A comment I saw:

I was part of the last madatory basic training we had. It used to be that every male had to get basic training for a year. Back than it was already that only about 20% of combat vehicles where working. I and many other could play weel of fortune with our G3 rifle sights. Without the madatories the maintainance must have gotten even worse. Additionally the only way for professional soldier to get decent pay was a security clearance. But if you get devorced you loose your clearance. From around 2017 they startet fireing everyone who was even remotely right wing. Btw i was on duty in 2011 and we only startet protectiong our own base after the towers. Before it was only a private security service. We where on a high security base... We had the "Fernmeldeaufklärung" "telecommunications reconnaissance". So if it was this bad on our base you can imagine what it was like on others.