@MPN11: Well, I don't know if you guys are in a much better state. However, I am 100% sure that, SDSR notwithstanding, the UK armed forces are in a better state overall.
Sure, every Western military basically has been dealing with the same problems since 1990. Financial restraints, frequent and seemingly confusing restructurings (which equals cuts, for the most part), a defense industry mainly consisting of bloated quasi-monopolists who deliver their products overpriced and too late, difficult demographics and so forth.
However, in the UK, there seems to be a broad agreement about the mission of the military itself. It may be underfunded and all that, but at least you Brits pretty much know what you are supposed to do in terms of your strategic and operative ambitions. And if a decision to deploy military assets is made, for instance to bomb IS troops in Iraq, nobody in Parliament asks about which weapons to use.
In consequence, your military is able to deploy and maintain three substantial GR.4 detachments simultaneously, while having only three squadrons worth of aircraft in total. Of course, from what I've read on this forum, this isn't really a perfect situation because it puts a heavy strain on the troops. But from a professional point of view, this is admirable.
And this is where our military fails miserably. For 25 years now, the political leadership of our country has failed to precisely define the purpose of our military. Sure, there are White Papers and all that, but nobody seems to analyze them thoroughly and draw the consequences in terms of the military's structure, training, recruitment et cetera. The Bundestag's major party are in approximate agreement that we somehow need a military, but dealing with defense politics is highly unpopular, so nobody seems to put too much emphasis on that. Consequently, the military has no lobby, so the population didn't really care what was going on with the military until very recently.
As a consequence, we have a very top-heavy armed forces structure with clumsy decision-making structures, which looks good on paper, but isn't able to be deployed effectively and rapidly. Our tank battalions, our infantry, our pilots and maintenance personnel etc. are still very good from a tactical point of view, but somehow we managed to lose any ability to "put things in perspective" and make it all work together coherently. In short, we lack professional leadership.
And the lack of "purpose" from both the political and the military leaderships means, of course, that we don't really know what we need in terms of our equipment. As a result, we have a lot of theoretically exquisite stuff which takes ages to arrive at the front lines, is massively over-engineered and equally overpriced.
At least, the current scandals seem to make the public more aware of all the things that are wrong with the Bundeswehr. Even most media have jumped on the bandwagon that "something has to be done". Maybe, the current events in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine have helped with that, so there is a glimpse of hope.
Sorry for all the rants. I hope my English is good enough so that you can understand what is going on with our armed forces. Serving in our military can be pretty tedious right now.
exhorder
Excellent post and your English is much better than my German. In fact most of your rant's are nothing new in the German military, They have been doing it since the birth of Germany in the 1800's. An interesting documentary by James Holland that I just happened to watch on Youtube last night covers almost all of the problems you state. I hope your English is up to it
