(Berlin) After the fall of the USSR and the Iron Curtain during the 1990s the world took to the philosophy of swords to ploughshares in which to strive for a world of peace and understanding. Unfortunately for all Radical Islam replaced communism , however whilst the Western World was preventing 'Ali's snackbar' from spoling everybody elses day. The Russians under Putin decided that they would steal a march on everybody else and rearm. Which is exactly what Russia has been doing under his remit as leader for life since 2000.
However 18 years down the line and only now have the Western nations started to notice the disparity between themselves and Russia and started to rearm. However whilst nations such as the US, don't have much to do in which to catch up, Germany which was once considered the European bulwark against Soviet aggression finds itself in pretty poor shape:
Currently Germany hasn't got one working submarine, It has refused to accept its latest frigate (of which it is getting 4) as it simply isn't fit for purpose and sent it back stamped 'Return to sender'.
Whilst Germany is due to take over leadership of NATO's multinational Very
High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) at the start of next year, with a rapid reaction force consisting of 44 Leopard 2 tanks and 14 Marder armoured infantry vehicles. It has now come out in the wash it only has 9 working tanks and 3 APCs to bring to the table. Its main Infantry weapon the Heckler & Koch G36 which was supposed to set a new standard in rifle design was found to have only a 7% chance of hitting a target at 100 metres if the weapon became too warm. Which is why the Germans are replacing 176,000 rifles with something a little more reliable.
Whilst the German Airforce has 105 Typhoon aircraft , the other year it only had 8 working examples. Its entire Lynx helicopter fleet (22) was grounded from 2014 till last year.
With a belligerent Russia next door but one, Germany has finally woken up to the threat and is set to increase its defence spending from 1.23% of GDP, with an aim to get to 2% by the middle of the
next decade.
