The Dutch armed forces are specialized to a fairly unusual degree. We’re never going to win a war by sending endless waves of troops into battle so we have no intention to try.
Instead, we organize our armed forces around the concept of having a much higher than the average number of specialists and using those to support our allies and our own operations.
So essentially, the Dutch armed forces are fairly elite in terms of specialist troops and equipment. That doesn’t mean they’re all navy seals type badasses but we have a lot of different kinds of engineers, commandoes, rescue specialists and so on.
And on the practical side. We’re just a much more expensive country. The same amount of money will pay for fewer Dutch salaries than Polish ones.
Also Poland borders with their good friend Russia, while the Netherlands is surrounded by friendly neighbours. That puts another perspective into how you set up your army.
Example: Poland needs tanks, the Netherlands does not.
Oke, just spitballing, even though many of these figures seem to be.. wrong:
Well, part of it is simply lower wages and lower local costs.
Part is the fact that those ships we dó have more of are quite expensive.
Part of it is that half the Polish air-force consists of Soviet made planes. They have the same number of F-35s on backorder as we do but we might be a bit ahead on that.
And finally I’m sure that being so close to Russia and sharing a border with Belarus instills quite some drive for efficiency in their military.
If you look purely at expenses versus these figures Germany has more explaining to do.
A big financial strain in western armies is paying out pensions. I think a that’s a big part of the explanation
Let’s neglect all the logistical personal. As if that’s got any importance.
P.S. Wait, this isn’t r/NonCredibleDefense
We have two times as many ships. Ships are expensive.
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The Dutch armed forces are specialized to a fairly unusual degree. We’re never going to win a war by sending endless waves of troops into battle so we have no intention to try.
Instead, we organize our armed forces around the concept of having a much higher than the average number of specialists and using those to support our allies and our own operations.
So essentially, the Dutch armed forces are fairly elite in terms of specialist troops and equipment. That doesn’t mean they’re all navy seals type badasses but we have a lot of different kinds of engineers, commandoes, rescue specialists and so on.
And on the practical side. We’re just a much more expensive country. The same amount of money will pay for fewer Dutch salaries than Polish ones.
Also Poland borders with their good friend Russia, while the Netherlands is surrounded by friendly neighbours. That puts another perspective into how you set up your army.
Example: Poland needs tanks, the Netherlands does not.
Oke, just spitballing, even though many of these figures seem to be.. wrong:
Well, part of it is simply lower wages and lower local costs.
Part is the fact that those ships we dó have more of are quite expensive.
Part of it is that half the Polish air-force consists of Soviet made planes. They have the same number of F-35s on backorder as we do but we might be a bit ahead on that.
And finally I’m sure that being so close to Russia and sharing a border with Belarus instills quite some drive for efficiency in their military.
If you look purely at expenses versus these figures Germany has more explaining to do.
A big financial strain in western armies is paying out pensions. I think a that’s a big part of the explanation
Let’s neglect all the logistical personal. As if that’s got any importance.
P.S. Wait, this isn’t r/NonCredibleDefense
We have two times as many ships. Ships are expensive.
No European army!
De laatste podcast van [Boekenstijn en De Wijk](https://www.bnr.nl/podcast/boekestijn-en-de-wijk/10462421/de-verdediging-van-ons-grondgebied) gaat over de Nederlandse strijdkrachten. Een aanrader! Na het luisteren van die podcast hoop ik toch dat de Russen niet binnenvallen want hoe de stand van de strijdkrachten daar geschetst wordt, daar word je niet vrolijk van.