If you aren’t already doing so, spend some time reading Dr Barnett’s blog. Aside from noticing what seems to work and what seems to fail tactically, he doesn’t really tell the military how to do their jobs so much as what those jobs need to be.

From EU Observer

“EU member states are likely to begin reducing troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina early next year, despite potential instability stemming from talks on the future status of nearby Kosovo. . . Germany and the UK last month announced they would like to reduce the number of soldiers in the region next year.”

Most of NATO’s countries have long spent less than 2 percent of GDP on the military (NATO’s target). Democratic pressures will doubtless reduce the public expenditure even further. In essence, funding is a key problem with the transformation proposal – which might be resolved if the United Nations is more closely involved in authorising military action.

I’m skeptical of the Leviathan/SysAdmin division because, to use some 3GW/4GW terminology, the support troops provide a surface to attack without the combat power to defend (they are the equivalent of a rear-area forces), and will therefore get killed. At the same time the Leviathan presents a surface with huge amounts of combat power, and consequently repels enemies. This places the two forces at odds with eachother, and ultimately leads to a disunity of command, which is fatal in COIN ops (look at the SysAdmin-esque and utterly incompetent CPA, or the UN during its brief time in Iraq before it was bombed).

And don’t tell me that the insurgency in Iraq could have been averted with more SysAdmin troops. The grievance of the Sunnis is entirely political, and nothing the SysAdmin types could dish out would have prevented the insurgency from arising. And Yes, I know that Dr. Barnett views the Army and Marines, especially the Light Infantrymen, as SysAdmin. Go and tell that to a TOW Missileman and see what he thinks. Bottom line, these guys are warfighters—they shoot, move, and communicate as their core mission. Yes, they can distribute MREs, convoy, provide security to HADRs, NEOs, TRAPs, etc. But that doesn’t make them SysAdmin. A successful SysAdmin capabiliy requires unity of command at the tactical level. That means small task forces under captains and colonels with infantry providing security and engineers, docs, civilians, and civil servants working together at the small unit level. And those same grunts may also be leviathans. This is the successful model of the PRTs in Afghanistan.

I wonder whether the German SysAdmin force will be anything other than hostages that need to be rescued when the goin gets tough.

I think Germany conceives of projecting German power abroad more as projecting stability, rather than projecting hard power.

Only 35,000 combat troops? That is pathetic for a nation as populous and wealthy as Germany. How exactly would they ever win a real war against a real enemy that was threatening Germany?

The German deployment to Lebanon is a joke BTW. These guys sit in their base all day and then once a week or so they drive around the local villages to be seen. They are doing absolutely nothing to prevent Hizbollah from re-arming and starting another conflict.

I agree that the basic idea of reforming the Germany military is a good idea, but the first step would be to dramatically adjust those troop ratios to at least 50% combat troops. Stabilization and Support troops are expensive truck drives and chefs.