No soldiers to man the equipment

Military recruitment is being managed so poorly that the Czech army is heading inescapably toward a situation in which there will be new defense equipment but no one to operate it. That's the way Army Chief of Staff Karel Řehka characterized the situation yesterday during a meeting of military command. The army is losing its competitiveness on the labor market, he said, and this is a truly strategic and urgent problem. Recruitment, he said, must be the absolute goal, and if we have to invest more money into people to the detriment of upgrading equipment, so be it. Part of what he said about recruitment was then repeated by Defense Min. Jana Černochová of ODS, who pushed through the expensive purchase of F-35 fighters but couldn't prevent a freezing this year of soldiers' salaries. She's speaking now, after three years in office, about the need to pass related legislation that her predecessors "feared like the devil." Despite all the words of urgency from Řehka and Černochová, neither of them dared to name the real problem: The defense budget is limited, and there isn't a commission to be earned on raising soldiers' salaries.