Germany is being restored, but are there enough soldiers and reservations for a war scenario?

Recently, German Defense Officer Boris Pistorius of Social Democrats, the most popular German politician, who say many will remain in the post and with Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz as Chancellor, inspected the Büchel air base in Rheinland-Pfalz state.

The latest F-35 aircraft, which Germany bought by American Lockheed Martin, is expected to be deployed there by 2027, in order to strengthen the NATO Alliance’s preventive skills.

« We need to make the base here suitable for F-35, it should be improved by NATO standards, » Boris Pistorius said, continuing: « Russian aggression in Ukraine and Russia’s permanent threat show how important it is to have a reliable nuclear prevention along with conventional prevention. »

Defense, for us is not just theoretical scenarios on paper. In recent years, seeing the circumstances « Germany must be ready for war » because the Russian threat is real, conventional and largely unconventional in Germany.

As he said characteristically from Büchel: “Every day we read more and more what will happen if… I am actually worried about what to do. We need to regroup, fulfill our duties as a European NATO partner. I believe our role as German is another, one of the strongest Germany.

On the other hand, the lack of reserves

However, at the same time and while the debate and investments for the radical improvement of the German Armed Forces have been starting for two years, chronic gaps and structural problems are not easy to hide. A few days ago, the statements of the president of the German Reserve Association, Patrick Schönsburg, on the T-online site, according to which to make Germany ready for war, a million reservists are needed to make Germany ready for war.

On the basis of calculations, Germany needs about 350,000 troops to protect its territorial integrity. This means that the number of reserves must be tripled. In a hypothetical war scenario on the eastern wing of NATO, Sensburg estimates that up to 5,000 soldiers can die every day.

For him, the main problem of the German Armed Forces is not as much infrastructure and technical means of prevention as a lack of staff. As a single solution he considers the return of compulsory military service and not a voluntary model, according to the Swedish model, proposed by Boris Pistorius. (DW)