To let German service members ride their country’s trains for free.
None of the Bundeswehr’s transportation systems work so this way they’ll still be able to make it to combat operations on time. Although, on the other hand, Germany’s railway isn’t the most reliable these days either.
German service members in uniform and their children will be allowed to travel for free on trains in Germany, beginning next month. Germany’s minister of defense and the head of Deutsche Bahn came to an agreement Monday in Berlin, allowing military members from each branch to ride all of the national railroad service’s trains at no cost, together with their children up to the age of 14. Spouses will still have to pay their own way, a German Defense Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Germany’s armed forces are struggling to attract much-needed recruits, with the number of new soldiers joining the Bundeswehr falling to an all-time low last year. The shortages are an urgent challenge for the German military, which has tried to boost its strength and capabilities at a time of record-low unemployment, and against fierce competition from both the private sector and institutions such as the police.
The need to build up the Bundeswehr reflects at least in part the recent pressure from the U.S. and other allies to raise German defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, in line with a longstanding commitment given by all NATO members. Berlin spent 1.2 percent of its budget on defense last year, a figure that is expected to rise to 1.5 percent by 2024. Still …
JUST 20,000 RECRUITS JOINED THE ARMED FORCES IN 2018, DOWN FROM 23,000 THE PREVIOUS YEAR, AND THE LOWEST IN THE HISTORY OF THE BUNDESWEHR.
German ISAF (I Saw Americans Fighting) are already packing their bags in Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump’s mooted decision to pull half the US troops out of Afghanistan could mean that the German military follows suit, according to a former head of the Bundeswehr.
“If the United States reduces itself to a small contingent in Afghanistan there’s no reason for us to continue the mission anymore,” retired General Harald Kujat, inspector general of the German military between 2000 and 2002, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Thursday.
He added that it was “out of the question” to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan if the protection and support of German troops could not be guaranteed, though he said he expected other NATO members, such as the UK, to increase their contribution to make up for any US withdrawal.
I mean, what on earth do the Americans expect the German army to do? Protect themselves? Like, with firearms or something?
Germany’s military has a manpower problem, and its solution may be foreigners and teenagers.
Germany’s long-understaffed Bundeswehr is using computer videogames in an effort to lure young people into its ranks.
During this year’s Gamescom trade fair for video games in Cologne, the German armed forces unfurled a number of “Multiplayer in Its Best” and “A More Open World Doesn’t Exist” posters with a bundeswehrkarriere.de link carefully printed underneath.
“Vor zwei Jahren hab’ ich noch mit Playmobil gespielt.”
I mean, if it’s on your way and not too much of an inconvenience? They want to come home now but their airplane is broken.
The Bundeswehr, one of NATO’s largest militaries, is now a steady source of news about planes that can’t fly, tanks that break down and troops that admire the Nazis. So what exactly has gone wrong in Germany’s army?
Quite simple, really. These are soldiers who are not allowed to be soldiers in an army that is not allowed to be an army – other than to serve as an excuse for being able to export lots of way cool and expensive military equipment that works fine everywhere else but here. There’s a lack of culture in Germany regarding its military and its responsibility as a partner, in other words.
Insgesamt 89 in Mali eingesetzte deutsche Soldaten warten seit Tagen auf eine Rückflugmöglichkeit aus dem westafrikanischen Krisenstaat in den Heimaturlaub.
Wait. It gets better. Or maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know what to say, people. But only a military counterintelligence service called MAD could come up with a story like this.
A German soldier who falsely registered as a Syrian asylum seeker has been arrested for planning a terror attack. Authorities believe the lieutenant was motivated by xenophobia…
Prosecutors said the man hid a loaded weapon in a bathroom at Vienna airport in January. He was then briefly arrested by Austrian police when he returned in February to retrieve it.
They later released the soldier due to insufficient evidence. However, the suspect’s fingerprints indicated he had in late 2015 used an alias to falsely register as a Syrian refugee in Germany. In early 2016, he applied for asylum. He was subsequently granted accommodation and even received aid money.
Ein mutmaßlich rechtsradikaler Bundeswehrsoldat, der sich als Flüchtling und Syrer ausgab, soll einen Anschlag geplant haben.
Over 400 German soldiers have filed applications for resignation from the country’s armed forces, leaving the other half to fend for itself all on its own.
“Combat situations are often revelatory moments in which the risk of a soldier’s career – of killing or being killed is often realized for the first time and then experienced in its full scope,” said a Left party Bundeswehr expert when interviewed about the matter.
“That the German army doesn’t ever experience any combat situations like ever at all (as in NEVER) is the really mysterious thing behind all of this,” said another unnamed expert who wasn’t even being interviewed. Or even asked, for that matter. Nor will he ever be, as far as I can figure.
Seit Mitte 2014 wollten 62 Soldatinnen und 407 Soldaten aus Gewissensgründen entlassen werden.
Why on earth do the folks over at the Bundeswehr think that they need to have a new camouflage system? The old camouflage is working amazingly well already.
Just like that guy up there in the snow, I can hardly find any Bundeswehr soldiers anywhere these days as it is. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, you name it.
I also think that they are using some kind of a Klingon Cloaking Device for their tanks and other heavy military equipment, too – for the few pieces of heavy military equipment that are still working. Only they call it a Colonel KlinkonCloaking Device, of course.
Das Wehrwissenschaftliche Institut hat für die Bundeswehr einen Tarnanzug entwickelt, der auch Nachtsichtgeräte täuschen kann.
The sniper is straight up from the big boulder in the lower left corner, where the color of the stones changes from light to dark.
“The key question for me and my work at the moment is, how images are used to influence people and their decisions,” Menner wrote. “At the core, hiding snipers and ads for Apple have something in common, since both try to infect us with ideas about things we are not able to see. But I think that this is easier to detect while ‘looking’ at hidden snipers than by looking at Apple ads.”
And roads. And they train the police and only do the things that other bad soldiers won’t do because they reek of goodness and niceness.
And of course they also select insurgents to be placed on “kill lists” when nobody else is looking (so the bad soldiers can kill them later). But still.
A so-called “Target Support Cell” was based at the German headquarters of Mazar-e-Sharif. The group’s mission was, according to the report, “to collect information for the nomination of individual targets.”
Observing Hermann 