.
... would be an army that gets the basics right at every level, even if it has no luxuries, no bells & whistles, not a single piece of equipment newer than 20 years old design.
Like a perfect storm
Such an army would overrun more sluggish lethality-obsessed armies, it could outlast much larger Potemkin village armies, it would benefit from every season, it would be only mildly impeded by air power and it would generally have very lopsided (in its favour) "exchange ratios" in battle.
It would also be only mildly attractive to defence contractors, as they would not get many outsourcing contracts, and could not make much profit off gold plating development contracts. They would get a steady stream of revenue from good-sized munitions & spares orders, though.
Systemic deviations from the optimum
I understand that the leadership of most developed world armies wants to get the basics right, they probably even think they do.
I strongly suppose they don't, based on the observation of symptoms. I strongly suppose there are systemic issues in group and organisation behaviour that lead to suboptimal outcomes. To get the basics right on all or nearly all levels requires to betray tactical and organisational traditions. It requires constant effort. It requires that you free up time from everyday activities to learn about what others do differently, why, and with what results. It requires to forego self-interest and peer - group self-interest in favour of the pursuit of getting at least the basics right.
Identify and fix
The concept may be abhorrent to many military fanbois, but the way to go is to bring in external economists (which the German military actually educates in its own university!), psychologists (same), historians and sociologists (including anthropologists!) to work out the patterns that drive the army bureaucracy away from optimum paths towards self-serving paths. Some additional research is needed to identify (and likewise call out) civilian influences that cause such harm as well.
We can aim to counter the bad patterns and influences once we understand them, and everyone who gets into high leadership positions needs to be briefed on these findings thoroughly. In fact, I would have them educated to the point that they need to show they understood everything in tests, and have to work more on test questions where they failed to score. I'd rather have an interim leader and the designated leader stuck in a training course for months than to let anyone new into a high level position who does not understand the issues well.
The insiders can't fix themselves
It is utterly self-evident that the German professional officer corps is a failure. It's not their fault, really. Some wrong people got selected into it and the rest is also working within a rotten system, unable to decisively reform it from inside. They sure have a very high opinion of themselves, but their results are damning and their excuses (especially blaming politicians) are weak sauce considering how much goes wrong that a handful of politicians cannot possibly have been responsible for.
Example: The antiquated small arms training that got reformed only a couple years ago after generations of stagnation. No army officer can reasonably argue that ministers of defence forced the army to bring firearms training that's limited to 1920's style shooting ranges into the 21st century. Another example; the utterly unrealistic layout of exercise areas, which can easily be identified on satellite imagery because they stand out from the real world so much. Even the best built up training area could not be mistaken for any real world settlement. The army preferred to ask for gold-plated vehicles rather than to insist on realistic training (areas).
It's furthermore completely impossible that the German military wasted millions on Global Hawk drones that could never be used, but somehow it would be the civilian politicians' fault that we don't have a gazillion of dirt-cheap consumer-grade multicopters like the ones employed with success in Ukraine. They get money for a lot of crap, certainly they could have gotten funds for such drones if only they had prioritised it. It would even have been less than the famous 25 million threshold*, so political interference opportunities would have been minimised.**
Civilian overseers have to force a course change
The insiders cannot fix themselves, thus we need outsiders to do it. outsiders with the power to force and remove insiders, to break all resistance. The civilian leadership by politicians such as the minister of defence has this job.
This job hasn't been done for decades, though. Not a single German minister of defence did a decent job in the post-Cold War era. Rühe had to lead in a very demanding period (integration of East German military including retaining some officers, post Cold War downsizing) and certainly some things were done well back then, but he also launched a terrible, terrible refocus towards stupid "out of area" missions that brought practically zero benefit to the nation over the next three decades.
We need a competent minister of defence with a team of competent, trusted reformer managers and a competent civilian chief of staff. This minister and his team shall not become one with the armed bureaucracy, shall not adopt its self-interest as their self-interest. They shall be rewarded for exposing scandals and shaming failures, for firing and disbanding. The press usually instinctively does the opposite; it blames ministers of defence for what goes wrong in the armed forces. That's an incentive to cover up and keep things silent, rather than an incentive to clean the house of crap. The minister of defence should publish scandals themselves and the press should shame the predecessors for scandals instead (unless the minister has been in officer for more than the last three years already).
In the end, we need very few legislative changes. Most importantly, the entire approach towards the office of the minister of defence needs to change. No more no-clue non-specialised politicians shall be sent there to bury their career, to give them some office after they failed with some more grand ambitions or for mere party coalition offices distribution maths. We need reformers with a passion for breaking resistance and clearing out crap. Brutal personalities who don't bend arms to get what they want, but cut throats right away - so the peers understand the new direction of flow right away. We shall ignite a passion for clearing out bollocks among the officers and ignite the hope that the rotten institution becomes a deservedly proud one again.
Those generals? They're worthless pawns. They cannot repair the armed forces. The professional officers are the insider club whose autopilot is stuck on the wrong course. The minister of defence needs to be the power that drives reform. He/she/it (I REALLY don't care) has to change the course, and everyone who resists shall be eliminated from the armed bureaucracy, regardless of rank and the treatment should be as mean and disrespectful as possible within the limits of article 1 to discourage resistance by others.***
No need to shine
There's no need for anything spectacular, shiny, "sexy", super-impressive in an army or air force. We need no GUMLRS-ER missiles, for example. We need no dedicated national military radar satellite. We need no high end main battle tank. We need no F-35.
We need to get the basics right. We need stuff that works, in good quantity, with enough consumables, we need to be able to get it where we need it and when we need it, our troops need to know how to use it well, they need to be fit, alert, ready, deployable, motivated, confident, take care of each other, follow orders without delay according to the superior's intent. Command has to be modest, self-restrained, agile, clear, quick and imaginative. We don't need a hugely impressive military machine, but its gears need to be well-lubricated and sand-free.
And anyone who dares to stand in the way of achieving this shall be eliminated from the armed forces, period.
S O
*: Orders bigger than € 25 million require additional parliamentary involvement.
**: That being said, I'm convinced that lobbying and "my region before the country" politicians in the armed forces committee are responsible for much money wasted on defective helicopters, defective transport aircraft, combat aircraft for which there are almost no spares or munitions and certain useless warships. These are no excuses for all the other things that went wrong, though.
*: German constitution, article 1 is a very general article that protects human dignity.
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You want one knowledgeable individual to show everyone the way and be utterly ruthless. This reminds me of the Great Purge under Stalin. Like Marx, you're good at diagnosing some errors, but you don't see the faults of the remedy you want to prescribe.
ReplyDeleteTo reform an organization, some high ranking people must be retired, that's a no brainer. But you don't lead people towards a shared goal in a climate of fear.
Exupery (1900-1944) wrote: “if you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” First you need to develop a shared dream and then people can contribute towards this goal and be shown the right way if they err. Very few will need to be retired, because they obstruct.
The issue with a professional corp is that it becomes a 9-5 job.It isn't a thing to inspire,attract and keep those 1% that are born for this .The only mission for an army is to win battles and wars.So the only criteria for promoting officers should be the ability to do well in simulated battle.Being an effective peacetime administrator should only make you the CO's deputy for paperwork.
Delete@2nd anon: We need and have two kinds of officers; officers for leadership (command) and officers for administrative/staff duty. I understand that the command career path may include too much paperwork, but not every officer needs to be a combat troops commander.
DeleteIt is a constitutional fact that a single minister is to be selected to oversee and lead the armed forces.
DeleteEveryone powerful inside the armed forces is a compromised insider, so that one outsider has to change the course.
I would create a climate of fear among professional officers for a very good reason: They shall piss their pants at the thought of pursuing self-interest and only feel comfortable serving the nation, their pay being the only self-interest part. Meanwhile, volunteer officers, NCOs and enlisted personnel would gain optimism, confidence, hope, dignity, initiative.
Your goal is noble, but the way you want to pursue it, creates likely a very different outcome. I encountered the institutional stupidity that creates little bang for the buck, but it's not due to numerous bad actors. The problems are more localized and I suggest a scalpel rather than your sledgehammer. I think you agree that most people want to do a good job and much of the problem can be solved by finding the sources that prevent them from it.
DeleteA horde of McKinsey's had no discernible effect. The civilian leadership doesn't have quantity to go into detail.
DeleteThe sledgehammer would break the paradigm of how things work, and give everyone the opportunity (and motivation) to do something about the problems.
Systemic failure like this cannot be solved the nice way in an acceptable timeframe.
A general is to a minister of defence no more than a recruit is to a basic trainer; completely subordinated. This is the lever, but it's not effective if the officers don't fear consequences for failure to solve problems. The consequence shall be the end of career and possibly shaming of the entire peer group that the officer wanted to protect from change.
S.O. everything you write here is completly impossible in this german federal republic, because of the Rechtsstaat. So why do you Waste so much Time on this fantasy BS ?
ReplyDeleteIt's not impossible at all. Any professional officer can be fired (forcibly retired) at the minister's whim. You just need to stay clear of article 1.
DeleteFeel free to point out what exactly is supposedly impossible.
"S.O. everything you write here is completly impossible in this german federal republic, because of the Rechtsstaat."
DeleteNonsense. A Verteidigungsminister can of course remove generals, esp. in case of underperformance. This may in the medium term lead to some legal actions and in worst case compensation of some duds, but it is possible and would give motivation.
The essential requirement is a Verteidigungsminister, who is actually interested in armed forces and knows what is required, and backbone.
Little gedankenexperiment: Do you assume Helmut Schmidt would have had any issues with firing some generals?
Schmidt actually fired one about 50 years ago. IIRC only one other general was fired since, other than that we had only some generals taking a soft landing by leaving their post a little sooner than anticipated (no overt firing).
DeleteFiring some (few) Generals would solve nothing. Firing many and many officers too would make everything in the armed Forces unworkable, for this even a passive resistance would suffice (Dienst nach Vorschrift etc). The legal actions against the firings would overwhelm the courts longer than any Minister could stay in his Position. It would cripple the armes forces completly even After that. Despite all your left wing radikal allmachtsphantasien of a allmighty leader and saviour (which are quite dubious for themselve) there are laws and according to them All Tour ideas here are simply illegal. No Minister of defence will have enough Power or even the legal possibilities despite your claims that he has.
DeleteLook, all generals can be removed without need for justification. Call it what you want - fire or not, they get kicked out of the service.
Deletehttps://www.buzer.de/gesetz/2246/a31692.htm
Everybody else can be ordered to a dead end post and effectively removed from the real military that matters. The MoD can send a colonel to command a depot where he oversees how troops are doing a weekly inventory check.
And any kind of subverting MoD decisions can trigger
§43(2)4
https://www.buzer.de/gesetz/2246/a31684.htm
And all that is a mere law. It can be changed easily by the Bundestag. Only the constitution is a durable obstacle against policymakers.
To your first link regarding § 50 SG: only the Federal President can do this, not the Minister of Defense and they will not be fired, but sent into retirement with full pay. That does absolutely nothing.
DeleteAbout your second argument: this would also solve nothing. You would only have tons of officers who ultimately collect full pay for doing nothing, politically agitating against you, covering you with administrative lawsuits, paralyzing the whole operation with service to rule, insubordination and all kinds of cunning.
Believe me or not, I know this association, the officer caste, very well from my own experience. It's a snake's nest, all snakes in the garden. The higher the worse, worst of all at the Ministry. You wouldn't even find out who your enemies are there and who actually supports you seriously, and your supposedly idealistic comrades-in-arms that you think you've found will then be the ones stabbing you in the back.
For your next link, the § 43 / II / 4 SG: Here is written that a judgment in a judicial disciplinary proceeding is necessary. You would end with endless court proceedings, appeals, administrative proceedings, proceedings up to the highest courts, the whole thing would drag on so long that you would no longer be a minister before even those proceedings were ever finished.
Currently, officers often sue other officers for promotions because they are transferred and they are not or vice versa, and even these procedures by soldiers against other soldiers drag on for so many years that promotions are massively influenced as a result. Without the slightest action being taken against it from above.
Of course, that reverses the actual meaning, but that's how the rule of law actually exists.
And if you actually believe that the Bundestag could and would be able to change that through new other laws: they don't even manage to separate the salary law from civil service law, and then we add the parliamentary group pressure, like so many in the parties are linked to the economy, how strong the influence of lobbyists (ex-officers!) is here, how much is being done behind the scenes and how much the systemic corruption has eaten away at this political system and then you naively seriously believe that the party proportional representation of the Bundestag could solve this? Hard to imagine even in theory my friend.
Quite apart from that, I totally agree with your conclusions regarding an operational army.
DeleteBut for an functioning german army you might have to completely rebuild it from scratch from the drawing board, but then you're faced with the personnel problem again of cause.
On the other hand, because of the officer corps and the party representation in this Federal Republic, I consider the actually existing Bundeswehr totally unreformable. Regardless what means you think of.
Look only at the actual PUMA disaster.
The federal president does what he's being asked to do. That's a formality like sending the paperwork to HR department. It may take a few days, that's all.
DeleteThe lobbying shit comes from the reservist association, not from officers sent to rot on some deadend no-influence post. Also, keep in mind what I wrote about the press.
Regarding politician behaviour; I'm writing about what's needed for real reform. I did not claim it's easy, but it is a fact that officers are powerless against the decisions of the ruling federal government coalition and their MoD. It doesn't seem that politicians are wielding this power well so far. We've have terrible MoDs for three decades.
I Think you underestimate the real Power of the General Caste behind the scenes and outside of the law. Their informal power, the corporative System between political parties, officers and the industry and the extreme systemic corruption, and also the legal possibilities to hinder every move of yours for years make it Not only difficult but simply impossible. In the end you would have Made the armed forces completly destroyed to the point that you can disolve them alltogether.
DeleteAs an MoD instead you first have to identify young competent and motivated officers and Bild a reliable followship. But even this would require years and a political power against the industry and other Power groups even in your own party no Party or MoD will ever have.
Also the Präsident is Not simply a puppet of the relative powerless MoD
"Schmidt actually fired one about 50 years ago."
ReplyDeleteYes. My point should have been that Schmidt as MoD knew what he wanted and had no problem to clash with the military leadership to achieve his goal.
Or think about a guy like Gerhard Schröder as MoD....
It struck me as kind of odd, how German ex-general Kujat and inspector general Zorn cautioned against delivering weapons to Ukraine and generally expressed sordid pessimism about the situation, whereas the political leadership was far more enthusiastic and optimistic.
ReplyDeleteWhat are your thoughts on this?
The opinions of retired officers colonel and higher are generally mysterious to me.
DeleteThe politicians have a foreign policy paradigm; a rules-based international order where only Western powers are allowed to violate the rules. Putin violated this brazenly and repeatedly, so he needed to be punished.
On the other hand, Baerbock's preference for continuing the Mali mission is a total mystery to me. The greens literally hate militarised foreign policy done by others, and love militarised foreign policy done by a green minister of foreign affairs.
One way to explain the opinions of the retired officers colonel and higher is that the institution Bundeswehr selects mostly such soldiers for said ranks.
ReplyDeleteExceptions will exist, but that would be quite damning.
Firn
I get the impression that they are very "establishment", very beholden to their peers club (usually branch of armed forces, sometimes specific branch of service) and very much anchored on attitudes, explanation patterns & doctrines that were indoctrinated and very much incapable of discussing anything truly in public (though the latter could be about deeply ingrained OPSEC).
DeleteBasically, they robotically present predictable opinions as if those were the only thinkable ones that are not outright ludicrous/incompetent/ignorant.
I really wonder how they get along with differently-indoctrinated senior officers of other NATO countries these days.
It sure makes sense to suspect that those with power select mini-mes for promotion to Col and beyond.
That's one more reason to never expect the armed forces to reform themselves effectively. The last time that worked was after Napoleon had crushed the rotten Prussian army.
I know from reading your blog that you oppose this idea for ideological reasons but I think one thing that would really make any military less bureaucratic and more focused on the basics would be to reintroduce conscription in some form.
ReplyDeleteAll the first world countries with (some form of) conscription seem to generally have excellent militaries that get the basics right and have a stern focus on territorial defense (Scandinavian countries, Greece, Israel, South Korea and off course Ukraine) while professionalisation seems to lead to gold plating, bureaucratisation, as well as expeditionary and firepower obsession.
When (the male half of) your population regularly gets exposed to the real state of the military it will be much harder to hide mismanagement.
It will also be much harder to justify stupid "out of area" missions and small wars with a military made up mostly of conscripts.
It would also ensure that enough troops for maneuver, frontlines and defense in depth are available and can thus prevent an overreliance on firepower.
The bigger size (active+reserve) also would prevent gold-plating equipment since bigger volumes would have to be produced.
And such a force would have a greater deterrence effect on potential aggressors.
All of your criticisms of the current situation of the German military would be improved by conscription.
Ukraine would never have lasted as long as they did if it wasn't for conscription.
In the "Ernstfall" it will be necessary anyway, so better prepare now.
Here is a piece by John T. Reed that also argues the case: https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-blog-about-military-matters/66448067-should-there-be-a-military-draft
The problem is in many W-E countries, in the last decades conscription wasn't done well anyhow.
DeleteThe professional soldiers ended up as conscription babysitters. The conscripted soldiers were learning how to march in parade, clean latrines, work food in shifts etc.
And depending on when you did your service, either no shooting (no money for ammo), or loads of it (this ammo is about to reach it's end of service-date.. disposing of it costs money... hmm... FULL AUTO back-to-back weeks of training time!)
Ukraine conscription is much more 'military utility first', survival training, etc.
uniform folding & parade march for after the war.
It is not enough to argue for 'conscription'; those conscripts need to be well trained, and that goes back to the overall premise: good basic training, which needs to be budgeted for.
Where-as in Belgium, yes we had conscripts.
But the 'gold plating', by Cold War standards still occurred: budget for the F16's.
Land vehicles and land forces training? Errr....
Crazy to think how in WW2, 20-25 year olds with weeks-months of training got send in as paratroopers (elites) NCO's.
And they seemed to have a working leadership, grasp of tactics etc.
Even today, with years of training: no-one can truly predict how a soldier, NCO or officer will react under (artillery) fire.
a 'Ukraine-style conscription' with military & survival focus, might draw in candidates a whole lot more than 'parade march & uniform folding'. But it won't look as good during ceremonies.
'the basics right at every level':
ReplyDeletewhat those basics entail, do differ massively depending on the nation and what is expected of the military.
I don't see any nuclear-capable nation scrapping submarines e.g.
But the main problem is the West (-Europe) has been very negligent towards their land force capability.
In favor of ever more expensive & capable aircraft, and ships.
(as a result, there has been some investment into high end anti-air, and now some anti-drone)
Modern tanks & artillery are upgraded Cold War designs.
F22, F35 have moved far beyond that;
recent submarines & ships too I'd argue (ever larger 'frigates',...)
The land forces equipment comparatively is worn-out.
You don't hold a ceremony for a tank rolling of the assembly line like you do for a ship, certainly not for an artillery piece, and it is not as 'sexy' as an airshow.
Have you ever had the chance at looking at the PAVN (People'
ReplyDeletes Army Of Vietnam)? They look to be focused on the basics (with self-sufficient and large weapon stocks) for most of the time with very limited modern day purchases (like airdefenses, drones and guided fire-and-forget antitank missiles). They look to be inline with what you repeatedly wrote here.
I know almost nothing about them, not even what reforms they did since 1979.
DeleteModern day wise, they are mostly similar to what they were in 1979. Most of the funding is going towards increasing the ammo/weapons stockpile, acquiring training equipment like Virtual simulator and researching upgrade packages.
DeleteThey heavily focused on artillery as a base with mortars ranging from 50mm-80mm pushed down to platoon/squad level and companies are afforded 100-160mm mortars. Higher than that, they use T-55 (upgraded Israeli variants) as fire support vehicles (and PT-76 for the marines and ASU-85 for the sappers) and self-propelled 120-155mm howitzers at battalion levels. They do have mutiple MRLS units Bm-12 and other variants as divisional assets.
Some funding do go towards acquisition but they are extremely limited.
+ SPYDER local anti-air defense system
+ S-300 systems
+ Czech Counter-Artillery Radars
+ Isareli loitering UAVs
+ T-90s and BMP2 but this is to arm a single test manuver division. (Vietnam's main doctrine isn't maneuver warfare but trench/tunnel delaying warfare)
Other funding that I'm unable to find sources for are often related to logistics like vehicles to make it easier to dug tunnels, better thermal camo and higher quality rations.
If you are interested, here are few sources that document several of PAVN current and past developments .
https://twitter.com/AnnQuann
https://www.facebook.com/VietDefenseVN/