And yet Merkle is busy running her fat mouth about the US can't be trusted to
protect Europe anymore, and Junckhead is busy trying to raise money for an EU army;
you know, the one they said wasn't happening before Brexit.

This is ultimately the price of the 'Long Peace', you wind up with generations of citizens and politicians who have never seen a major conflict and don't understand how much effort and funding it takes to keep the military running at an effective level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Air_Force

According to what I read, Der Luftwaffe has 94 Typhoons in service,
and another 115 Tornados of two variants in service, not including
the many transport aircraft either.

-J.

The Luftwaffe is understood to have only four combat-ready Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets out of a fleet of 128, the latest in a long list of equipment failings in the German armed forces.

Heh, it'd be ironic if Merkel pissed off the Poles and then Poland invaded Germany!

Broken fighter jets, grounded helicopters and idled tanks: Germany's military is ailing

There are so few German army helicopters available for the troops that pilots have been forced to train in bright yellow civilian choppers leased from the German Automobile Club.

A chronic shortage of spare parts and assorted technical woes has grounded 29 of the Bundeswehr's 130 camouflage-green colored helicopters. Acute shortages of parts have also left only 39 of the Luftwaffe's 128 Eurofighter jets combat-ready — idled along with nearly half of the armed forces' 224 Leopard tanks and five of its six submarines.

No country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance has savored the "peace dividend" as much as Germany, which slashed military spending in half after the Cold War. And no country in NATO has drawn more criticism from President Trump for not carrying its own military weight than Germany.

The country's embarrassingly long laundry list of inoperable fighter jets, grounded helicopters, idled tanks and dry-docked submarines has exacerbated tensions between Germany and the United States, which — like other NATO allies — worries about the threat of Russian aggression following its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

But for many Germans, a country with a deeply pacifist streak following two wars in the last century, the lack of military preparedness is of little concern. In fact, it's a source of pride among the peaceniks who grew up with a post-World War II idealism of a world without wars — the Nie wieder Krieg generation.

While some in Germany, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, agree that Germany should spend more to pump up its military, there is no plan in place to significantly raise the amount that Europe's biggest economy spends on defense. Though Germany is the second-largest of the 29 members of NATO, it spends just 1.2% of its gross national product on defense — far less than the agency's goal of 2% for each member country.

The United States, by contrast, spends 3.3% of its gross domestic product on defense, or more than $600 billion a year. Eight NATO partners are expected to hit the bloc's 2% goal this year and 15 more by the target date of 2024. But Germany won't be among them. Its current aim is 1.5% by 2025. Merkel recently told Trump that Germany could meet the 2% target by 2030.

"The situation with the Bundeswehr is not satisfactory at all," Merkel said in a speech last week, adding that the armed forces had shortcomings "all across the board" and the army's combat readiness "totally needs to be improved."

Tensions over military spending have boiled over during her 2-month-old "grand coalition" government with the defense ministry, controlled by her conservative party, wanting to raise spending slightly, but blocked by a finance ministry that is now controlled by the center-left Social Democratic Party, or SPD. Even though the federal government has been running widening budget surpluses the last four years, the SPD and other Germans on the left don't want to spend a single extra euro on arms and soldiers. Some even deride NATO's 2% target as a "fetish."

"There's a narrative going on here suggesting that progression towards 2% is something that could lead to a militarization of Germany," Merkel said in a speech in Berlin on Monday. "This 2% goal is not some kind of fetish. Rather it is necessary for us to meet our international obligations and defend ourselves."

Trump has repeatedly and publicly rebuked Germany for spending so little toward the bloc's collective defense. "It's unfair," he said, in one of his more polite comments. Following a meeting in Washington, D.C., last month, Trump took to Twitter and sarcastically congratulated Merkel for "ripping off" his predecessors in the White House on defense and trade — another sore spot for the president, who has complained about Germany's perennial trade surplus with the United States.

Officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels say Trump is right to demand that Germany increase defense spending. "Trump is using different language and doing it more publicly, but he's essentially saying the same thing about Germany that previous U.S. presidents have been saying all along," said a NATO official from Britain in an interview in Brussels.

On his first day on the job, Secretary of State Mike Pampeo lambasted Germany for not doing enough, saying "they should meet the goals they signed up for."

In Berlin, the new U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, also quickly made it clear that he intends to be a thorn in Germany's side when it comes to investing in defense.

"This is not being taken seriously enough," Grenell told embassy staff upon his arrival in Berlin this month, adding that it would be his "No. 1 issue" as Trump's envoy to Germany. "The 2% target is symbolic, and we all know that. But everybody agreed to move in that direction."

Probably blew through all their defense money the last three years on goodies for all those rapefugees they let in.

Heh, it'd be ironic if Merkel pissed off the Poles and then Poland invaded Germany!