Freitag, 20. Mai 2011

Todays topic: Bundeswehr

Today I wanna talk about the Bundeswehr. The Bundeswehr is the German army and one of the biggest employer in Germany and that is a problem.
Germany has big financial, suprise suprise, problems like many European states. We are not close to a crysis but we have a lot of debts. (Thx to the Eurosaving found. A ton more now)
Well anyway our former minister of defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg who left the job because he cheated in his dissertation, started a programm to shrink the Bundeswehr: The Bundeswehrreform. This should , and will if done, lead to savings in the German state budget. The Bundeswehr shall shrink but get more powerfull. More powerfull with less tanks, with less airplanes and submarines. Oooookay.

Bundeswehr Logo

            Here a short list of what will happen to the Bundeswehr:

  • The Bundeswehr has now ~228.000 soldiers. The reform want to shrink that to 185.000. That means 43.000 soldiers will lose their jobs.
  • The Marine will lose 4 of their 10 submarines and 10 other combat ships like destroyer or mine searchers.
  • The Heer, ground forces,  would lose three brigade- and three divisionstaffs. (I hope I translated this correctly. There wasnt a word2word translation). According to Wikipedia we have currently 264 tanks of the type Leopard 2. The new plan will cut 64 of them.
  • The Luftwaffe, airforce, would lose 5 of their 13 Wings.

The Zivildienst , a social replacement to the Bundeswehr, will as well as the draft service be cancelled.
That means that a lot of social organisations will have huge problems to do their work correctly. But not just that. Hospitals, old people's homes, psychiatries and other supporting organisations will lack of people and therefor can not do the same work as done before.
This new reform should save 8.3 billion € but according to Der Spiegel, a big German magazine, will this reform only save 1.5 billion €


I am against the reform. I did Zivildienst and in my opinion this is a very important and good thing. Also savings on the lands defense ? Dangerous thing. This plus the 40.000 people who would lose their job make the reform to me unnecessary.


Let me know what you think about it! Do it? Don't do it? 

ps: After staying awake for 28 hours I slept 16 hours. I had a lot of dreams and was extremly confused when I woke up. Happened twice. The one thing I did not know where I was. The 2nd time I thought I cuddle my brother and my cat. 
Oh and I'm off till sunday. So have a nice weekend buddys :) 

9 Kommentare:

  1. The US army is also facing similar downsizing to save money. In fact we had the lowest pay raise this past year in decades. Go inflation go.

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  2. In my opinion reducing big "company's" on the governments orders is kind of ridiculous. They want to have a strong and good economy, firing people will only get them unemployed but (in europe) they will get them to reapply for jobs, which is hard in this economy, and the government will still have to pay them for life support.

    I think all governments are underestimating the consequences of firing all those people, no matter what branch they are in...

    Go cuddle your brother tho!

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  3. I don't know, as an American I feel that the one place we need to cut is the Military. It consumes to much of our GPD it is insane what that money could do if we weren't funding 2 wars and a skirmish. Then again, we are spending a lot more than any other country in the world, so cutting back isn't unreasonable for us.

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  4. we are getting rid of our tanks as well, who needs them these days?

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  5. not from germany but do what u need to do!

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  6. 16 hours of sleep!? Dude, that's insane. o_o

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  7. I wish I could sleep for 16 hours :/

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  8. Man könnte das Geld auch anders einspaaren, z.B. indem wir nicht ganz Europas Schulden bezahlen ,)

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