It didnt came up in this thread but look for threads that have a surviving Austrian Empire.
A number of people think that the solution of the Empire's survival is the following:
1. Get Franz Ferdinand on the throne
2. Execute U Plan
3. Federalize the Empire and it will survive forever.
Im not really that familiar with Plan U, what I know is that it was made by the common army during the crisis of 1905-06 in Hungary.
What I meant by destroying leadership I meant the Hungarian political elit. The people propagating the above reason that because the very narrow suffrage in Hungary the elit had no popular support so removing them will clear the route.
But back on topic I dont think that the hungarian elit can be faulted for not wanting to pay for an army that was ready to attack it.
If the armies are separate I think they would be willing to spend more on the army.
I really, really would love some actual sources on this Plan U. Literally never heard or read about it before. It seems like a completely stupid political move. Then again, it seems to roughly equate with Hötzendorf's tenure and the Hungarian Constitutional Crisis and we all know how much of an idiot Hötzendorf was. The Crisis, however, was a seriously terrible time riddled with some nasty corruption scandals and civil strife that was about to break Hungary apart. Call me an apologist, but maybe it was wise to be ready to restore order if the Hungarian Parliament broke apart from infighting, which is bound to lead to another crisis in Zagreb. Wouldn't want another 1848-esque clusterfuck happening again.
Anyways, I was reading Anthony Sokol's 'The Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy', a fairly old book but probably the only decent book on the Navy available in English, and Dr.Sokol has a passage that really struck me as interesting for this topic.
Alongside describing how the Hungarians would get "economic consessions in return for a favourable vote on appropriations", he describes that besides "the joint Navy and Army, in both of which the Emperor insisted that German be retained as the language of command, each half of the realm maintained a territorial army, called Landwehr in Austria, and Honved in Hungary.
The Landwehr and the Honved were trained in the same way as the joint Army, but were not as well equipped and used different languages of command. In wartime, they were integrated with the joint Army."
This really seem to agree with my statement that the KuK Army's equipment problem is overblown and that the Landwehr and Honvéd being better funded is at least partially true, if not actually false. It does disagree with my statements about how poorly integrated the three branches were, as they were, I assume, entirely integrated in 1914.
Still, I think I have an explanation to why the KuK Army was so short of artillery: there were no significant artillery industry in Hungary like the Škoda complex in Bohemia. With the Ausgleich, the Hungarians insisted that rifle production be made in Budapest alongside the famous Steyr complex. This meant that OeWG and the FÉG company made rifles for the armies and, as such, rifle shortages were cleared relatively quickly in the war just like thr other comabatants (and even switched over from long M95 rifles to the Stutzen carbines en-masse mid-war when they proved good on the front). However, since Hungary wouldn't profit from an expanded artillery branch in all three land services, it was probably more difficult to convince them to fund more guns, since Škoda would inevitably get thr contracts. It's how the Navy convinced the Hungarians to spend on the Navy; the yards in Fiume/Rijeka would be expanded and ships would be built in Hungary-Croatia, fueling the economy. Still, it would be nice to have hard numbers on rifle, machine gun, artillery, shells and munitions somewhere...
Dr.Sokol also claims that "Most recruits went to the joint Army and Navy, and the rest into the territorial forces." I would love to see numbers for manpower and recruit distribution as well...
Still, I think people forget that the Landwehr and Honvéd were territorial armies and, thus, second-line troops. It doesn't make sense that they would be better trained and equipped than the first-line troops. Plus, if there was no KuK Army, I think the artillery shortage would have been even more glaring in this ATL Honvéd and less so in the ATL Landwehr. It would have taken years for Hungary to build up a substantial artillery manufactory that could barely hope compare to Škoda and it would take even longer for good quality guns to come out unless there's a new arrangement similar to the OeWG Steyr-FÉG one. Which reminds me, why didn't this happen iOTL anyways? Or if it did, I would love more information about it.
Anyways, in the end, this makes me beg for a new, thorough and complete study on the Austro-Hungarian armed forces...