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International News Title: Germany’s Typhoon problem: Only four fighters can be made combat ready [also tanks, ships, subs, copters] If you thought the US Department of Defense's procurement adventures with the F-35 and other big-budget weapons systems are bad, you might want to check out what's going on in Europe, where defense procurement battles have left most of the German Luftwaffe grounded for lack of parts. Last week, at the annual Charlemagne Prize ceremony in Aachen, Germany—in which French President Emmanuel Macron was recognized for his efforts on behalf of European unity—German Prime Minister Angela Merkel pronounced that Europe could no longer depend on the United States for its protection. "Europe has to take its destiny into its own hands," Merkel said. "That is the task of the future." Merkel has given this message before. But if Europe is to take its destiny into its own hands any time soon, Germany has a lot of work to do—the Bundeswehr, Germany's defense ministry, is suffering from multiple readiness crises in a culmination of years of cost-shaving and poor management decisions. And the latest symptom to emerge of that crisis is the dwindling number of actually functional fighter jets that the Luftwaffe, Germany's air force, can actually call combat ready. For the Eurofighter Typhoon, Germany's main fighter aircraft, that number is four—out of a total of 128. According to a report in Der Spiegel, the Bundeswehr has claimed in an official report to the Bundestag (Germany's legislature) that 39 Typhoon fighters were designated as ready for missions last year. But that report named any aircraft that was capable of flying as being "ready." In fact, only 10 aircraft currently have all their systems functioning, because of a problem that has plagued the defensive aid subsystem (DASS) of Germany's version of the Typhoon. One component of the DASS is a wing pod that contains the aircraft's electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment—its gear for jamming the radar of incoming missiles—and parts of the aircraft's electronic support measure systems, which include radar lock warning and target identification. During the development of the Typhoon, Germany decided to break off from the Eurofighter consortium and fund the development of a domestically built DASS by Daimler Aerospace (DASA). Eventually Germany re-entered the fold, and DASA was absorbed into the European defense conglomerate EADS. But the money-saving maneuvering has continued, as the Bundestag strove to reduce stock in repair parts and opt for "just-in-time" ordering. Unfortunately, the DASS pods on Germany's Typhoons have been failing because of coolant leaks. And the supplier for the part needed to repair the leak is no longer in business. As the rest of Eurofighters' customers are upgrading their DASS systems to the Praetorian DASS from the Italian defense company Leonardo, the factory for the part was sold—and Germany, which did not opt for the upgrade, is now left without a supplier. Cost-cutting procurement strategies have caused problems elsewhere over the past year for the Bundeswehr: The only saving grace for the Bundeswehr is that with the wind-down of NATO support in Afghanistan, there's no immediate combat mission for the German military. And as Der Spiegel's Matthias Gebauer was told by a Bundeswehr source, "We can say with a good conscience that large parts of the [German armed forces] are mission ready, because there is currently no mission." Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 30. Germany doesn't need an army at all. France, England and the United States have nuclear weapons, and the Russians don't have the armed strength to get across Poland against US, Polish and NATO resistance. And given that nuclear weapons mean that Russia can't attack Germany (or vice versa) anyway, why throw all that money down a rathole? Abolish the military and be done with it. What good does the German army do for anybody? It's an expensive white elephant.
#3. To: Vicomte13 (#1) Germany doesn't need an army at all. France, England and the United States have nuclear weapons, and the Russians don't have the armed strength to get across Poland against US, Polish and NATO resistance. Then we need no armies at all, do we? Navies? Piffle. We'll just nuke everybody as a standard response to anything. What if we're not willing to nuke humanity and civilization when some nuclear-armed aggressor like Iran or North Korea starts carving up Europe or Asia or the Mideast? The Soviets were never all that afraid of our nukes, you know. The Soviet archives reveal that they took nuclear exchanges as a given in a war with America. Other hardnosed opponents will do the same. We can threaten all we want but don't be so sure we're willing to ignite a world holocaust just because Russia takes Finland. Or Sweden and Norway. Or the Baltics. Or all of them.
#5. To: Tooconservative (#3) Then we need no armies at all, do we? I didn't say WE didn't need armies. WE are Rome, the world empire. WE need conventional forces to protect and expand that empire. GERMANY doesn't need an army, and if I were German, I'd be clamoring to save all of that money and pay off the national debt.
#8. To: Vicomte13, misterwhite, sneakypete (#5) (Edited) I didn't say WE didn't need armies. WE are Rome, the world empire. WE need conventional forces to protect and expand that empire. GERMANY doesn't need an army, and if I were German, I'd be clamoring to save all of that money and pay off the national debt. And the payoff for the American working class who will have to fight and die for the privilege of defending the EU and other lazy cowardly countries that pretend to be our allies? Why should any of us agree to that? Carnegie Europe: NATO’s European Allies Won’t Fight for Article 5
So it is the job of American boys to die for Europe with possibly some Canucks thrown in to help a little, mostly if England is under threat. We don't have allies. We have military dependents. They're almost entirely worthless. We need to cut them loose if they will not accept and fulfill their treaty obligations. If they don't want defense, there is no rational reason why we should foot the bill for defending them. Let them deal with Russia on their own. Let them deal with Turkey, another alleged NATO ally, deliberately unleashing waves of Third Worlders to live off EU social welfare and establish lawless ghettos and pockets of totalitarian sympathies throughout the rotten EU domain. But don't you dare ask us to clean up their EU mess when it all turns to shite. Again.
#9. To: Tooconservative (#8) So it is the job of American boys to die for Europe This is where your argument collapses. Nobody is dying for Europe. Nobody has died for Europe since 1949 when the Werewolves were finally defeated. Russia has no forces capable of seriously threatening Europe, and there are two nuclear powers in Europe that are fully capable of destroying Russia, if need be. Europe is under zero credible external military threat, and hasn't been since the fall of the USSR three decades ago. Americans are not dying to protect Europe. At all. There is no risk of that This is all about preening, perception, defense contracts and the politics of who is boss. It is NOT actually about any real threat to American or European lives. There is none that requires US forces there. We WANT to be there because of the political power it gives us, and because of the defense contracts that flow from it. THAT is the game. Dying for Europe? Nobody is at any real risk of doing that. At all.
#10. To: Vicomte13 (#9) Dying for Europe? Nobody is at any real risk of doing that. At all. Then get rid of NATO entirely. It is an unfunded liability for America.
#11. To: Tooconservative (#10) Then get rid of NATO entirely. It is an unfunded liability for America. It's not really a liability. It's a tremendous political and economic asset. Yes, sure, we spend money putting forces there. Truth is, that money we spend goes to defense contractors, which boosts employment and the economy. Military jobs are decent wage jobs with benefits. They boost employment. Maintaining a big heavy military footprint all over the world keep employment numbers high, improves the education statistics of the nation, reduces crime at home in a couple of ways, prepares a lot of kids for the workforce and pumps up tax revenues and the science and engineering economy as all of those hundreds of billions flow into US defense contracts. Slash the military as much as I have talked about, and you'll end up shrinking the US GDP and increasing the welfare payments to the unemployed by more than you actually save in tax dollars, and you'll have a lower-educated workforce and a lot more crime: idle hands are the Devil's workshop. Also, NATO places America in supreme command over Europe. The Europeans will accept that. They WON'T accept some other European - a domestic political rival within the EU - in command over them. And non-EU countries such as Norway will ally with the US, for security reasons, but they won't join the EU, for sovereignty reasons. NATO gives the Europeans a multilateral agency besides the EU to push off of. Eastern Europe, for example, balks at EU immigration policy. And they still fear Russia. They view the EU as perhaps helping their economic future, but they don't trust the French and Germans who run it. They view the US as the guarantor of their national security, and they DO trust the United States to be there much more than they trust Berlin or Paris or London to act in their interests. Remember, the US has no seat at the table in the EU, but the whole Greek situation was substantially moderated, with the US in the role of blowing cold wind on the German fire to EXTRACT things from Greece. Because Greece could always bolt the EU and get money by letting the Russians use bases there. Greece (or Turkey) could really mess up the European strategic picture, but people with poor strategic reasoning skills like the Germans are perfectly willing to reduce Mediterranean security in order to extract Euros out of deadbeats. The USA had a firm behind the scenes hand on making sure that the other Europeans remember that their national security is more important than preventing German bankers and taxpayers from taking some losses. In a similar vein, when the British Parliament was twisting with outrage over Iceland's effective cancellation of British bank debt, ominously rumbling about retaliation against Iceland, the fact that Iceland is a fundamental link in NATO defense didn't matter to British bankers, but it DID matter to American policymakers. Having the huge defense presence over there puts American military and intelligence in the heart of every European capital, and gives us a great deal of fine internal control over what goes on. Truth is, the Europeans, grosso modo, don't want us to leave, and it's not in our economic or security interests to do so. A Europe that does not rely on us for its defense and for the defense of its supply lines is a Europe that can act against our interests in dealing with Israel or China or Iran. Right now we see the utility of these things. The Europeans WANT to maintain the cushy deals with Iran. But the USA says so, and so Europe has to adjust. Has to. That's because we're over there in force, and that gives us tremendous power over European decision making. The Empire, gross modo, has made the USA stronger, richer and more dominant - to our benefit, not our detriment. Although I have mused in the past about cutting it and returning home like an isolationist of old, I've thought it through again and again and realized that dog don't hunt. The NATO Alliance is the crown jewel of our world empire. It keeps the peace, and it keeps us in charge of Europe and its littoral. That ends up being worth a lot more to us in GDP, taxes, employment , and peace dividend, than any dollars we'd save by pulling out our forces.
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#11) Hooey. None of that is true.
#14. To: Tooconservative (#12) Hooey. None of that is true. It's completely true. Isolationism is why we had to lose three quarters of a million American lives and half of Europe in World War II. We pretended that we are not our brother's keeper. We were as wrong as Cain on that score. The Paleo-Conservative wants to retreat into isolation again. Failed the first time. Would fail again, if we ever were foolish enough to go that way. But we're not. FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W, Obama and Trump were all very different men, with very different concepts of governance, but they ALL agreed that America needs to first and foremost a military superpower, very present in the world, containing evil and protecting the free. Paleo-Conservatives like you don't agree with Realists like me on this subject at all.
#15. To: Vicomte13 (#14) FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W, Obama and Trump were all very different men, with very different concepts of governance, but they ALL agreed that America needs to first and foremost a military superpower, very present in the world, containing evil and protecting the free. Ike sensibly opposed any expansion of NATO and wanted to withdraw from Europe entirely.
#16. To: Tooconservative (#15) Ike sensibly opposed any expansion of NATO and wanted to withdraw from Europe entirely. He didn't think that with strong enough conviction to actually DO it, because he saw full well what would happen if we withdrew from Europe. Sure, it would be great if we could just come back home and save all of that money. I've thought that myself for years, and Ike was coming from most of a lifetime in which the American desire was very much to not be "over there". We were dragged into World War II against our will. Remember, please, the Russia tried to join NATO in 1954, to be part of the efforts to preserve the peace in Europe. Instead, we admitted West Germany, in 1955, which promptly triggered Russia to form the Warsaw Pact. All of this happened under Eisenhower. So sure, "expansion" of NATO to include the USSR was nixed by Ike, but it was Ike who added West Germany to the mix, with the Warsaw Pact forming in reaction. Ike may have wanted to be a Paleo-Conservative, but he wasn't stupid so he didn't ultimately act on those isolationist instincts. He did what was necessary, which was to keep the USA widely engaged in the world. Yes, he bemoaned the dangers of the "military-industrial complex", and he was certainly correct about some of those dangers. The alternative was letting the Communists sweep most of the world, and eventually become dominant politically in America. Should we have? Paleos would assert that was not really the choice, but I think they are naive about that and wrong.
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#16) Sure, it would be great if we could just come back home and save all of that money. I've thought that myself for years, and Ike was coming from most of a lifetime in which the American desire was very much to not be "over there". We were dragged into World War II against our will. I wouldn't cut it all. However, the rising debt crisis makes that more and more inevitable and painful. I think we should focus on naval and air power and we should mostly move our forces out of Europe. If they don't want to defend it, why should we? And they can rely on France and Britain to nuke Russia if Vlad conquers the Baltics and the eastern half of Ukraine on some sunny afternoon, right?
#30. To: Tooconservative (#17) I think we should focus on naval and air power and we should mostly move our forces out of Europe. If they don't want to defend it, why should we? The thing is the typical European never sees our Naval or Air Power,and when they do see it,it just doesn't register as being foreign because their native nations use our designs. They DO see and register military bases and the soldiers and airmen wandering around in their towns when off-duty,though. Even if it is at a sub-conscious level to most of them,it has an impact.
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