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The Disgraceful State Of The German Military

Posted on 21st February 2018

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These two reports by the BBC really show what a terrible state the German armed forces are in.

The first report, from UK Defence Journal, describes how the air force has been filling the fuel tanks of their Tornado jets with a fuel mixture containing too much bio-diesel.Now all the fuel tanks need to be flushed, putting many aircraft out of commission. Also, because of maintenance issues, the Luftwaffe’s Eurofighter and Tornado fighter jets and its CH-53 transport helicopters are only available for use an average of four months a year. The article also contains some alarming statistics about the German army's ninth tank brigade which has only nine operational Leopard 2 tanks, instead of the promised 44, and only three of the promised 14 Marder armored infantry vehicles.

The second report, from the BBC, describes how no submarines or large transport planes were available for service at the end of last year: "At the end of the year six out of six submarines were not in use. At times, not one of the 14 Airbus A-400M could fly". The condition of the military's fleet of fighter planes, tanks, helicopters and ships is described as "dramatically bad".

To put this all into context, Germany is supposed to be the leader of NATO's Russian-aimed Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, hence the use of the word "promised" in relation to the number of vehicles above. The German military is meant to be our first line of defence against threats from Russia, but are clearly not up to the task. Let's just hope they are not needed.