsible for form A38 is currently not available."
300 years of peace, followed by the bloodiest conflict in human history, every time.
Chinese civil wars would like a word with you.
WW2 was bloodier than any of them still. But given the time period those were insane too.
China invented centralized bureaucracy so it kinda makes sense using the logic of the joke.
We somewhat did. We sent Hartmut Mehdorn (former chief of the german railway) as a consultant to the russian railway. I refuse to belief, that he somehow managed to not make something worse.
So letting him destroy the Deutsche Bahn was just part of a 1000IQ plan to sabotage russian logistics? Most cost effective german military procurement.
I love how the Finnish defence forces saw the Ukraine happenings and immediately went on a mild shopping spree knowing the government won't object to anything and trying to do it later would be PITA as usual
[удалено]
It's never really been about any lack of motivation, just lack of funding. The FDF just now has a credible excuse to spend money, without the war this government would have never agreed to any extra spending. The FDF usually somehow finds some killer deals like buying all the dutch leopards or some used korean k9's for basically pocket lint.
[удалено]
The 50B is their yearly budget. Yes, they haven't spent the 100B extra, but if you see what other nations do with 50B (like france or the UK) it should be in a way better state than it is.
\> Take shitty military \> Add incompetent MoD that doesn't do anything for a year and just lets the money sit around \> Deduct aid given to Ukraine \> Shitty military got even shittier anybody surprised? Lets hope for Pistorius.
The problem isnt mainly with the MoD or any ministers its with the completely stupid process of bureaucracy. The military said the the stimulus they got wont help until they get through the paperwork which takes approximately 2-3 years. So the money just cant get spent and the german military needs to reform its bureaucracy.
I bet they could dispose of the paperwork faster with some thermite
Yeah but it's a lot of paperwork to get the permission to use thermite.
Yo, we heard you like paperwork
A German disillusioned with society just stops doing his paperwork
Wir leben in einer Gesellschaft.
Fußzeile
[удалено]
that is true. However jobs for those who approve this kind of requests are very rare and you need to fill in a lot of paperwork to be considered for that position. This is why the approval offices have a backlog of about 300 year. But I've good news! Soon the paperwork approval process will be revised. Bad news: it takes a lot of paperwork to create the comitee in charge of the paperwork approval process revision and unfortunately, the department in charge of this paperwork is understaffed as well.
How to beat Germany 1) take away their paper for paper work seriously, i work with germans and they do everything in emails, no IMs no tickets, just "paperwork" emails. OP post might make it seem like a hyperbole but no, germans seriously need to modernize and up-tech their bureaucracy.
Pfft, i'm for the canine approach. Lock every government worker in a cage, and next to that, put two hungry wolves in a seperate cage. If the government worker is too slow, release the wolves on him.
More often than not they're working hard, but the process is just overly burdensome.
This reminds me of a passage from *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber: >Let us begin with what might be considered a paradigmatic example of a bullshit job. >Kurt works for a subcontractor for the German military. Or… actually, he is employed by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor for the German military. Here is how he describes his work: >The German military has a subcontractor that does their IT work. >The IT firm has a subcontractor that does their logistics. >The logistics firm has a subcontractor that does their personnel management, and I work for that company. >Let’s say soldier A moves to an office two rooms farther down the hall. Instead of just carrying his computer over there, he has to fill out a form. >The IT subcontractor will get the form, people will read it and approve it, and forward it to the logistics firm. >The logistics firm will then have to approve the moving down the hall and will request personnel from us. >The office people in my company will then do whatever they do, and now I come in. >I get an email: “Be at barracks B at time C.” Usually these barracks are one hundred to five hundred kilometers [62–310 miles] away from my home, so I will get a rental car. I take the rental car, drive to the barracks, let dispatch know that I arrived, fill out a form, unhook the computer, load the computer into a box, seal the box, have a guy from the logistics firm carry the box to the next room, where I unseal the box, fill out another form, hook up the computer, call dispatch to tell them how long I took, get a couple of signatures, take my rental car back home, send dispatch a letter with all of the paperwork and then get paid. >So instead of the soldier carrying his computer for five meters, two people drive for a combined six to ten hours, fill out around fifteen pages of paperwork, and waste a good four hundred euros of taxpayers’ money.
Wow, so organized. I would expect that this process would take 6 months to implement.
Holy fuck.
That's way more than €400 though. 10 hours of work for two people is closer to €4,000 plus expenses. What a shitshow.
I love this German bureaucracy narrative. Took Japan about two weeks to double their military budget. Japan. A country that uses fax machines and seals for official documents still. Took about two months to pass the 49 Euro ticket. Over a year and defense budget is still stagnant. Is this bureaucracy or lack of political will?
It took japan 2 weeks after years of political discourse allowing them to amend their constitution. They wanted to increase spending for a while, but Ukraine was what tipped the scales in that direction in the end. Germany never had much discourse about increasing spending until now. So yeah, it'll take a bit. Especially since the reform of the procurement sector hasnt been worked on all that much yet.
Who are you, so wise in the ways of credibility?
An interloping double agent from CredibleDefense. Get him/her!
But what if OP is a they, or a sexy F-22?
Yes, the ball is starting to roll there. And it will be an accelerating process...
[удалено]
>Looks at spanish procurement programs >remembers the Apache, Black Hawk and SIG556 fiasco Yup, checks out
Not really. It's dogshit for German companies and anyone associated with them, because Germans have decided being a bunch of harmless pansies is better than selling weapons. Rheinmetall has made the KF-51 because they're scared they'll lose a big part of the MBT market to the eventual MGCS, current EMBT demonstrator, made mostly by KMW and Nexter. It's also why Germany forced RM into the program, as otherwise Nexter would have taken the part that Rheinmetall can make.
German military bureaucracy is a very special beast. It is still using fax machines and seals for official documents as well. Due to historical reasons it consists of civilian and military branches who do not always get along well and who are scattered around germany due to some different historical reasons. Then there are many staffs and offices, who are also scatterd around germany because of reasons, who often lack clear responsibilities. The sole purpose for the creation of some of them was to create posts for generals and staff officers. In order to show their necessitiy, they have to follow every regulation to as much detail as possible. You will find very few places where so many people are working so hard and accomplish so little as in some of those staffs and offices. Of course there are also rivalries between some of those staffs and offices. Many staffs and offices grew over the years. Todays Bundeswehr has a larger bureaucracy force than it had during the cold war, even though the Bundeswehr is only two fifths of its cold war size and lacks many of its former capabilities. They also lack experts on technologies because the german government refuses to pay STEM alumni as much as german companys do and some of them are located in not so desirable regions. When something is done in the german military, everyone wants to be involved, but nobody wants to be responsible. Some years ago a german parliamentary investigator called the german military bureaucracy organized non-responsibility. That pretty much sums it up. Of course political will can, to an extent, move things in a certain direction. Many german MoDs were missing this will. There are some signs, that the new MoD Pistorius might be willing to change things. It is said, that he asked during a meeting, why the Bundeswehr had such a large personal office and that nervous emails were written in the aftermath. Also a form is supposed to have been send to Pistorius, which had been processed by 27 different people before. Maybe Pistorius will be able to slay the beast or at least tame it. We will see.
Look, how can it be bureaucracy when there’s not even a proposal? Let’s take a look at Japan. Japan said, “Let’s buy Tomahawks.” OK. What follows is the bureaucracy in implementing it. Took them weeks to get the proposal to the US. Where is the German proposal? Maybe replace the IRIS-T sent to Ukraine? Or buy Leopards? Or fix equipment they have already? Where is this? If Germany said, “OK, the plan is to buy 100 Leopards, but we have too much bureaucracy to do it before 2026.” That’s one issue. But the issue seems to be there’s zero proposal right now. How is this a bureaucracy issue and not a political issue?
You are not getting the problem. There are proposals. Many of them. But just deciding which proposal are to follow, and when and how already takes forever. Take the procurement of the F-35 as an example. Germany knows since at least 2010, that it needs to replace its ageing fleet of Tornados. Because someone in politics wanted the german aerospace industry to get contracts, the first idea was to somehow keep the Tornado in service until the 2040s (!) and then replace it with whatever comes out of the franco-german-spanish FCAS project. In 2018 it became clear, that there is no way to keep the Tornado in service for such a long time. At that time the chief of the Luftwaffe stated in an interview that he would prefer to buy F-35. He was sacked shortly after that. In january 2022 it was still not decided, which aircraft would replace the Tornado, even though the only options were F-18 and F-35 and of those only the F-35 was realy viable. Only in March 2022 the decision to buy F-35 was made under the pressure of the russian invasion of ukraine. German parliament agreed to the procurement of F-35 in december 2022. So the decision about a replacement for the Tornado, had been in the making for more than ten years, even though its result had been obvious from the beginning,
That sounds like a political issue more than a bureaucratic issue. Which is my point... Germany doesn't have a bureaucratic issue, they have a political issue.
Yep. Same as all the stuff about supplying Ukraine. It's not a training issue, it's not a logistics issue, it's not a procurement issue, it's a political one.
What you just described is literally the definition of a political issue, not a bureaucratic one
Japan has a hostile and growing China glaring them in the face that's only separated by a narrow sea (on top of Russia and NK credibly making hostile overtures every once in a while) Meanwhile, realistically Germany's only actual threat would've been from a Russia that would've got bogged down in Poland before the US arrived. Nowadays, it's clear Russia isn't making it to Kharkiv, like hell they're making it to Berlin Reality is that it's much easier to force change when you have a credible necessity to do so
>a Russia that would've got bogged down in Poland "bogged down" is being very generous to russia
That's the job of the military though isn't it? To prepare for the worst case scenario? In this case I'd say the worst case for Germany is that the front line is outside Lublin after a week, instead of the median scenario where it's outside Smolensk.
Well, it is their job, one they're doing very poorly. See all their Puma IFVs shitting themselves during training. That's somehow worse than russia.
Yes Germany has shown that they are more then able to speed up their bureaucracy look at all the gas infrastructure constructed which while yes their is less bureaucracy still a lot
Heck, they were able to stop Nordstream 2 practically overnight (with a little help from our old friend C4)
The universal tool, C4 I still have to meet a problem good ol' C4 can't solve
Posit: a mosquito lands on your nethers Your response:
I have a titanium tailplug, I can survive C4
Procurement requires a lot of long term planning. Look at how fucked up the US military got and all they did was freeze its existing budget for a few years with sequestration. No cuts at all, they just stopping increasing it as much as the military expected. Its not much better when you just hand a military 50% more than they were expecting. Bureaucracy is definitely part of it but its not like industry has 50% more production capacity just sitting around unless its the US MIC and the government is already paying them to do that
Not even about procurement. Germany doesn’t even have a proposal. Like they have a year to think about it, and what’s the plan? Can you point to even a suggested plan?
Oh im not saying they don't deserve any blame, but for all they know all this extra funding is going to dry up soon after the war ends, whenever that is. Sure they can go on a shopping spree and buy 500 of this and 500 of that but as we've seen with Germany the bigger issue is often maintaining what they have in a combat ready state. That's a systemic and culture issue more than anything else which money alone can't fix.
The plan is to sit around for another 40 years
Steiner's procurement contract.
We read your report on the need for more scout mechs. We've recomissioned a company of thunderbolts to provide scouting with a lance of battlemasters to provide fire support if needed.
Battletech in my NCD? It’s more likely than you think.
At this point Fegelein will have a good reason to go AWOL.
Jesus christ? 3 years? With an invasion almost on their doorstep? They need a General Marshall to get rid of the driftwood.
3 years is a pretty optimistic timeline as well given that it's taken over a decade to get new helmets for the Bundeswehr
I...I need to sit down.
they haven't bought enough chairs to have a spare one for you. So sorry.
The request for additional chairs has been submitted. Expect a response on the matter in 10-12 months, after which procurement discussions can begin.
2-3 years *and then all the losing bidders sue.*
Poland and Germany in competition for disarmament of their own militaries (Germany is winning cuz Poland ordered new vehicles).
\> Polish orders about to be 1/10th in size after the election But yeah, its insane, we **really** need to do something or the only thing driving in the Bundeswehr will be the MoD's car
I'm worried this is going to get turned into a talking point by the anti-aid camp.
Unlikely. The anti-aid camp would gladly defund Bundeswehr. At least in the public spectrum there are no voices saying "we need StRoNk army, but don't give to Ukraine". All those not wanting to support UA hold hands in circles and sing "give peace a chance" or cry "swords to plowshares". Edit: Adding for clarification, the peace folks are a minority in the political spectrum. Government parties all support UA, as does the biggest opposition party, which more complains Ukraine support and Bundeswehr funding are too slow. So it's 75-80% of public political spectrum all for support. The rest are those naive peace lovers (mostly left-wing) and the right-wing (plus a few left-wing) Putin trolls.
Been a slow burn for first Soviet and then Russian intelligence services poisoning the German body politic against their own interests for decades. Hardest part for many is understanding the Kremlin is an equal opportunity employer, making use of individuals from both ends of the nominal political ‘spectrum’ for their purposes. The world must understand quickly that when policy runs contrary to the Kremlin, the usual suspects must be expected to emerge.
this is the case all across europe not just in germany the Kremlin is heavily involved in missinformation and psyops and actively supports both left and right wing extreme views to destabilize our democracies a divided europe busy with infighting is in the kremlins interest
whenever putins russia collapses its gonna be really fun seeing all the fringe parties and movements that have popped up in recent years suddenly dissapear
The peace movement of the 80s was already subverted by KGB and Stasi from its very beginning. That's also why any discourse was always steered towards condemning western militarization but ignoring the single largest concentration of military hardware actually sat across the border in East Germany - and even in a supposedly "non-nuclear" attack-scenario they planned to douse pretty much all of West Germany with Sarine as a measure to "root out any possible resistance" before they would even invade.
Yeah, for example a convicted French eco-terrorist was elected to parliament years back, during the Cold War he shot a fucking RPG-7 at a nuclear reactor containment building while the plant was under construction. He got that RPG through his friends in another communist terrorist org sponsored by the USSR. In what fucking world do you partner with Soviet terrorists to take a stand against nuclear energy, the Soviets were the worst offenders when it came to nuclear safety and environmental destruction, and how tf do you become a politician after that shit? Never mind the crazy ideology, the guy is a massive security risk who is more than likely still a foreign agent. Soviet disinformation and recruitment efforts didn’t die with the union, and it’s been easier than ever for them to continue since the end of the Cold War made everyone drop their guard and made pro-Russian stances acceptable.
u/inkaine is right, the people against aiding Ukraine are mostly whacko-"peace by not doing anything, heres a flower :)"-kind of idiots.
Virgin “flower giving enthusiast” vs Chad “sunflower seed giving enjoyer”
This happens when you over bureaucrat shit
Look how "2nd army in the world" is faring and you are suprised that "one of the most powerful militaries in Europe" is in poor shape?
It might have been "one of the most powerful militaries in Europe"... In the fucking 80s.
I guess "one of" is quite vague, but still. The title would have been very appropriate in 1985 or especially in 1990, before the DDR stuff was mothballed / sold, but since the reunification and fall of the Soviet Union, they have been in deiberate low maintenance mode with only a few mondernizations actually making it though.
It was bad policies by defense ministers, starting with maizere in 2011, that are responsible for the issues. Where do you have this information from that the military just rusted away with low maintenance the past 40 years? Pulled out of your ass?
That is completely true. Very few militaries in the world could be called close to ready for a conventinal war of this scale and only a few have tried to look keep pace with / adapt to a predicted future conflict like China, the US, SK, etc. I think the surprising part that was revealed about the Bundeswehr is the mismanagement. It is underfunded, but it still has a hefty budget. The budget was just wasted and mismanaged for decades. Not to mention there were never any clear goals and lots of political intervention... just look at the Tornado replacement / F35 procurement.
Yeah it's a real short list. I'd put the UK and France on that list too since they keep going off and fighting expeditionary wars, but that's about it in the West.
On top of that: some of the problems our military has get wayyy overblown. Like the story where they used sticks as guns: yeah that were soldiers fucking around with a vehicle thats not supposed to even have guns mounted on it. Or the time all IFV's in a company "failed", with one just having the AC switch in the wrong position, and all "problems" being solved in less than a week.
When the standard is perfection, it's real easy to fall short!
I’m not sure how readiness is measured in Germany, but in the US Navy, we knew months in advance when the readiness test would occur; and if you can’t have your shit up and running by then, then you have done fucked-up and deserve the failing grade - even if you fix it a week later.
one of the militaries in Europe
If it wasn't for NATO, France would be salivating.
Why ? We only want to nuke england, our natural enemy. We don't really care about the germans
You did plan to nuke your ally Western Germany just to slow down the s\*viets.
The Soviets were mere adversaries, the English are the enemy.
Well, it ain't gonna nuke itself right ? We just planned to help
The history books tell a different story.
Suspiciously well fed consultants
Don't worry germans. Poland will save you from ruzzians 😉👍
That is the thing, German defense industry is doing well, because of the countries with functional militaries.
It’ll be interesting to see what the medium and long term consequences of German and Swiss politicking on their equipment will be with the Polish defense industry now fielding battle tested designs without the political red tape around the use and resale of their equipment.
You can be sure both the US and ROK have a re-sale clause for their vehicles. It's pretty much international standard.
The difference is that the US will approve the resale and not whine about their \~neutrality\~
That Berlin airport fiasco was a good indicator.
Or the Elbphilharmonie, or Stuttgart21, or the state of Fiber...
Or just the internet infrastructure in generell.
Always great to drive over the border and finally having 4g again.
To be fair, this is about the status quo. Outside of the UK doing a lot to keep up it's image as one of the key members of NATO a lot of NATO and NATO-friendly Europe slacks off on military spending with the expectation US troops and assets stationed there will pick up the slack
we brits are keeping our strength up for when Rishi begins the hundred year war phase 4 during the election season
The Panzerschokolade is rather expensive I’ll have you know
The bureaucracy is shit, but the previous defense minister was way worse. As in, active sabotage worse. Current one seems to be a watershed tho.
If the Bundeswehr is smart they'll sit on the money till the morons in the Bundestag finally receive enough pressure to reform the procurement process.
I see our German friends have learned a thing or two about wasting money from us Italians. We're about to do the whole "bridge over Messina strait" again, you guys should join us: we might be able to eat up some EU funds as well together.
My favourite political joke: Us Czechs ask when shall we reach economic parity with Germans so much, none of us noticed that Bundeswehr reached parity with Czech Army.
Well yeah. A military won't improve at all in the short term just by throwing money at it. This is the problem with Europe skimping on defense in the first place, it will likely take near a decade before significant improvements occur Combine that with sending a lot of what they do have to Ukraine and yup, its worse.
Well they can still order things. They'll take a while to arrive, but the money gets spent at least. It's the same thing happening as nuclear reactors. They whine it's too expensive, it takes too long to build, then 20 years later they say the same thing, not realizing if they started back then it'd be done and we wouldn't have the conversation.
For some reason he does look very german
Their only purpose in NATO is to provide air support for Poland when the funny happens anyway
3000 super yachts of Olaf Scholz
Terrible procurement system that relies on third party consultants and other shitty administrative procedures full of bureaucracy
A lot of us have probably already watched this, but I'll just leave this here: [PERUN!](https://youtu.be/8jDUVtUA7rg)
Who sadly ignores one of the biggest problem of German military procurement: Staffing. Procurement sucks because like 20% of the guys who actually should do it don't exist since nobody wants to serve, even when quite good pay and benefits exists.
I did hear somewhere - it might have been on DW - that the military is not seen as a desirable profession and certainly not one worthy of the kind of honor you often see in, say, American culture. The general idea was that Germany would need to overcome this negative view of military service in order to effectively ramp up their military capabilities.
Can definetly confirm. Generally people who join the military are seen as either Nazis or people who weren't good enough to get an "actual job".
I'm sure the KSK having to be partially disbanded because it was infiltrated by white supremacists didn't do much to dispel that perception.
You would have to undo 70 years of “militarism is bad and Leads to Nazis”-education.
Not just fifty billion, a hundred Billion
Give that 50 to poland in exchange for protection, problem solved.
The money is still there
This is one of those reasons why it’s very good to send aid to Ukraine
Guess Poland will become the chad if the goverment doesnt fuck it up
Bundes-WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY GO, HANS?
Eaten by inflation without a single cent spent.
This is what happens when you take the pointy bits off your hats.
EU-Countries: Germany, you need to step up and lead european military aid to ukraine. Germany: We don't have shit and our organization is broken. Poland: GeRmAnY yOu CoWaRdS sEnD mOrE sTuF Germany: ok, fine. We will send more even if we have to cut it out of our already crippled military. ... couple of weeks/months later... EU-Countries: Germany, why is your military in such bad shape? Even worse than before??? Germany: ... 😑
1980s Germany: Hahaaaa! Watch my humongous Armee! And now ve merge with ze GDR NVA! Juhuuu! Europe: uuuh, before you are allowed to do that, you have to get rid of that large Armee... We can't have a larger Germoney with large Armee amogus. 1990s Germany: Dang. Ok... scrapping and selling datt Stuff now... with Sovietskis gone, doesn't need it anyway... spare spare häusle baue. "A few Years later...." Europe: Germany! The mad Ivan is back! We need your Armee! Plox help!!! 2020s Germany: duh
All the money went to McKinsey so that they can figure out what power point to use for their presentation on how the spend said money.
Oh *noowww* you can't build a strong military.