Originally Posted by
KiwiNedNZ
I would assume that these big European countries would have a MUCH BIGGER budget than a tiny little country here at the bottom of the world
@Casper64 summed it up perfectly at least for Germany. In Germany since the end of the cold war, the Defense Budget was always considered as the first option for executing cuts if money was tight. Since procurement numbers are typically contractually fixed, the cut- backs first hit maintenance and spare parts. Same applies if procurement programs exceed their defined budget. Only when it exceeds extreme thresholds this will result in procurement of lower quantities. Up to that point the money is squeezed out of the defence budget in other corners. Again Spare Parts and Maintenace being a cheap target.
All this results in catastrophic readiness rates across almost all sophisticated systems. In the last two decades adventures in foreign Countries also grabbed lots of defence money and at the same time put excessive load on equipment deployed. Bottom line: Even in bigger and rather rich countries depending on priorities money can be very short for keeping military equipment serviceable.