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September 3, 2010
Guttenberg kick-starts shorter conscription periods
Published: 17 Mar 10 11:55 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100317-25931.html
Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is to bring forward the government’s scheduled reduction of compulsory military service from 2011 to this autumn despite criticism from the ranks, a media report said Wednesday.
- Guttenberg proposes trial period for new soldiers - Politics (29 Aug 10)
- Conservatives suggest mandatory public service for young adults - Society (26 Aug 10)
- Military reforms could alienate soldiers, Bundeswehr commissioner warns - National (25 Aug 10)
The defence minister also plans to increase the number of new recruits each year from 40,000 to 50,000.
But outgoing parliamentary commissioner for the Bundeswehr, Reinhold Robbe, slammed Guttenberg’s plan in an interview with daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
“Among the troops the reduction is seen with overwhelming scepticism, because there they can’t yet see what direction this is going,” he told the paper, adding that the military had to guarantee that recruits still understand the meaning of their service.
Meanwhile Robbe said there was a growing demographic problem when it came to recruitment.
“The quality of the applicants is going down,” he said.
The alternative to Bundeswehr service, compulsory community service, or Zivildienst, would also be shortened but the government is considering allowing voluntary extensions, as many community groups believe six months would not be long enough to make the service worthwhile.
However the government would have to approve additional funding to support people's service if they choose to work longer than six months.
DPA/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
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Your comments about this article:
Is the training period part of the six months?
If so how long is the training?
Is the training period part of the six months?
If so h…
And 6 months is twice as long as a MOS11B infantry soldier in the US Army gets before it's possible to send him into combat.
In the current doctrine at least.
Soldiers need to be integrated into a unit for a period of time to build on what was learned in basic training. They also need to take part in combined arms operations. And perhaps some joint training with NATO this can not be accomplished is such a short time. Beside avoiding an unneeded war the best thing you can do for a soldier is to give him proper training.
In the …
With a nine month service rotation you are on duty for six months after the three months training. This means that there are a minimum of 4 rotations through a unit per year. So if a unit requires 1k to be fully staffed, you require 0.5k new people every 3 months. When the duration is cut from 9 to 6 months and your requirements remain the same, command requires 0.5k new people every six weeks which means that your requirements for personnel doubles.
It was stated somewhere that shortening the duration of service would raise the numbers from 40k to 50k people that would serve. For this to work you would need not a 25% increase but a 100% increase in personnel. This means under the present scenario the military falls way short of their staffing requirements.
Note: this assumes that the length of training period of three months remains the same when the service time is shortened.
Until 2001, it was the norm that there weren't specialized training units, but instead a certain number of battalions in the army would assign one of their companies to recruit training; when i served, this meant that the 4 active combat companies and the staff company would effectively each take on fresh recruits, train them, put them into their respective jobs, and after the ten months were up would take on completely fresh conscripts. A fifth combat company would pool and train reserve soldiers.
If a unit (company, battalion etc) was earmarked for a deployment, it would skip from this cycle for at least one rotation. This was only abolished to increase the availability of units for deployments. In the current scheme, basic training (first 3 months) is instead handled by a newly formed training company within each battalion, and the conscripts then procede on to individual companies where they are inducted into their jobs for the remaining 6 months.