"Severe" mismanagement within the German navy and Defense Ministry led to massive cost overruns in restoration work on a naval training ship, according to a confidential report seen by Der Spiegel magazine.
Repair estimates on the Gorch Fock were originally priced at under €10 million ($11.5 million), but skyrocketed to €135 million last year, the 39-page report from the National Audit Office found.
The agency blamed military officers for inadequately examining the sailing ship's deficiencies, ignoring information vital for the repair work and failing to fully inform Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
Work on the ship's hull and renewal of its upper and middle deck began in 2015 without an economic feasibility study, and without considering the case for constructing a new ship, auditors said.
A Defense Ministry spokesperson said the ministry would submit a formal reply to the Federal Audit Office's accusations by April.
For example, what is the most costly naval vessel that the German navy has? What has been the most expensive in the long run? It might surprise you, but it has been the Gorch Fock. Which is the ship below: — ssu
That's the biggest outcry now, that why nobody thought of that in the first place. I assume with less than 100 million or even less you could have made a training ship.It's a steel-hulled sailing ship from 1958, you could have probably build a new ship to the same specifications for a fraction of the cost. — Echarmion
The shambolic state of the Bundeswehr's affairs has long been known in military circles. Stories of dysfunctional tanks and helicopters, rifles that fail in hot weather and soldiers having to train in the cold without thermal underwear have been sidelined for years.
Many of the German military’s problems don't always stem from lack of funding, but also from unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles in procurement and poor planning. The thermal underwear shortage stems from the latter.
In 2015, a German broadcaster quoting a confidential military report said that German soldiers tried to hide the lack of arms by replacing heavy machine guns with broomsticks during a NATO exercise in 2014. After painting the wooden sticks black, the German soldiers swiftly attached them to the top of armoured vehicles.
In short, the war in Ukraine has shone a disturbing light on the German military's critical unpreparedness.
1 - If the formation of a military block bordering with Russia on its eastern front was perceived by Russia as an intolerable existential security threat , this would hold for NATO as much as for a European military alliance. Even more so, if one remember that the US has NEVER EVER invaded Russia proper. France, Germany and Poland did. — neomac
Russia is building back its war machine. (and other things by the way -me) — boethius
Just imagine the horrors of peace. — boethius
Now, you can argue that Russia shouldn't invade Ukraine even if NATO is indeed a legitimate threat to Russia, but arguing NATO is not a legitimate threat is just dumb. — boethius
Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO? — Jabberwock
↪boethius, I don't think you quite caught my drift with those couple comments. (Maybe try not to zoom in on individual verbiage while oddly forgetting the rest?) — jorndoe
Obviously, has thousands of nukes.
The problem vis-a-vis Ukraine is that Ukraine is not a legitimate area of strategic defence for NATO.
If Ukraine was of legitimate strategic value to NATO, then NATO would have gone in the night to Ukraine at some point in the 20 years it's been playing footsie with Ukraine and just brought Ukraine into the alliance by surprise and then flooded the country with NATO troops, bases and equipment the next day. — boethius
So, why is there a war?
Well there isn't a war between Russia and NATO, that's clear.
There's a war because enough Ukrainians (though no the majority, going by any of the votes in which this was a major topic) are gullible enough to play footsie back with NATO and some of those even gullible enough to think NATO really will "stand up" for democracy and risk something real for themselves (aka. nuclear war) in order to "defend freedom or whatever".
The other reason we have the war is that the US elite saw strategic benefit in provoking tensions, as the RAND document literally entitled "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia" makes clear. Now, it's possible US elite weren't aiming for such a large scale war so destructive to Ukraine, but as RAND makes perfectly clear that is a risk (to Ukraine) of the policy. — boethius
That is hilarious from someone urging me to 'live in the real world'. You clearly have no idea how the real world works... Ukraine joining of NATO required consent of all it members, some of which (mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 (not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on, not to mention subversive influence of Russian on European politics which is only now being disclosed). — Jabberwock
(mostly Germany and France) blocked it in 2008 not for fear of Russian reprisal, but due to quite lucractive business going on — Jabberwock
No, that is not the reason there is a war. The reason there is war is because most Ukrainians, as the constant majority of votes shows, want to get out of the Russian sphere of influence, just like Poland and the Baltics did. — Jabberwock
as you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Hint: Germany and France did block Ukraine's accession, hint 2 — Jabberwock
In other words ... what you're saying is ... in the real world Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let Ukraine in ...
Congratulations on expounding on the reasons why Ukraine is not important strategically to NATO. — boethius
But lets say Ukraine was strategically important to the US and the UK and not Germany and France, well first note that's another way of saying Ukraine is not important enough to NATO for NATO to let it in, but even then the US and UK are big boys, they could just go and make a bilateral defence agreement, such as the UK made with Finland to cover the ascension process.
US acts unilaterally all the time, so if Ukraine was somehow strategically important to the US, the US would just march right in, make some bases: as it does everywhere else it says it has "strategic national interest" in. — boethius
Is literally just straight up saying "Important members of NATO weren't afraid of Russia in the slightest, didn't even view Russia as a military rival, and just wanted to do business!!"
Not even fearing reprisal is as far as possible as you can get from some strategic military asset required for credible defence. — boethius
This is probably true, sure, but most Ukrainians also wanted to avoid a war with Russia in such a process, and so why they kept on voting for compromisers, including Zelensky advertised himself as a compromiser.
Likewise, certainly a majority of Ukrainians would like to be in NATO as a way to avoid being invaded by Russia.
The problem is that NATO doesn't let Ukraine in. — boethius
If you put it to Ukrainians anytime in the decades before the war that "would you like to play footsie with NATO for decades, be in a 'will we, won't we relationship' and all cute and shit, but never actually get into NATO and likely be invaded by Russia and the country ruined, millions of Ukrainians permanently leaving, the already terrible demographics totally shot ... oh, and hundreds of thousands of heroes dead or maimed in a war they can't win?", you really saying most Ukrainians would be like "oh! sign me up! Glory to those soon to be dead heroes!".
I don't think so. Rather, people in "less sophisticated" places, such as Ukraine, often put stock in word keeping, as that's the only way society has any sort of structure at all, and they are easily manipulated by more sophisticated civilizations that can see a bigger picture where their word meaning absolutely nothing is of greater benefit to themselves, over the long term; talk to the native Americans if this level of sophistications escapes your imagination.
What are the facts, NATO declared Ukraine would join, and then Ukraine made a clumsy play to join NATO thinking that would solve its security problem and NATO certainly would need to keep its word ... oh, some day. — boethius
The facts are that in 2008 Germany and France blocked MAP, which put Ukraine on hold indefinitely. Then Ukraine declared independence from military alliances and put in its constitution. Then Russia has invaded it anyway. These are the facts, which you again seem unaware of. — Jabberwock
Ukraine declared both simultaneously that it was neutral and also intent on joining NATO, and that also their definition of neutrality didn't exclude collaboration with NATO. — boethius
How bad was it for Ukraine to hand over the nuclear deterrent to Russia? And believe that Russia would keep up it's promises made several times?Ukraine's play was "keep thing ambiguous and hopefully jump into NATO one day". The play didn't work. You can argue Ukraine had a right to make such a play. Sure whatever. You can also argue that the play was the best move but unfortunately hasn't worked out so good; sometimes to the best move is foiled by bad luck. — boethius
How bad was it for Ukraine to hand over the nuclear deterrent to Russia? And believe that Russia would keep up it's promises made several times? — ssu
The deterrent value of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine was also questionable: while Ukraine had "administrative control" of the weapons delivery systems and had implemented measures to prevent Russia from using them, it would have needed 12 to 18 months to establish full operational control. The ICBMs also had a range of 5,000–10,000 km (initially targeting the United States), so they could only have been re-targeted to hit Russia's far east. The Soviet air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) had been disabled by the Russian military during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even reconfigured and made to work by the Ukrainians, they would probably not have had a deterrent effect and had Ukraine done so, it would have faced sanctions from the West and perhaps even a withdrawal of diplomatic recognition by the United States and other NATO allies, and likely retaliation from Russia. Ukraine would also have struggled to replace the nuclear weapons once their service life expired, as it did not have a nuclear weapons program. Ukraine received financial compensation, and the security assurances of the Budapest Memorandum. — Ukraine and weapons of mass destruction, Wikipedia
1 - If the formation of a military block bordering with Russia on its eastern front was perceived by Russia as an intolerable existential security threat , this would hold for NATO as much as for a European military alliance. Even more so, if one remember that the US has NEVER EVER invaded Russia proper. France, Germany and Poland did. — neomac
Russia hasn't invaded a NATO country nor an EU country.
Ukraine is neither in NATO nor the EU. — boethius
Ukraine also (in the before times) owned Crimea which was home to an important Russian military naval base. — boethius
Ukraine is also politically unstable with plenty of armed factions willing to cause trouble and explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Russia. — boethius
Furthermore, and this responds to ssu as well who seems often mystified that Russia views NATO as a threat, NATO is not just an alliance where parties commit to mutual defence, it is also a military hardware system.
Moving weapons closer to someone or something is by definition a threat. — boethius
If I put a gun to your head, you'd view that as threatening even if I was "promising" to not harm you and if fact only putting a gun to your head to defend myself! — boethius
Now, you can argue that Russia shouldn't invade Ukraine even if NATO is indeed a legitimate threat to Russia, but arguing NATO is not a legitimate threat is just dumb. — boethius
It is such an obvious legitimate threat that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was completely predictable if the push / game of footsie to integrate Ukraine into NATO continued. — boethius
Which makes that policy either completely idiotic or then entirely for the purpose of provoking Russia into invading Ukraine. — boethius
the purpose of the policy is not the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty — boethius
Now that the copium highs are wearing off, such as belief in the great counter offensive and "cutting the land bridge", I really hope cheerleaders for Ukraine fighting, repudiating any compromise whatsoever, rather than negotiating and compromising and really able to take a long honest stare at the dead so far and simply ask themselves if its fair that these people died on false premises and false promises. — boethius
Nonsense. What Ukraine lacked is simply the political will. If a dirt-poor North Korea can create a nuclear deterrent, obviously Ukraine could have done that far more easily with already existing material and know how.And this is where Ukraine clearly just doesn't have the resources to pull that off. — boethius
Well, Ukraine is preparing it's own defensive lines, so the likely outcome is a war like the Iran - Iraq war: a kind of WW1 stalement, until one or the other gets enough materiel and resources for an operational assault.Various people/groups have considered what might come to pass in case the Kremlin prevails — jorndoe
Nonsense. What Ukraine lacked is simply the political will. If a dirt-poor North Korea can create a nuclear deterrent, obviously Ukraine could have done that far more easily with already existing material and know how. — ssu
But as Ukraine, or it's leadership at least, clearly believed in the promises from Russia (and from the Western states) in the Budapest memorandum, creating an own nuclear deterrent was out of the question. Not only would it have deeply angered Russia, the US would have been extremely angry too! — ssu
Yeltsin's army had huge difficulties with Chechnya, they actually lost the first Chechen war. But any Russian invasion wouldn't have been Ukraine's problem. The West, especially the US, wouldn't have at all liked the idea. Hence Ukraine would have become a pariah state thanks to it's strange obsession of having a nuclear deterrent.I did not argue that Ukraine could not develop a nuclear program, I argued that doing so would risk Russia invading / nuking Ukraine before it could complete the task. — boethius
Go and tell that to the Swedes, who basically dismantled their armed forces, because it wasn't anymore the Cold War era. And go tell that to the Germans. Actually many West European countries. And all those American diplomats and administration that wanted to restart the relations after Russian previous aggressions.People with even a little bit of political experience know these sorts of deals aren't eternal. — boethius
Ukraine did want to be neutral. But as all of the East European countries starting from the Baltics, sooner or later they understood what Russia's plans would be... when it got it's act together. The Baltic states being tiny countries understood this from day one. Hence their objective to join NATO.Moreover, to what extent any of the Ukrainian leaders and policy analysts were confident in a perpetual peace, they certainly did not have in mind "great, we can just go ahead and join NATO" and they all could have easily explained that existing at peace with Russia would be contingent on not doing a few things. — boethius
Putin suddenly claims that representatives of "many European countries" took part in the Siege of LeningradAnd here, on the Leningrad Front, representatives of many European countries participated in the siege of Leningrad and committed crimes.
Due to a certain tolerance and in order not to spoil relations, not to spoil any background of our relations with many countries, we have never spoken about this before. But this was not only in Leningrad, on the Leningrad front and during the blockade, it was everywhere. Just look at the Blue Division. Here, in Leningrad, on the Leningrad Front during the blockade, there were participants from all countries - from many, in any case.
But when you talk about the need to preserve historical memory, I have already said that I fully and completely support this. We will do this at the state level, we will do it persistently, including so that, as I have already said, nothing like this happens again.
Meanwhile, someone is deliberately oblivious to all these facts. As you may have heard, perhaps quite recently at the United Nations we proposed for voting a document condemning the glorification of Nazism. After all, 50 countries voted against it. Who could be against recognizing the glorification of Nazism as criminal? Well, what is it? This is not just some kind of historical or political amnesia. This is all being transferred here again, in our time. For what? In order to maintain such a common front based on the current political situation, put pressure on our country. So in this sense, unfortunately, little changes. This means that we must consistently defend historical truth and do what you suggest. This is what we will do. — Vladimir Putin
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