There are two camps in the USA lining up against each other when it comes to growing our Navy;
(1) Buy units first. Get the manning, maintenance, and readiness later.
(2) Get manning, maintenance, and readiness healthy first, then grow the fleet.

#2 started to gain traction as the events of the summer of 2017 started to set in and people began to talk of the dangers of a hollow force. That seems to be losing momentum as the drive to 355 gets a fresh push.

As few are still around who remember the second half of the 1970s (me included) and that hollow force, perhaps other, more modern benchmarks are needed to describe what a hollow force is in full bloom.

Where can we look today for a modern version? The Royal Navy is an imperfect datapoint, as they have chosen the path of simply reducing numbers in a boil-the-frog method, so we need to look elsewhere.

We need good numbers from a relatively transparent Western navy. Along those lines, we may have a non-USA benchmark for a hollow force; Germany.

A hollow force doesn’t mean that the force cannot do anything, just that is can’t do what, on paper, it looks like it might be able to do. What can the German military numbers show us as a warning? Do we already seem aligned with some of their problems?

Alex Luck over at twitter has done a nice job summarizing the results by who looks like the German version of our Ron O’Rourke and his band of merry pranksters at the Congressional Research Service; the Bundeswehr ombudsman (Wehrbeauftragter).

They just published their annual report with the data from 2019.

Here’s some numbers to ponder what happens when a nation starves its military year after year after year.

Navy: Massive delays in maintenance b/c once hulls are in yard, the repair log explodes.

Eg: K130 Braunschweig scheduled time in yard grew from 5 to 18 (!) months. F123 Brandenburg maintenance schedule rise from 307 to 688 positions.

P-3C Orion on average two out of eight airframes operational.

Frigate multi crew concept so far unfeasible because land-based training infrastructure wont be operational until 2030 (!). Result is that while eg crew alpha is deployed, land-based crew charlie has nothing to do.

Having a military ready for war is a near run thing even in the best of times, but decline and neglect is a choice.

Ultimately, politicians will provide or not provide, but as a force hollows in to ineffectiveness and Potemkin force levels, what is the role of the uniformed leader? Do they participate in hiding the hollowness, making excuses, and defining deficiency down – or do they have a larger calling?

In times of war, they will be the ones tasked with ordering Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen in to harm’s way. They will go to war with what they were given in peace.

Who will answer for the wartime performance of a military in such a condition?