The Quest for Relevant Air Power

GERMAN Air Force │ 157
forces to 370,000 personnel. 29 Despite the resulting force reduction,
both the 1992 Defence Policy Guidelines and the 1994 Defence White
Book emphasised that conscription would be retained in a unified
Germany and that only a minor fraction of the armed forces was earmarked
for out-of-area operations with a UN mandate. 30 Germany’s
main contribution to NATO was rather seen in its capacity to mobilise
large quantities of troops in case of collective defence. This capacity
was further believed to give Germany significant leverage
within the alliance. 31 Crisis reaction forces represented only a complementary
element and were deliberately kept at a low level to prevent
too interventionist a defence policy. 32 International obligations,
however, conflicted with this self-imposed policy of restraint. Particularly,
German participation in the Balkan operations during the second
half of the 1990s revealed significant shortfalls and serious limitations
in Germany’s power projection capacities. 33
Increasingly obsolete force structures caused the 2000 Weizsäcker
Commission report to ultimately regard the German armed forces
as too large and wrongly structured. The ratio between the overall
size of the armed forces and readily deployable troops was considered
to be completely inadequate. The commission suggested that
the German armed forces should be transformed into an intervention
force for international crisis management. 34
This reform proposal, however, was deemed too progressive by
Scharping, who took the view that territorial defence still determined
the size and structure of the German armed forces. 35 He
finally decided that they were to be reduced but that a significant
number of conscripts would be retained. His reform aimed at generating
80,000 directly deployable personnel plus an additional
70,000, with a reduced degree of deployability. 36
An increasing demand for military deployments because of 11
September, however, revealed that the structures still proved to be
inadequate for prolonged and sustained out-of-area operations. 37
Clearly, a recalibration of the reform became necessary. To better
respond to the more probable types of operations—conflict prevention
and crisis management—it was planned in 2004 to realign the
German armed forces into three force categories. These categories
encompass response forces (35,000), stabilisation forces (70,000),
and support forces (147,500), bringing the total up to 252,500 personnel.
Response forces were conceived for joint high-intensity and