Military Story

There's a curious story that comes out of Focus news magazine today over the German army (the Bundeswehr).

There's a confidential 'leak' that occurred and the info came to BILD (the German newspaper).  The leak says that right now....there are 25,000 positions vacant in the German army and they are having serious problems in filling vacancies.  Adding to this situation, the same leak says that out of the typical 760,000 kids who reach 18 years old.....only half of them are qualified/capable of being accepted.  Of the remaining non-capable kids.....if they did have an interest....they'd have to ask for a waiver because of issues.

The problems?  They don't go into a lot of details. 

If you go and just view the 16-to-18 year old crowd in Germany, you tend to view some kids who are seriously out of shape and probably at least ten-percent of them would have weight issues preventing them military service. 

You have to remember as well, that it's a volunteer service.....so they require a physical, a fitness standard prior to signing the contract, and even an aptitude test that you 'must' pass before entering service.  If you marginally made it through school, the odds are against you having enough of a score to qualify yourself.  This is not like the draft era of the 1970s where they took even marginally qualified folks.

An indication of problems to come?  If they are short on 25,000 positions by next year....you can figure in six to eight years that it'll double to 50,000. 

What I suspect will occur as we leave the Merkel-era over the next decade, is that the German Army will agree to downsize (probably 10-to-20 percent)....so the problem will go away.  Some of the pro-military crowd may grumble about this problem and the likely solution, but lets face facts.....if you are buying a major part of your natural gas each year from the most likely 'thug' to attack you.....the odds are heavily in favor of the 'thug' actually developing a friendly customer-based relationship.  Beyond Russia.....no one is going to attack Germany.