Afstan: Oh dear, those Germans
That poor, strained, Bundeswehr. Talk about maybe really letting NATO down for truly parochial reasons:
...Update: Why the AWACS may be wanted:
NATO is currently considering plans to deploy AWACS reconaissance planes in Afghanistan -- a move that could lead to another debate in Germany on the scope of the mandate for a mission that has grown deeply unpopular here. Politicians from the center-left Social Democrats and the leftist Green Party fear the beefed-up deployment could strain the capacity of Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
On Thursday, NATO officials announced they were considering a deployment of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) reconnaissance aircraft in the Hinda Kush. The move came after the commander of the Aghanistan peacekeeping force ISAF, a military alliance between NATO member states, issued a related request to NATO headquarters in Brussels.
But defense experts with both the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and leftist Green Party have expressed their reservations about the proposal. If a request is made for German soldiers to serve as crew on the AWACS planes, SPD parliamentarian Rainer Arnold told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, "the German debate could get a lot more complicated." Green parliamentarian Winfried Nachtwei also expressed his skepticism about NATO's considerations.
NATO currently has 18 AWACS aircraft stationed at a base in Geilenkirchen near Aachen, Germany. The Bundeswehr provides most of the crew for the Boeing planes, which, with their UFO-shaped radar system and four engines, are capable of monitoring a radius of up to 500 kilometers (311 miles).
The deployment in Afghanistan is a highly controversial issue in Germany -- with public opinion clearly opposed to it -- and demands from allies to expand combat missions or send German troops to the more dangerous south have been rejected here. The German government recently said it would deploy an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan (more... [though none of that nasty combat, mind you]), but the decision must still be approved by parliament and the new AWACS request could complicate that debate. Currently, Germany has about 3,500 troops in the country...
...
No details were available on the reasons for the request, but NATO commanders have long complained about the difficulty of carrying out proper surveillance of a country the size of France with poor or non-existent internal infrastructure...
Equipped with radar capable of tracing air traffic over large distances and at low altitudes, the planes would be useful in coordinating the helicopters on which the 53,000-strong NATO-led mission depends for much of its mobility...
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 2:12 p.m.
2 Comments:
Here is what the Germans may as well do with those 18 AWACS aircraft, currently sitting safely and politically correctly on the flightline in Germany.
If done well, that process might even bring in enough cash to transport the useless German contingent in Af-stan back home.
Once home, the German troops could stand around in their dress uniforms in front of public buildings, charging a fee to be photographed by the tourists. Or, the German govt could even rent them out en masse for use in filming war movies, as the Greek and Spanish govts used to do.
(I guess in WW2, we killed off all the Germans who had balls.)
I am pretty sure the NATO AWACS is not manned mostly by the Bundeswehr. If any German organisation would be crewing the aircraft they would come from the Luftwaffe and they would not be the majority as most every other NATO nation contributes to the AWACS progamme. Some poetic license with the facts?
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