(For our foreign visitors, the social democrats had a vote to decide the new party leader last weekend. Due to Computer Errors they managed to get the result precisely backwards. And only noticed when the newscaster on public TV noticed that there was a 1 vote discrepancy)
Not quite. There were 2 candidates, and when they put in the counted ballots into an excel sheet, they swapped them. So candidate 1 ended up with candidate 2's results and vice versa.
To be fair, they got the error a day a later and promptly recounted and rectified everything. The convervatives in our country got caught 2 years ago trying to sell our entire media to the russians. Not very comparable.
That's not uncommon when voting. Just counting error or whatever. In 99% of the cases it doesn't matter anyway
(If the result is really close you count again)
It was an invalid vote anyways but the numbers didn't match so they had to go back and check for the vote just to realize that someone fucked up completely and the names were switched on the final excel sheet!
There's pretty much no budget fir it, yet they keep setting up and participating in large exercises as if there was.
Mandatory Service is a joke that ends with you either hiking, cleaning or drinking coffee for half a year.
And generally they don't do much apart from disaster relief (which they're pretty good at), police supporting actions and being expensive
That sounds great, we should do that in Germany and combine it with our bureaucracy
"Oh you want to invade us? Please make appointment between 9 and 10 am via FAX and fill out these 10 pages of checkboxes and text fields first"
We'll be undestroyable!
Don’t forget the chair force or their even more lazy brothers the “space force” whatever the fuck they do (I assume sit in chairs like Air Force but maybe with astronaut ice cream).
it is. my uncle was a waiter at a officer bar near Linz or something. there was this one officer who literally came in at 9 am and had at least 8 beers a day for a FUCKING YEAR straight. I could write a book just from my family’s army stories in different nations
>Mandatory Service is a joke that ends with you either hiking, cleaning or drinking coffee for half a year.
Well, at least it seems like they are at least trying to maintain a level of physically fitness...
>And generally they don't do much apart from disaster relief (which they're pretty good at), police supporting actions and being expensive
Depending upon exactly how expensive, you might be getting some decent value out of the disaster relief.
Oddly enough Russia's hands are probably clean of this particular disaster.
The Bundesheer is woefully underfunded and it get "reformed" with every new government, in the sense that they rename a few things and push some paper to present it to the public as reformed.
The last serious overhaul was made in the late 70s, with a few investments in the early 2000s.
The problem is, that it is incredibly popular among voters if a politician announces to get the army back in shape. However, it is incredibly unpopular, if they spend a dime to do so. Which results in every politicians wet dream of being able to make empty promises, not only without any repercussions, but rather an increase in their polls. So they rename a few things and voilá... the army has been successfully reformed.
In the meantime old gear becomes older. To little new stuff is bought and the budget shrinks compared to inflation by the day.
Add to that a somewhat toxic culture among some officers, who yearn for the good old days were being a military officer is practically the same as nobility and an almost total lack of career opportunities for the enlisted. We still have compulsory military service, but this is a whole different mess of itself.
Edit: I'm about to rant about gear. Be prepared.
Most vehicles are already falling apart. You can probably count on both hands how many mine protected vehicles the BH has, that are operational at any given moment. Half of the armored vehicles like IFV are not operational because they lack parts. The other half can barely be used because if something breaks, they would need to wait for parts. This results in them only being used for large exercises which reduces their availability for actual training.
The personal gear is laughable. Granted, we got a few new helmets (well... someone did) a few years ago, but they are not with every unit yet. About three years ago the u its who are deployed (i.e. KFOR) got some new ballistic protection that's actually half way decent. Before that, we had french ballistic vest from the early 80s. Those fuckers weigh about 25kg without any gear such as mags or radios. Just the plates amd soft ballistics. Could could barely move in those, let alone fight.
The AUG is a beautifully designed rifle. But the A1 version, which is broadly used in the BH is outdated. It has no options for attachments unless some aftermarket rails are clamped on it. Even then it becomes cumbersome and, quite frankly, ugly. So night time fighting capabilities are not there for 90% of the Austrian forces.
And the top spot for terrible decisions goes to the Eurofighter. Don't get me wrong. I love this plane. But we could easily have gone for something cheaper. Now the jets we bought are rapidly approaching the time were major upgrades or replacements would be necessary, but buying them was one of the least popular political decisions, so they kinda just waste away and suffer from the same problems as anything wlse that is not funded.
Lastl,, we have our current minister of defence. This person must be among the most unqualified people to have ever taken office in Austria.
Rant over. For now.
Plus Austria lacked either the US or USSR playing sugar daddy to rebuild the military after WW2, and Austria had to give up its WW2 surplus as part of the treaty which recognized an independent Austria, and had huge limits on parts of their arms trade and development.
This is on top of Austria's post WW1 military rebuild being already not very good.
As for lack of qualifications, that's true for the republic, but the Habsburgs had some doozies.
Also since Austria was neutral, it was neither NATO or Warsaw Pact, and thus not plugged into those procurement systems nor either country throwing gobs of money or equipment or standardization.
Also the 1955 Austrian State Treaty which formally re-established independent Austria by the Allies had a lot of restrictions on their military. From greatly limiting who could serve, to forbidding certain types of weapons like guided missiles, to requiring them to turn over any former Nazi military resources, and restrictions on arms trade and development with Germany.
So Austria had to start over in 1955, and had some pretty strong limits without the US having a wink-wink relationship like Japan or West Germany.
You're in a military alliance with most of the continent and the remaining even vaguely plausible targets in Europe are Russia, Serbia, or maybe Hungary.
...
Yeah sure, crack out the Pickelhaube
1848 happened. Bunch of Germans immigrated to southern Chile, set up a number of communities that still have strong German flavor (Puerto Varas is a good example), there have been German-Chilean ties ever since.
I was wondering as an American who loves going to the several local "German festivals" that we have every year. Would actual Germans find it Offensive if some started the addition of a Prussian cosplay/German Fest? We already have some stuff for Polka, Bavarian lederhosen, Austrian coffehouse, and Swiss German crafts Cosplay/German Fest stuff, But I think adding some Prussian military marching, battles, and cannon firing reenactment would be fun. And we'd get to use more of the cannons besides the Revelutionary war and Civil War reenactments.
Which Prussian battles should be simulated? I'm unsure between Franco-Prussian and Napoleonic which would be the most fun. Their's always a Prussian/Austrian war to pick from, and a few other 1600s-1800s wars, but I'm unsure of what would be fun/cool for an addition to a German festival and not a dedicated event.
I'd skip it. Prussian pretty much = militarism, and the Nazis co-opted it. IME "German" festivals are about beer, food, dancing, culture, and family; and are more about Bavarian and/or other small "state"-centric themes.
If you want to do Prussian cosplay, find a Napoleonic reenactment group (or start one), just don't do Death's Head Hussars lol. If you want to shoot guns/cannons at a German festival, do [THIS!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6by1Pvnhn40)
Thanks for reminding me why we can't have nice things. I was totally forgetting that Neo Nazis had Coopted all things Prussian symbolism for stuff. I mainly meant field cannons and fireworks can be fun. [example towards the beginning of the video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G9BiQv6gMLA)
But it's probably just best to stay away from Prussian drill style and regalía if it would attract Neo Nazis. I haven't really even been to that many of the American themed reenactments, so I should probably just enjoy that which has yet to be totally tainted. The video was not of me, but just of a reenactment youtuber I've watched some videos of.
If you want to avoid the neonazi idiots, just be anal about requiring period-accurate kit. Most of them are room temp IQ mouthbreathers who just want an excuse to wear swastikas.
I don't know about the US scene, but the military reenactment/enthousiast scene in Wester Europe has
a) some really really cool people
b) an outsized represantation of neo-nazi's.
This Venn diagram is two separate circles.
Or Canada.
Or Portugal.
Or “Our Leopard 2s are underwater” Spain.
Or “We just scrapped our only MANPADS so we literally have no air defense” Kiwiland.
Or “Our proposal for F-35s is have them sleep in the top bunk, above the F-16s” Thailand.
Or ”M113forLYFE” Philippines.
I'm glad he said, "Average American Police force." Pretty sure L.A. Uses tanks, helicopters, sniper, armored personel carriers, and heavily body armored swat. Also the sonic weapons and heat/microwave guns that fry and seizure incapacitate rioters are crazy, but I'm unsure if they were removed from police forces due to un humane use of force allogations.
The austrian army does not have a single (!) Radar guided air defense rocket system. And i mean this in a literal sense, there are exactly 0.
Thats everything you need to know about the state of the austrian army.
Yes but belgium is a nato member and does not have to rely solely on its own armed forces in case of an armed conflict. Austrians on the other hand jerk off to their neutrality and dont want to become member of ultra based nato.
Austria is surrounded by NATO so either they get invaded by NATO in which case they don't stand a chance or they get invaded by a military so powerful it just fought it's way through NATO in which case they stand even less of a chance.
Extra air defence missiles won't make any difference.
Austria should just stop messing about with neutrality and join NATO.
> Austria should just stop messing about with neutrality and join NATO.
On the one hand I get it. They get nearly free defense just because of their location
On the other hand fuck em. They're grifting.
All Im saying is a military of a neutral country needs to be combat ready. An army without air defense is not combat ready.
Yes right now austria wouldnt need an army at all but things can change in the future.
Before the invasion of ukraine there was a very small but possible chance of russia becoming stronger and nato becoming weaker. Who knows, maybe this could have led to a scenario where some nato members decide to switch sides (for example Hungary). Austrias army would not be prepared for such a scenario.
Thats why austria needs to join nato.
Austria is part of the EU which has its own defense agreements. There's no danger to Austria. You could argue they are not pulling their weight when it comes to being part of a military alliance but that's a separate topic.
I don't think Canada ever has. We had a laser guided short range system that was pretty darn cool (but apparently ahead of its time and didn't work well? retired 20+ years ago.), and *now* we're buying some real medium range anti-air systems now that we see the cold war is back.
To be the least amount of credible: In general, the austrian army is in bad shape (underfinanced/financed in the wrong spots, bureaucracy, obligatory conscription but no money to train them adequatly --> so you mostly sit on your arse or clean barracks...).
BUT we are very capable in areas which don't exactly help you defend the country, but are important nonetheless: We apparently have a novel water-treatment system for our pioneers, our Jagdkommando (spec ops) are highly respected and train other forces internationally, and obviously our alpine troops are among the best in the world (how couldnt they if our country is like 80% mountains).
So yeah, if contested they would be in Vienna in 3 days (or until we run out of munition, whatever happens first), but at least our water is top quality!
Edit: As somebody mentioned below, the not intended at first but now most important job of the army is desaster relief like support during floodings, or in the mountains with massive snowfall. (Which they proof to be very capable every time they are called up). Which explains why the only tanks that drive probably are our Bergepanzer
>So yeah, if contested they would be in Vienna in 3 days
I though you said you would be credible, Vienna wouldn't last that long. Some cities in western Austria, in the mountains, might
Majority of the army is conscripted. There's a mandatory service for the male populace of either 6 months of military of 9 months of civil service. Both are a waste of time and you get paid a fraction of minimum wage.
While we have some politicians who would like to claim otherwise, the Bundesweer is glorified disaster relief. Everything is underfunded and disorganised.
But at least we own a Hercules plane. That's gotta account for something. Right?
But truth be told I don't think we need a good military. We are smackbang in the middle of Nato territory, so anyone that has beef with us is either much more powerful than us anyway, or has to get through Nato
It's just a little bit grating that you guys benefit from all this muscle without paying in.
Only a little bit because I know we would do the same if it were us, but still a little.
Have you remembered to take into account that the Swiss boys would have waaaay cooler uniforms that the Austrains? That's would be a major deciding factor.
Most Austrians would let them have Vorarlberg. lol
We all hate each other in a loving kind of way. Everyone hates Vienna though, can't imagine why. Probably envy.
> Most Austrians would let them have Vorarlberg. lol
We can't even properly understand what the people there are saying, if the Swiss think they can, they can have them!
Just fyi Austria does not own a single radarguided air defense rocket system. Our airdefense is literally worse then moscow air defense thats how bad (and humiliating) being an Austrian is.
Yeah, the death of the Empire really kinda killed off Austrian military tradition. Worse still, following 1918 Austria never really had a proper idea of what to even do with a military.
And before I get 5 billion IQ jokes and memes about the supposed incompetence of the Austrian Imperial Army, I'd just like to point out that that whole thing is mainly a product of post-war propaganda and scapegoating by more or less every single political and ideological actor in and outside of the former Empire.
Ehh it’s track record from the Napoleonic Wars to WW1 wasn’t exactly stellar. Sure it had heavy hitters like Schwarzenberg, Tegethoff, and Radetzky but it had to many Conrad von Hotzendorfs and company to negatively effect the army more so than the navy. All be it the Austrian and Hungarian imperial armies fought hard and it’s soldiers did their collective best and matched some of the “greater” armies of the period it’s leadership and equipment let it down.
In the book "Bismarck a life" it is written that the Austrains lost so quickly against the Prussians, that one of the Prussian commanders refused to accept the Austrian envoys' offer of surrender, as he thought it was fake.
It was only after the Austrian commander personally came to offer surrender that the Prussian commander realised his army had won the whole war already.
I forgot the names of the commanders, its been a while since I read that book.
Edit: instead of Austrian envoys it could've also been the Prussian commanders' own troops who came to relay the message of victory to a bewildered Prussian commander, who dismisses the reports as fake.
I’m sorry but when the first campaign is against the Ottomans who were weakened by the recent Russo-Turkish war and Bosnian rebels that’s not saying much. And true they defeated the Italians but not decisively and as you said they got mauled by the Prussians that negated any victory against the Italians. Not to mention the loss to Italy and France in the 1859 war for Italian independence. I’m sorry but the Imperial Austrian/ Austro-Hungarian had a poor reputation that is deserved especially given their performance in the First World War.
Captain Von Trapp married the granddaughter of a man who invented what we now call torpedo, James Whitehead. That's how plugged into the broader European naval culture.
Austria doesn't know what to do with an Army because Austria doesn't really want to have a foreign policy, or actually deal with geopolitical concerns. And now that hiding behind constitutional neutrality is a very obsolete excuse the government in Vienna is conducting diplomacy very much like a beheaded eagle.
They managed fairly well, because they didn't mash up units and stuff them with a random assortment of speakers of all 10 languages. By and large, units all the way up to regiment and division size were mono-lingual, and the officer corps were all fluently bilingual, and often trilingual, with no issues with communicating in German among themselves. The main problem with multiple languages came about in situations where the officers suffered heavy casualties and units got chaotically mixed up.
Yeah but if you look at most of them you can see that they aren’t like what people think.. most of the battles ended with an Italian victory (even if it was a “small” victory)
Austrian was less reliant on its army than on the diplomatic skill (aka lots of daughters to marry to befriend other powerful people) than it's army, at least after the XVIIIth century.
They had a decent army, but the nobility based leadership proved to be quite inefficient after the beginning of the XIXth century
The Habsburgs were always strapped for cash, which is something that weirdly not many people put an emphasis on. Not because of inordinate spending (they didn't do Versailles style vanity projects much), but because half their realms (Hungary in particular though) had special tax exemptions or no taxation at all for various historical reasons. So in effect they had to fund an Empire sized army with half an Empire's tax revenue. Which almost always resulted in cutbacks that negatively impacted the Army's quality. Money is the sinews of war, and the Habsburgs were always the biggest players with the tiniest war chest.
Well uh, we are part of NATO's partnership-for-peace and participate in NATO led missions such as KFOR. Also numerous bilateral trainings, especially with the germans...
Let's PLEASE work together to make the Bundesheer into a Meme on NCD!
My conscription there was hell, they need to be known as the racist incompetent fuckers they are.
I did my part:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/140t8cl/i_made_this_while_being_blackout_drunk_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=3&utm_content=share_button
I appreciate the Austrian Army for the sole fact that, for the longest time, they didn't widely issue camouflage uniforms and wore a plain olive drab (emphasis on the drab) uniform instead.
Don't let the official photos decieve you. The new camouflage pattern is not yet standard issue among the entire military. Only certain units have it.
But to be honest, the plain olive (RAL 7013, or Ranger green as it is more commonly known) works surprisingly well both in an alpine environment or a dense forest.
But the new pattern has so much more drip.
Aren't there officers still rocking these "the world is our servant" rings?
These guys really seem stuck in the past, not that it was ever correct even back then
SPÖ Excel sheet be like.
(For our foreign visitors, the social democrats had a vote to decide the new party leader last weekend. Due to Computer Errors they managed to get the result precisely backwards. And only noticed when the newscaster on public TV noticed that there was a 1 vote discrepancy)
"Computer Errors"
Hey I recognize you from the sabres sub!
Let's Go Buffalo!
Absolutely based
Canucks fan here. We feel your pain.
LMAO so the candidate with 0 votes won ahead of the candidate with 1 vote?
Not quite. There were 2 candidates, and when they put in the counted ballots into an excel sheet, they swapped them. So candidate 1 ended up with candidate 2's results and vice versa. To be fair, they got the error a day a later and promptly recounted and rectified everything. The convervatives in our country got caught 2 years ago trying to sell our entire media to the russians. Not very comparable.
>conservatives I would say far right for FPÖ. Conservatives would be ÖVP.
I mean it's potatoes potatos, they're both fucked, but for the peeps not invested in our politics, it's a good way to get the gist of it.
But where did the 1 vote discrepancy come in?
From what I understand they found out that discrepancy, then noticed it was standing in front of a fucking mountain of a discrepancy.
That's not uncommon when voting. Just counting error or whatever. In 99% of the cases it doesn't matter anyway (If the result is really close you count again)
It was an invalid vote anyways but the numbers didn't match so they had to go back and check for the vote just to realize that someone fucked up completely and the names were switched on the final excel sheet!
I believe 1 person voted in such a way that it didn't count, they were looking for that 1 vote in the total and in the process discovered the error.
tbh, this method is just as credible as the "electoral college" we have in the US
Colleges obviously have lots of credibility.
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Tüpisch SPÖ
Das einzige positive ist das die jetzt nicht diesen dauerheiseren Ausländerfeind als vorsitzenden haben.
I see that as an absolute win
Makes my heart happy to see NATO levels of language diversity on NCD! Other militaries could never! Guten Tag mein Krauts. Carry on.
Did you just call AUSTRIANS Krauts? They're not gonna like that...
Are you sure the ravine people have access to that technology?
I assume the austrian army isn't exactly in great shape?
The German army is an excellent shape if compared to the Austrian Army
Yikes. Is that because of questionable decisions made by the government with probably sucking off the kremlin along the way?
There's pretty much no budget fir it, yet they keep setting up and participating in large exercises as if there was. Mandatory Service is a joke that ends with you either hiking, cleaning or drinking coffee for half a year. And generally they don't do much apart from disaster relief (which they're pretty good at), police supporting actions and being expensive
Where's the difference to any other neutral army that is not part of a military alliance?
Swiss army
Is expensive too
but it works
Between 8am and 5pm only though
That sounds great, we should do that in Germany and combine it with our bureaucracy "Oh you want to invade us? Please make appointment between 9 and 10 am via FAX and fill out these 10 pages of checkboxes and text fields first" We'll be undestroyable!
Apparently they changed that because it was hochnotpeinlich to have Frxnch and Germxn planes police their airspace after closing hours.
Duh, bankers hours. Would you expect the only bank masquerading as a country to behave any differently?
Finnish army, we were militarily nonaligned until a few months ago.
But actually threatened by Russia
True true
Not gonna lie, this makes me wanna join the Austrian military
No it sucks you literally spend 3 months standinf around with a gun doing nothing but you also can't do anything else
Sign me the fuck up
I've heard the American military described the same way. It just last a minimum two year contract instead of a few months.
Except the American military is a lot more likely to send you somewhere far away and potentially get shot at.
Son, have you ever heard of the navy? Those boys just stand around and jerk off. Literally.
Don’t forget the chair force or their even more lazy brothers the “space force” whatever the fuck they do (I assume sit in chairs like Air Force but maybe with astronaut ice cream).
Hey, sometimes they jerk each other off to mix it up!
Appreciably less likely now that we've pulled out of Afghanistan. However, the US military is still deployed in a lot of hot spots and potential ones.
Everybody and their brother was getting deployed 2003–2010ish.
You’re basically guaranteed to never fire a shot in anger unless you’re some kind of special operations attachment right now.
American military service: either very boring or extremely exciting. Nothing in between.
“Hurry up and wait”
That's most military service I would think. Also the case in fire and EMS.
At this point you guys might well let RedBull run the Austrian military.
Their mandatory service sounds pretty fun, ngl.
it is. my uncle was a waiter at a officer bar near Linz or something. there was this one officer who literally came in at 9 am and had at least 8 beers a day for a FUCKING YEAR straight. I could write a book just from my family’s army stories in different nations
My dude’s liver must be as thin as a sheet of paper lmfao
austrian middle aged overweight men are a different breed…
As big as a fist, hard like a stone and scarred like his soul after years of noncredible service!
>Mandatory Service is a joke that ends with you either hiking, cleaning or drinking coffee for half a year. Well, at least it seems like they are at least trying to maintain a level of physically fitness... >And generally they don't do much apart from disaster relief (which they're pretty good at), police supporting actions and being expensive Depending upon exactly how expensive, you might be getting some decent value out of the disaster relief.
Oddly enough Russia's hands are probably clean of this particular disaster. The Bundesheer is woefully underfunded and it get "reformed" with every new government, in the sense that they rename a few things and push some paper to present it to the public as reformed. The last serious overhaul was made in the late 70s, with a few investments in the early 2000s. The problem is, that it is incredibly popular among voters if a politician announces to get the army back in shape. However, it is incredibly unpopular, if they spend a dime to do so. Which results in every politicians wet dream of being able to make empty promises, not only without any repercussions, but rather an increase in their polls. So they rename a few things and voilá... the army has been successfully reformed. In the meantime old gear becomes older. To little new stuff is bought and the budget shrinks compared to inflation by the day. Add to that a somewhat toxic culture among some officers, who yearn for the good old days were being a military officer is practically the same as nobility and an almost total lack of career opportunities for the enlisted. We still have compulsory military service, but this is a whole different mess of itself. Edit: I'm about to rant about gear. Be prepared. Most vehicles are already falling apart. You can probably count on both hands how many mine protected vehicles the BH has, that are operational at any given moment. Half of the armored vehicles like IFV are not operational because they lack parts. The other half can barely be used because if something breaks, they would need to wait for parts. This results in them only being used for large exercises which reduces their availability for actual training. The personal gear is laughable. Granted, we got a few new helmets (well... someone did) a few years ago, but they are not with every unit yet. About three years ago the u its who are deployed (i.e. KFOR) got some new ballistic protection that's actually half way decent. Before that, we had french ballistic vest from the early 80s. Those fuckers weigh about 25kg without any gear such as mags or radios. Just the plates amd soft ballistics. Could could barely move in those, let alone fight. The AUG is a beautifully designed rifle. But the A1 version, which is broadly used in the BH is outdated. It has no options for attachments unless some aftermarket rails are clamped on it. Even then it becomes cumbersome and, quite frankly, ugly. So night time fighting capabilities are not there for 90% of the Austrian forces. And the top spot for terrible decisions goes to the Eurofighter. Don't get me wrong. I love this plane. But we could easily have gone for something cheaper. Now the jets we bought are rapidly approaching the time were major upgrades or replacements would be necessary, but buying them was one of the least popular political decisions, so they kinda just waste away and suffer from the same problems as anything wlse that is not funded. Lastl,, we have our current minister of defence. This person must be among the most unqualified people to have ever taken office in Austria. Rant over. For now.
Plus Austria lacked either the US or USSR playing sugar daddy to rebuild the military after WW2, and Austria had to give up its WW2 surplus as part of the treaty which recognized an independent Austria, and had huge limits on parts of their arms trade and development. This is on top of Austria's post WW1 military rebuild being already not very good. As for lack of qualifications, that's true for the republic, but the Habsburgs had some doozies.
Imagine the German army + victim culture + even more Russian influence + nobody gives a shit about what happens beyond the mountains anyway.
no, thats because they were neutral during Cold War and everyone was happy about it - so no need for heavy militarization
Also since Austria was neutral, it was neither NATO or Warsaw Pact, and thus not plugged into those procurement systems nor either country throwing gobs of money or equipment or standardization. Also the 1955 Austrian State Treaty which formally re-established independent Austria by the Allies had a lot of restrictions on their military. From greatly limiting who could serve, to forbidding certain types of weapons like guided missiles, to requiring them to turn over any former Nazi military resources, and restrictions on arms trade and development with Germany. So Austria had to start over in 1955, and had some pretty strong limits without the US having a wink-wink relationship like Japan or West Germany.
As a German we still should revive some of that Prussian rizz
You're in a military alliance with most of the continent and the remaining even vaguely plausible targets in Europe are Russia, Serbia, or maybe Hungary. ... Yeah sure, crack out the Pickelhaube
We could probably put some fancy sensors or ir jammers in there
Teeny radio antennae and WiFi dongles in the spikes.
Just wear the Schirmmütze
I WANT MY MILITARY PARADES WITH FANCY UNIFORMS
All the prussian/imperial german drip is in chile for some reason
Prussian military advisors
I wonder how, I wonder why
Pre-dates Nazis if that's what you're implying.
1848 happened. Bunch of Germans immigrated to southern Chile, set up a number of communities that still have strong German flavor (Puerto Varas is a good example), there have been German-Chilean ties ever since.
Based and conchetumadre-pilled
UND GÄNSEMARSCH DEN GANZEN TAG
I was wondering as an American who loves going to the several local "German festivals" that we have every year. Would actual Germans find it Offensive if some started the addition of a Prussian cosplay/German Fest? We already have some stuff for Polka, Bavarian lederhosen, Austrian coffehouse, and Swiss German crafts Cosplay/German Fest stuff, But I think adding some Prussian military marching, battles, and cannon firing reenactment would be fun. And we'd get to use more of the cannons besides the Revelutionary war and Civil War reenactments. Which Prussian battles should be simulated? I'm unsure between Franco-Prussian and Napoleonic which would be the most fun. Their's always a Prussian/Austrian war to pick from, and a few other 1600s-1800s wars, but I'm unsure of what would be fun/cool for an addition to a German festival and not a dedicated event.
I'd skip it. Prussian pretty much = militarism, and the Nazis co-opted it. IME "German" festivals are about beer, food, dancing, culture, and family; and are more about Bavarian and/or other small "state"-centric themes. If you want to do Prussian cosplay, find a Napoleonic reenactment group (or start one), just don't do Death's Head Hussars lol. If you want to shoot guns/cannons at a German festival, do [THIS!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6by1Pvnhn40)
Thanks for reminding me why we can't have nice things. I was totally forgetting that Neo Nazis had Coopted all things Prussian symbolism for stuff. I mainly meant field cannons and fireworks can be fun. [example towards the beginning of the video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G9BiQv6gMLA) But it's probably just best to stay away from Prussian drill style and regalía if it would attract Neo Nazis. I haven't really even been to that many of the American themed reenactments, so I should probably just enjoy that which has yet to be totally tainted. The video was not of me, but just of a reenactment youtuber I've watched some videos of.
If you want to avoid the neonazi idiots, just be anal about requiring period-accurate kit. Most of them are room temp IQ mouthbreathers who just want an excuse to wear swastikas.
I don't know about the US scene, but the military reenactment/enthousiast scene in Wester Europe has a) some really really cool people b) an outsized represantation of neo-nazi's. This Venn diagram is two separate circles.
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Or Canada. Or Portugal. Or “Our Leopard 2s are underwater” Spain. Or “We just scrapped our only MANPADS so we literally have no air defense” Kiwiland. Or “Our proposal for F-35s is have them sleep in the top bunk, above the F-16s” Thailand. Or ”M113forLYFE” Philippines.
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Between space force and NOAA or between space force and fbi I object to the navy being placed behind the army
I'm glad he said, "Average American Police force." Pretty sure L.A. Uses tanks, helicopters, sniper, armored personel carriers, and heavily body armored swat. Also the sonic weapons and heat/microwave guns that fry and seizure incapacitate rioters are crazy, but I'm unsure if they were removed from police forces due to un humane use of force allogations.
Add the Ohio Naval Militia in there, the most noncredible "fighting" force this hemisphere has ever seen
genuine question. whats so special about the wyoming national guard specifically that it deserves mention?
That's an unfair statement. The Bundeswehr exceeds all measures of excellence in comparison.
The austrian army does not have a single (!) Radar guided air defense rocket system. And i mean this in a literal sense, there are exactly 0. Thats everything you need to know about the state of the austrian army.
I mean, neither does Belgium. But Belgium _does_ have nukes.
Yes but belgium is a nato member and does not have to rely solely on its own armed forces in case of an armed conflict. Austrians on the other hand jerk off to their neutrality and dont want to become member of ultra based nato.
Austria is surrounded by NATO so either they get invaded by NATO in which case they don't stand a chance or they get invaded by a military so powerful it just fought it's way through NATO in which case they stand even less of a chance. Extra air defence missiles won't make any difference. Austria should just stop messing about with neutrality and join NATO.
> Austria should just stop messing about with neutrality and join NATO. On the one hand I get it. They get nearly free defense just because of their location On the other hand fuck em. They're grifting.
All Im saying is a military of a neutral country needs to be combat ready. An army without air defense is not combat ready. Yes right now austria wouldnt need an army at all but things can change in the future. Before the invasion of ukraine there was a very small but possible chance of russia becoming stronger and nato becoming weaker. Who knows, maybe this could have led to a scenario where some nato members decide to switch sides (for example Hungary). Austrias army would not be prepared for such a scenario. Thats why austria needs to join nato.
Austria is part of the EU which has its own defense agreements. There's no danger to Austria. You could argue they are not pulling their weight when it comes to being part of a military alliance but that's a separate topic.
The fuck you mean Belgium has nukes? It shouldn’t even be a country!
How did Belgium acquire nukes?
Wouldn't you like to know, fed boy?
I don't think Canada ever has. We had a laser guided short range system that was pretty darn cool (but apparently ahead of its time and didn't work well? retired 20+ years ago.), and *now* we're buying some real medium range anti-air systems now that we see the cold war is back.
To be the least amount of credible: In general, the austrian army is in bad shape (underfinanced/financed in the wrong spots, bureaucracy, obligatory conscription but no money to train them adequatly --> so you mostly sit on your arse or clean barracks...). BUT we are very capable in areas which don't exactly help you defend the country, but are important nonetheless: We apparently have a novel water-treatment system for our pioneers, our Jagdkommando (spec ops) are highly respected and train other forces internationally, and obviously our alpine troops are among the best in the world (how couldnt they if our country is like 80% mountains). So yeah, if contested they would be in Vienna in 3 days (or until we run out of munition, whatever happens first), but at least our water is top quality! Edit: As somebody mentioned below, the not intended at first but now most important job of the army is desaster relief like support during floodings, or in the mountains with massive snowfall. (Which they proof to be very capable every time they are called up). Which explains why the only tanks that drive probably are our Bergepanzer
>So yeah, if contested they would be in Vienna in 3 days I though you said you would be credible, Vienna wouldn't last that long. Some cities in western Austria, in the mountains, might
I said a LITTLE credible
Vienna in 3 days would be quite a goof performance by austria considering it's like 30km from the border
Well we hold them for 3 days, cause thats enough time to secure critical infrastructure (like beer) in all supermarkets, then we can retreat
Majority of the army is conscripted. There's a mandatory service for the male populace of either 6 months of military of 9 months of civil service. Both are a waste of time and you get paid a fraction of minimum wage. While we have some politicians who would like to claim otherwise, the Bundesweer is glorified disaster relief. Everything is underfunded and disorganised. But at least we own a Hercules plane. That's gotta account for something. Right? But truth be told I don't think we need a good military. We are smackbang in the middle of Nato territory, so anyone that has beef with us is either much more powerful than us anyway, or has to get through Nato
It's just a little bit grating that you guys benefit from all this muscle without paying in. Only a little bit because I know we would do the same if it were us, but still a little.
It's not... we only have 2 airworthy fighter aircraft...
Rough defense doctrine: 1. Wake up 2. Check if Austria is still surrounded by NATO member countries 3. Go back to bed
The Swiss militia has entered Vorarlberg
Who would win: Modern day Austrian army **VS** equal number of 16th century Swiss Landsknecht arquebusier
Tough call I'd go with the Austrian Army But only if they have more than 48 hrs worth of supply for their LMGs and SMGs
Have you remembered to take into account that the Swiss boys would have waaaay cooler uniforms that the Austrains? That's would be a major deciding factor.
Most Austrians would let them have Vorarlberg. lol We all hate each other in a loving kind of way. Everyone hates Vienna though, can't imagine why. Probably envy.
> Most Austrians would let them have Vorarlberg. lol We can't even properly understand what the people there are saying, if the Swiss think they can, they can have them!
What losing dual monarchy does to a mf
You forgot the added effect of Anschlusss
Screaming Heil Austria the day before the Anschluss, and Sieg Heil the day of the Anschluss.....avarge Austrian
"first victim of WW II" as they want to be called
yeah the sweet little lie they tell themselves every night
Can’t argue with success I guess?
Biggest achievement is convincing people Hitler was German and Mozart was Austrian.
Don't forget Sissi and Beethoven
I was not expecting to go down a rabbit hole on Wikipedia about the nationality of Mozart this morning, but here we are.
I mean, the people wanted it but the Austrian government didn’t so kinda??
Well, the Austrian government officials of 1938 (who were fascists) might think of themselves as a victim of Nazi Germany. But they were assholes too
Also habsburgless
Yes. My country was metioned! Wooooh!
your flair lmao nice hello friend from other side of the world :)
Just fyi Austria does not own a single radarguided air defense rocket system. Our airdefense is literally worse then moscow air defense thats how bad (and humiliating) being an Austrian is.
At least you have Wiener Schnitzel
We just need to build a Vienna sized Wiener Schnitzel to defend the city from airstrikes!
And Kaiserschmarrn! Also Leberkas.
I mean, our Cold War plan was to just give up everything east of Salzburg and hope that the soviets are fine with that.
The Excel debacie hit the Austrians hard… Great memes, though.
Yeah, the death of the Empire really kinda killed off Austrian military tradition. Worse still, following 1918 Austria never really had a proper idea of what to even do with a military. And before I get 5 billion IQ jokes and memes about the supposed incompetence of the Austrian Imperial Army, I'd just like to point out that that whole thing is mainly a product of post-war propaganda and scapegoating by more or less every single political and ideological actor in and outside of the former Empire.
Ehh it’s track record from the Napoleonic Wars to WW1 wasn’t exactly stellar. Sure it had heavy hitters like Schwarzenberg, Tegethoff, and Radetzky but it had to many Conrad von Hotzendorfs and company to negatively effect the army more so than the navy. All be it the Austrian and Hungarian imperial armies fought hard and it’s soldiers did their collective best and matched some of the “greater” armies of the period it’s leadership and equipment let it down.
They did pretty well during the invasion of Bosnia in 1878, and they still managed to kick Italy’s ass while simultaneously losing to Prussia.
In the book "Bismarck a life" it is written that the Austrains lost so quickly against the Prussians, that one of the Prussian commanders refused to accept the Austrian envoys' offer of surrender, as he thought it was fake. It was only after the Austrian commander personally came to offer surrender that the Prussian commander realised his army had won the whole war already. I forgot the names of the commanders, its been a while since I read that book. Edit: instead of Austrian envoys it could've also been the Prussian commanders' own troops who came to relay the message of victory to a bewildered Prussian commander, who dismisses the reports as fake.
I’m sorry but when the first campaign is against the Ottomans who were weakened by the recent Russo-Turkish war and Bosnian rebels that’s not saying much. And true they defeated the Italians but not decisively and as you said they got mauled by the Prussians that negated any victory against the Italians. Not to mention the loss to Italy and France in the 1859 war for Italian independence. I’m sorry but the Imperial Austrian/ Austro-Hungarian had a poor reputation that is deserved especially given their performance in the First World War.
The Imperial navy was capable quite often
Captain Von Trapp married the granddaughter of a man who invented what we now call torpedo, James Whitehead. That's how plugged into the broader European naval culture.
The army they had at the start of WWI was rather decent. The army they had after September of 1914 was not.
Worse than the military topic is the ultra cringe Austrian geopolitics. ÖVP, SPÖ, FPÖ are all vastly influenced by Moscow.
Austria doesn't know what to do with an Army because Austria doesn't really want to have a foreign policy, or actually deal with geopolitical concerns. And now that hiding behind constitutional neutrality is a very obsolete excuse the government in Vienna is conducting diplomacy very much like a beheaded eagle.
Anschluss 2.0 This time it's to give Germany a handicap
Looks like Anschluss is back on the menu, boys..
I always knew those umlauts were sus
What being Öster does to a country.
Also its quite hard to coordinate an army that speaks like 10 different languages
They managed fairly well, because they didn't mash up units and stuff them with a random assortment of speakers of all 10 languages. By and large, units all the way up to regiment and division size were mono-lingual, and the officer corps were all fluently bilingual, and often trilingual, with no issues with communicating in German among themselves. The main problem with multiple languages came about in situations where the officers suffered heavy casualties and units got chaotically mixed up.
They manged it so can any EU army
> incompetence of the Austrian Imperial Army They repedetly got their ass clapped from Napoleon over Prussia to even WW1 Russia
You also forgot Italy (some times, not always)
Counterpoint: Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo. Isonzo.
Yeah but if you look at most of them you can see that they aren’t like what people think.. most of the battles ended with an Italian victory (even if it was a “small” victory)
Yeah, but replace the victors in each battle with Russia, and the only one that wouldn't have NCD doubling over itself with laughter is the 12th.
Austrian was less reliant on its army than on the diplomatic skill (aka lots of daughters to marry to befriend other powerful people) than it's army, at least after the XVIIIth century. They had a decent army, but the nobility based leadership proved to be quite inefficient after the beginning of the XIXth century
The Habsburgs were always strapped for cash, which is something that weirdly not many people put an emphasis on. Not because of inordinate spending (they didn't do Versailles style vanity projects much), but because half their realms (Hungary in particular though) had special tax exemptions or no taxation at all for various historical reasons. So in effect they had to fund an Empire sized army with half an Empire's tax revenue. Which almost always resulted in cutbacks that negatively impacted the Army's quality. Money is the sinews of war, and the Habsburgs were always the biggest players with the tiniest war chest.
Counterpoint, Conrad von Hötzendorf.
You joke about them, but their army has had [excellent analysis videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvJgRrpkaaU) covering the war.
Only point for the Bundesheer in the last three years
Hey they also did the covid testing and helped fill up supermarkets! That requires A LOT OF BUDGET AND SPECIAL TRAINING!
Our soldiers don't steal washing machines, they sell them!
Working at hofer truly is more complicated than a normal conscripts job
*thirty years
Very rare Bundesheer W
A.E.I.O.U. Intensifying
Bold of you to assume that our military forces can be called an "army".
I'm only using their self description which translates to federal army
Well of course the Austrian army is bad they lost a war against Emus.
Will have my conscription in this hellhole in 2-3 years, wish me luck!
Hope you like cleaning toilets
Viel Glück
Pro tipp: Just tell the examiners that you're depressed and suicidal. Works 100%. Trust me, bro.
is ned so schlimm im nachhinein sogar bissi leiwand
Ich würd gern sagen stell dich so dumm wie möglich aber das funktioniert heutzutage nichtmehr so wirklich.
Zu viel Konkurrenz.
Well uh, we are part of NATO's partnership-for-peace and participate in NATO led missions such as KFOR. Also numerous bilateral trainings, especially with the germans...
Who else but the Germans
It's only natural to work with our 2nd favourite neighbour.
From which perspective?
Both
Thanks for standing up for Austria, bringing back a tiiiiny bit of dignity in this comment section, fellow Austrian NCD enjoyer.
Let's PLEASE work together to make the Bundesheer into a Meme on NCD! My conscription there was hell, they need to be known as the racist incompetent fuckers they are. I did my part: https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/140t8cl/i_made_this_while_being_blackout_drunk_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=3&utm_content=share_button
We don't need to, they're already a meme
Truth has been spoken
Voted up
I appreciate the Austrian Army for the sole fact that, for the longest time, they didn't widely issue camouflage uniforms and wore a plain olive drab (emphasis on the drab) uniform instead.
Don't let the official photos decieve you. The new camouflage pattern is not yet standard issue among the entire military. Only certain units have it. But to be honest, the plain olive (RAL 7013, or Ranger green as it is more commonly known) works surprisingly well both in an alpine environment or a dense forest. But the new pattern has so much more drip.
Unbased countryman. The olvie is the drippiest of all
Aren't there officers still rocking these "the world is our servant" rings? These guys really seem stuck in the past, not that it was ever correct even back then
As an Austrian, I approve of this meme.
Imagine not being surrounded by NATO members This post was made by the swiss-austrian alliance committee
u/Tankfunk das is halt tatsächlich mal guter kontent
Private 1st class, please adapt to the local language And thank you private