With the Great Reserve Strategy approved, increased military spending was inevitable. In the short term, the rise would not be obvious, but it would be different as the number of reservists grew.
No matter how cheaply reservists could be maintained, their expenses would not fall below fifteen percent of those for regular troops. Weapons and equipment could be old castoffs from the regular army, and soldiers' wages could be spared, but training funds could not be cut under any circumstances.
Under normal conditions, Austria's reserve forces trained for no less than two months each year. Once their training was complete, the government also had to issue them a modest consolation subsidy.
Calculated at two hundred thousand new reservists each year, this expenditure was equivalent to expanding the army by thirty thousand annually. Once the reserve force reached its cap of two million, it would be equivalent to increasing the standing army by two hundred and fifty thousand from its current level. (After deducting the existing five hundred thousand reservists.)
At Austria's previous rate of fiscal revenue growth, the plan likely would not have lasted long before dying stillborn.
Franz could not help being grateful that the industrial age had arrived. Otherwise, agricultural Austria truly could not afford to keep so many soldiers.
"Considering that our future overseas colonial strategy will require close coordination between the army and navy, I have decided to establish a General Staff, with Field Marshal Radetzky serving as its first Chief of the General Staff." Franz dropped a bombshell.
There was no doubt that this General Staff would stand independent of both the army and navy. Nominally, it would merely coordinate their cooperation, but in wartime, it would stand above the Army and Navy Ministries.
How could it coordinate anything without authority? Were they supposed to