Jakarta –
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius admitted he faced an uphill task recruiting new recruits and retaining existing troops to serve in the German Bundeswehr armed forces.
“Everyone talks about personal shortcomings in the Bundeswehr – and no one knows this better than I do,” he told reporters during a visit to the Bundeswehr career center in Stuttgart on Wednesday (2/8).
“The number of applicants this year is seven percent less compared to the same period last year,” he explained. But the German defense minister expects a trend reversal, saying requests for career consultations in the Bundeswehr are up 16%.
Germany currently has about 183,000 military personnel. But for the new Bundeswehr strategy announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that number is too little.
Increase enrollment and graduation rates in the Bundeswehr
Germany’s armed forces are targeting around 203,000 service members by 2031. But defense minister Boris Pistorius said this target still needed to be reviewed, as it was unrealistic at the moment.
Last week, the German government took a series of measures in an effort to increase the number of women serving in the military.
The problem is, the German armed forces are also experiencing a crisis with many military education participants who do not complete their education, aka “dropouts”. The dropout rate is 30%.
“It has a lot to do with expectations, with the management of expectations, maybe with misunderstandings, and in individual cases also with excessive demands,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said.
He suggested more realistic ads for the Bundeswehr, and avoided ads that looked like “Mission Impossible movies”, or references to Hollywood movies.
Work-Life-Balance and the demographics of aging Germany
The Bundeswehr last year launched an advertising campaign with a new image, but it was criticized for being too excessive. Many posters and videos, for example, feature fighter jets, paratroopers, submarines, and other special equipment roles, which are only available to a small percentage of recruits.
Boris Pistorius said that today’s young generation prioritizes work-life balance or Work-Life-Balance. In addition, Germany’s aging population is also a problem in military recruitment, as the armed forces usually recruit people from a young age, not when they are old. “By 2050, we will have 12% fewer people in the 15-24 year age group,” said Boris Pistorius.
The German military also needs to modernize its facilities. In March, parliament’s special official for Bundeswehr affairs Eva Hgl, said that equipment in the military barracks was in a “deplorable state”. He reported that in some troop quarters there was not even Wi-Fi and only a few working toilets.
hp/as (dpa, AFP)
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(it/it)
2023-08-04 09:37:43
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