German Soldiers Do Not Trust Their Weapons

German soldiers with M3 machine guns. PinInterest

Popular Mechanics: Why German Troops Don't Trust Their Weapons

Only 8 percent have confidence in their rifles.

A survey of German soldiers has found that an overwhelming majority have doubts about the reliability of their weapons. More than half rated their weapons as unreliable, with less than ten percent expressing confidence in their army-issued G36 rifles. The news comes as the German military prepares to deploy troops to the Baltics to counter an aggressive Russia.

The poll, conducted by the Bundeswehr (German Army) research center and reported by the German Bild newspaper, was carried out during the Trident Junction 2015 wargames. Forty-three percent of respondents said that their weapons were "rather not reliable" or "not reliable at all." Twenty-eight percent said they could "partly" trust their weapons. Only eight percent said they could fully trust their weapons. By contrast, 80 percent of U.S. Army troops reported they were confident in the reliability of their issue weapon, the M-4 carbine, when they were asked in 2006.

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