subject of Greece's defence spending.
The Troika have actually asked for savage cuts to the money allocated to Greece's armed forces: no less than 79%! This was reported by the press last October. In late November Papandreou/Beglitis had replaced Greece's top brass with PASOK loyalists. Back then, the reason wasn't obvious. Obviously, the defence cuts need not apply to state-of-the-art new equipment that Greece might wish to purchase from Germany or France...
A
Sources:
Oct 5, 2011
Nov 1, 2011
Superficially, the cause of these arms purchases is Greece's conflict with Turkey. But spending money on procurement of new weapons is not helping Greece at all. Poor maintenance and lack of spare parts mean that only 55% of the planes in the Greek air force were airworthy as of May 2011. Greece's ground forces and its navy were also suffering from shortages of fuel, munitions and spare parts.
The German submarine mentioned below has air independent propulsion (AIP) which means that this state-of-the-art diesel sub can stay underwater for long periods of time, rather like a nuclear sub. Once the sea trials began in 2006, the Greeks found a host of problems with their new submarine. They actually tried to shelve the contract for a while, possibly with a view to saving money. I think Germany threatened to veto the bail-out fund to persuade the Greeks that they really needed to spend their money on these new subs.
A
Sources:
Posts
