“Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” Gerhartz said at the event.

Head of the German Air Force, Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, told 200 industry executives, military officers and lawmakers at an event in Berlin at an event in Berlin on Jun. 27 that the “Luftwaffe is at a low point.”

Gerhartz said that his recent inspections of several bases revealed serious deficits in the readiness of aircraft and other equipment.

A 400-hour inspection of the Eurofighter now takes 14 months instead of seven.

His comments followed recent reports by the defence ministry and the German parliament’s military ombudsman that revealed significant gaps in military equipment and personnel.

A February ministry report showed only 39 of 128 Eurofighter jets were available for training and combat use last year on average, and just 26 of 93 older-model Tornado fighter jets.

“Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” Gerhartz said at the event.

According Reuters, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are finalising budget plans for 2019, but Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, from the SPD, has been resisting moves to accelerate increases in military spending.

Merkel this month forecast steady increases in German military spending in coming years, in line with Berlin’s pledge to meet a NATO target of moving towards spending 2 percent of economic output by 2024, but she gave no details.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has been pressing for increased spending after Scholz’s previous longer-term plan called for military outlays to edge lower after reaching 1.3 percent of economic output in 2019, up from 1.2 percent now.

Von der Leyen has pledged that German military spending will reach 1.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2025.

Gerhartz urged lawmakers at last week event to back a more sustainable spending plan that would allow the air force to rebuild its equipment and improve planning for new weapons and upgrades to existing systems.

This article by Dario Leone originally appeared on The Aviation Geek Club in 2018.

Image: Wikimedia.