While President Trump continues to make resounding statements about Europe and Germany regarding the weakness of its defense investment, on the eve of the next NATO summit, a report from the German Ministry of the Armed Forces will reinforce sentiment of underinvestment in the German defense effort. Indeed, according to him, only 1/3 of the major defense equipment of the German armies would actually be available in the first half of 2018, of which the majority of its fighter fleet composed of Typhoon and Tornados, its submarine fleet with 6 Type 212s at dock, and more than two thirds of its 300 Leopard 2. And it must be recognized that the figures speak for themselves: 65 fighter planes out of 220, 40 helicopters out of 190, less than one tank in 2, one frigate in 3, and none of the six German submarines are available .
But, on closer inspection, availability problems are far from being linked only to budgetary issues. As for Great Britain, of which only 1,5 of its 6 Type45 anti-aircraft destroyers will have been available in the first half of 2018, the problem seems more linked to a default by private providers than to simple faults of credits. In Germany, as in Great Britain, and in France, the key word of the past decade was the public-private partnership, and the use of private service providers to try to make savings on defense spending.
This was to forget that, unlike military and civilian Defense personnel, whose priority mission is, or should be, to offer maximum availability, civilian companies seek above all to make margins. And for this, obviously, it is necessary to reduce the available skills as much as possible, such as the stock of spare parts. This calculation could obviously be more doubtful, especially since where the military only takes into consideration the actual cost of this mass in the payroll, private companies must pay more taxes, and much higher social charges.
In other words, the use of PPPs is not relevant to deal with a recurring long-term need, because the private payroll is higher, and is not relevant to deal with peaks of activity, by definition very operational. and therefore requiring military personnel. And the current situations demonstrate that the productivity gains by switching to the private sector are not at the level of those hoped for. Having lived several times, in squadrons and flotillas, in contact with the technical personnel of naval aeronautics, I must say that I do not imagine, in the civilian sector, superior productivity, or even equivalent.
Perhaps it would be good to pose the right equations, and to study in detail the foundations of the PPP paradigm applied to Defense.