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Comment by ceeplusplus | Hacker News Reader

The far bigger issue is that France and Germany (especially Germany) have a chronic underspending problem on their military. They choose to spend on social programs instead. You can't claim leadership of a pan-EU army when you yourself don't even meet the 2% GDP spending target set by NATO.

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In 2020, German spent about 53 billion USD on its military, that’s rank 7 world-wide. The UK spent 59 billion, about the same ballpark. The bigger problem in Germany is inefficient spending.

Using absolute numbers borders on fraud. What's the %?

Why care about the %? What really matters are the capabilities, no matter the cost.

Correct, but if Germany wants to be a leader of a pan-EU army it needs to be a dominant military power in the region (for example the US globally, or Turkey in the East Mediterranean, or what Egypt/Libya used to be in the Middle East before the US decided to regime change them). Else you just get political squabbling because the various states have equal power and nothing gets done.

I'm not saying social spending is bad, just that if playing a lead role in a pan-EU army is Germany's interest then it needs to spend more.

How will more money fix the fundamental issue of inefficient spending? It will just be more money inefficiently spent.

The bulk of the German military hasn't been combat effective for a long time, and is basically just a government jobs program.

https://www.newsweek.com/germany-cant-explain-use-broomstick...

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/10/20/all-of-germanys...

https://www.dw.com/en/only-4-of-germanys-128-eurofighter-jet...

It's going to take a while to rebuild into an organization capable of actually fighting.

Did you read the first article?

That broomstick example gets paraded around a lot, but this was on a vehicle, that wasn't supposed to have a gun in the first place.

There is a lot of valid criticism on the readiness of Germany's armed forces, this isn't one.

You've made this comment twice - I am curious. Which configuration of the Boxer was it that was in the exercise without the weapon. I believe that the ambulance doesn't have one - which one was the German crew on?

arguably those two are linked - you can rationalise that French / German govt have been reluctant to spend on military force over which they have less influence than they would prefer. Hence the arguments for an EU army, despite the existence of NATO. We will see what happens with the German U-turn on military spending whether this results in them falling into line alongside the Brits in NATO, or closer the French in a EU military force. I suspect it will now be the former, given the loss of leverage the Germans now have

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