Britain sets up new commando base in Arctic

Quantity is our basic problem SJB. Not being able to handle multiple simultaneous deployments. The inherent difficulties of sustaining, rotating and reinforcing as required. It also adds to recruiting and retention difficulties. A 10 year crash programme is needed to at least double every aspect of the land forces. That includes the amphibious warfare capability of the Marines. (Littoral warfare my derriere.)

Suggestion – The Mountain/Arctic Warfare speciality should not be the sole domain of the Royal Marines. It’s the perfect extended role for light infantry regiments. Our Gurkha friends from Nepal excel at it.

I must admit the RM mountain and arctic warfare cadre used to be second to none back in the 70’s and 80’s. It certainly separated the men from the boys. Separated a few frost bitten fingers and toes too. I recall one RAMC NCO who lost several of each!

Is the M&AWC still around? I thought they were part of CTCRM now.

Ayup Daniele. The cadre will never die😂 but alas they are no longer referred to as such. There are still a few people around who served in what was then the Mountain & Artic Warfare Cadre, and have been through a few different names and acronyms, but it has a new name now, Surveillance Reconnaissance Squadron part of 30Cdo and made up of a few specialties, an emphasis on recce by a ‘however means possible,’ ethos also allows ideas to go from origin to prototype for trial by the ones who came up with it very quickly Which is turning up some remarkable results coming from all areas of the Bde.

I think whether the RMC is better suited to this commando work envisaged for FCF or they scrap all that and return to a 3Cdo unit Bde as previously in the mainly conventional sense that’s a big subject. And interesting too, with many views I imagine.
There’s always a little thought of thing like a return to a RM & Cdo structure, the RM blue berets are naval infantry, and the Cdo are Cdo trained RM, and open to army commandos in the same guise.
God they’d have to some serious Shiesen happening for that one mind😂

Hi Richard.

Good to see you post. Right, thanks for that. I’m of course aware of the SRS, BPT and so on, and actually, that makes total sense.

Assume it’s 1 Coy as afloat/deployed, as they’ve formed “Vanguard Company” but not found anything else about it, as is it part of a Cdo or a stand alone formation?
Assumed the former.

Agreed with assuming the former, anything else would require too much admin, probably the coy’s rotate through “vanguard coy.”
Also worth noting that there is a reason the Rangers added an extra Task Group when they re-rolled. Would be very interested to see how the RM LRG’s manage with 3 maneuver Coys.

It is very good to read your practical thoughts of how the LRGs might work but what I can’t get my head around is the usefulness of one Coys for LRG(N) in particular.

If we need to deploy 45 Commando to Norway as we are currently I am really struggling to understand the practicality of a single Coys in that same scenario. Indeed if the LRG’s are based on rotating Coys why not adopt it for exercise Joint Viking?

It feels like a Coys is too big for the SF role but not large enough for anything else.

I am not qualified to get into the military detail but I take a keen interest in everything RM in particular with friends and a son in the Corps.

Needless to say I don’t like the current direction of travel and believe our amphibious capabilities are essential for us and are being abandoned because of cost cutting and nothing more.

Anyway I am sure the accountants are really happy in the MOD because having cut the army into incoherent pieces they are now working there way through the rest of the armed forces,

It’s competing demands and manpower pressures really. So to have an entire Battalion on high readyness you basicially need a 1-in-3 ratio (One Battalion training, one on high readyness/deployed, one recovering). Even with all three Cmdo’s available, that would mean 3 Cmdo would be able to deploy 1 LRG. So a full Battalion at readyness is beyond the RM’s capability really.

So, you can either have two smaller LRG’s constantly available, or manage 1 large LRG 66% of the time. Add in the fact that the Navy doesn’t want to do amphib, it has enough on it’s plate funding the CSG, Subs, and Escort Fleet, and suddenly the RM’s are trying to make sure they continue to exist, while acknowledging that big landing ships might not be around for them to work off of.

Hence the LRG; a smaller lighter force (possibly in part inspired by SpecInf concepts), that can maintain a deployed sub unit at all times. (Personally skeptical as to why that sub-unit needs to be fully at sea, having CHQ and not-needed troops in the UK and then punching them out onto deployments seems to work for the rest of us, but Navy I guess).

Personally do I think Amphib is vital in the North? Not sure, but the most likely place we’d go is Norway, and that’s a friendly coast with friendly ports, even if deploying might be high threat, I’m not sure how much we’d be needing “over the beach landings” but I’m not navy so I don’t really care about those things. If a full RM battalion, or two, is needed for a task by the way, that can still be generated, either by force genning a composite from 45 and 40, or, with more lead time, spinning up an entire commando btw. That’s not impossible.

A Company isn’t really “too big” to do SOF work, even 22 spin up a squadron at a time for taskings. The bigger difference is a RM Commando Coy is (as far as I know) much larger than a SF coy, since it’s supposed to be capable of combat actions, but that’s a function of their platoon structure.

I’d really disagree with the Army being cut into incoherent pieces as well tbh.

Thank you for such a thorough response, which I can only agree with. I suppose my real annoyance is how in an era of a very small British military footprint anyone could think it would be a good idea to reduce the size of RM’s who alongside the Para’s are the UK’s spearhead units.

They are nearly always the first to deploy, undertook a disproportionate high number of deployments in Afghanistan and similarly provide a high percentage of U.K. Special Forces.

Forget the ability to carry out amphibious operations they should be one of the last units in the British military you would cut.

Unfortunately in the scramble for the available funds as you mentioned the RN has had little choice but something is very wrong when this type of decision is made because there is no military logic to it whatsoever and demonstrates to friend and foe alike that we don’t take defence seriously.

For me the CSG makes little sense either without the ability to insert a small but capable amphibious force that can be quickly reinforced. That doesn’t necessarily mean a D-Day style opposed landing but might require an over the beach capability.

Given the potential accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO I think a dedicated British Army brigade in the high north alongside 3 Cdo Brigade is a critical role for the U.K. military. That sits nicely with our need to support the Baltic States.

For the Army I think it is a lifeline in providing them with a new niche role in NATO something they could do with given any army formation we can field in Central Europe will be dwarfed by other nations contributions.

That new expanded role for the U.K. military in the Baltic and high north area requires amphibious shipping and airborne lift to deal with the vast expanse of sea, islands and topography that makes road and rail reinforcement less useful than in Central Europe.

It is worth reading about the disastrous Anglo French intervention in Norway in 1940 because the lessons are valid today.
They lacked air cover/support, the units were not trained in artic warfare and they were restricted to harbours for embarkation.

My apologies to those of you who have read my posts on other similar and related articles recently on here for repeating myself.

They, and the Paras are very often first to deploy because they are lightly armed, and therefore easy and cheap to keep on high readiness. It’s MUCH easier to keep a unit that only has to worry about small arms and 81mm mortars current, competent, and in service than it is to do the same for a unit that needs to maintain Foxhounds, Jackals, or Boxer. It’s also much easier to transport them. You also can’t forget politics: E.g. The Army did not want the Paras or Marines in Telic 1, they wanted to deploy 2 Armoured Brigades, the inclusion of 2 Light Role Brigades was very much down to internal politics rather than what was wanted or needed. (Also the Marines haven’t been the first boots on the ground in a long time: Herrick it was the Green Howards, Telic it was 7th Armoured Brigade, Barras was Royal Irish, SAS and Paras, Grapple it was the Chesires and 9th/12th Lancers, Granby, 7th and 4th Armoured Brigades, the last time the RM could claim to be “first” was Falklands.

Did the Marines undertake a disproportionate number of deployments in Afghan? Not really, each Commando did 3 tours, sure more than a lot of Infantry Units, but definietly not the record holders (Light Dragoons I think did about 5), and more than a few units did multiple Herricks and Telics (which the Marines where absent from after their initial contribution), and when it comes to the argument that both the Paras and Marines like to trot out about supplying a lot of the SF community ask yourself this: Do they actually take soldiers who don’t want to join SF and make them keen? Or do soldiers who want to join SF join the Paras and Marines because they see it as a Pathway? I suspect if we disbanded both those soldiers who want to be SF would still join and find their way there.

I actually would be rather in favour of cutting the Marines, or at least folding them into the wider British Army. Firstly there is unnecessary duplication; do we really need an entirely seperate training pipeline to produce 2, arguably 3, battalions of light role infantry? Especially since a lot of the “Commando” trained personnel go on to other duties after spending time in their GP role. It would be far more efficient to send the Commandos through Catterick and Brecon, while those that will do supporting arms work go through the relevant trades straight away. Plus the Royals do lag behind the rest of the Army doctrinally, which is a bit of a quiet secret. It doesn’t matter if Pte Atkins of 1 LANCS is in a Battalion that hasn’t deployed in years, when he goes for FTCC he’ll have a variety of DS from all over the infantry, if neither Cmdo Battalion has deployed, the Marines don’t get that benefit. I’ve argued before that the RM’s and Paras should form an amalgamated “Quick Reaction Regiment” of some description, and I stand by that.

The RN currently has the 2nd, or depending on how you rate the Chinese, 3rd best Carrier force in the world, and a top rate nuclear submarine force. I don’t think you can argue that they are not taking defence seriously. Simply put: we (and not only we) haven’t done a conventional amphib landing since the Falklands (the American stunt in Somalia doesn’t count), it’s really hard to justify it’s upkeep at this point. Until recently people loved to argue that tanks are obscolete (still do) but at least we’ve used them in my lifetime.

The CSG makes complete sense without an Amphib capability, it’s a blue water naval force. Amphib of any kind beyond CSAR is just a bonus to that. (Even American Carrier Task groups don’t come default with Amphib capability! Their LHD’s operate desperately most of the time). But the LRG’s provide exactly what you’re saying: The ability to insert a small amphib group from the sea, while not being reliant on the Navy maintaining horribly expensive amphib assault ships that it’s eager to get rid off.

No British Army brigade should be “dedicated” to anything. AWIC becoming available to the Army in large numbers should be a given, but with only 5 (4 if you want to be technical) brigades the idea of making one a dedicated “Arctic Formation” tied to the high north is a bit silly. Remember the 3-1 rule applies here as well.

(Worth noting that the Germans in Norway also lacked Air and Sea support, and also weren’t trained in Arctic Warfare. Also worth noting that if Sweden and Finland succede in joining NATO the impetus for being able to put troops ashore “over the beach” will become even less important.)

A good response but a few points.
The Royals were in Afghanistan in two operations before Herrick so they were definitely on the ground ‘early’ with the Paras.

Given their limited number the Royals and Para’s certainly carried a disproportionate number of tours in Afghanistan.

The marines were easy to deploy because they were on exercise in the region on those amphibious ships everybody seems so keen to scrap, which happened to be the same ones used off Sierra Leone.

We used helicopter assault at Al Faw in Iraq from Ocean and Ark Royal.

We also used a lashed up amphibious capability to help the Kurds after the first Gulf war.

The amphibious ships are very useful but like any vessel they require manpower and with a ridiculously small headcount the RN looks at Albion and Bulwark as the two most manpower intensive ships behind the carriers.

There is certainly duplication and I would suggest the “new’ Ranger units should have actually been Army Commandos trained at Lympstone but personally and I think professionally keeping RM separate from the Army is a healthy thing.

I take your point about the 3-1 rule but why wouldn’t the Army develop a skill set to fight in the high north. A British Army brigade in Scandinavia makes a real difference but is peanuts in Central Europe. Being cynical about it it is also far more difficult politically to cut a specialist capability declared to NATO.

Are we taking defence seriously?

We have allowed the Russians to kill people on U.K. soil, shoot down civilian aircraft, invade Crimea and politically interfere with its neighbours before finally doing something after a full blown invasion of a sovereign country. That’s called appeasement but at least in the 30’s we used that period to start to rearm ourselves. We have to date continued to reduce our military.

The US General seemed to suggest we are shall I say not in the first rank and even our own Defence Secretary acknowledges our hollowed out capabilities.

Great kit and people but not enough of any of it and no resilience at all if we need to get serious and take some losses.

For me we reached in 2010 a low ebb in terms of U.K. defence and our differences of opinion or vision are ones that should have never arisen if defence was managed and to an extent funded properly.

Making choices between MPA’s, troop numbers, carriers, MBT’s, manned aircraft and amphibious ships is not based on any sound military logic but politics, inter service rivalry and artificially low budget constraints. However, the latter, which I have seen first hand is largely caused by the monumental waste in the MOD.

The results are clear for us all to see and it will take until the end of this decade to in part repair the damage done to all parts of U.K. Defence. Let’s hope that China and Russia give us that time.

I suggest you count operational tours of other units and take amalgamations into account: as I said before, the Marines aren’t that special in terms of their tour numbers.

The Marines are easy to deploy because of their lack of equipment, they happened to be on exercise there perhaps, but if they hadn’t? Light Role from Kenya. As for HAF: Anyone can HAF, as repeated attachments by the Royal Irish and various Helicopter Assaults during Herrick have demonstrated. Certainly don’t need the RM for that, nor do you need an Amphibious Assault capability (see the two very big carriers we have for example).

I can respect wanting to keep them seperate, if only because of their PR and History, but the fact is, we don’t get the bang that’s worth the expense. We can decry wastage all we want, but then we can also say we need to keep an entirely seperate training pipeline, doctrine, and equipment budget for 2 Light Infantry Battalions. People have a go at the regimental system, but the RM are that writ 100 times larger.

Tbh don’t know where this idea that a Light Mech Brigade in Central Europe won’t make a difference comes from. Swedes and Finns both can put significant forces into the field in a similar time-frame that it would take us to deploy a Brigade, in either theatre we’d be a junior partner.
It might be a bit harder to cut, but the bottom line is the British Army doesn’t have enough forces to sustain such a specialised unit. 7, 12, 16, and 20 are the only deployable combat brigades in the army, and one of those should be permamently committed to a region that already has over half a million personnel assigned to it?

As for training the Rangers in Lympstone to be “Army Commandos,” and I’m really sorry if I sound rude about this, but fuck. No. If you think that you do *not* understand what the Rangers are. To put it simply: The Commando Course is not fit for that purpose.

We allowed the Russians to invade Czechoslovakia, and Hungary during the Cold War when we where “taking defence seriously,” we let them get away with running spy rings in the UK, yeah, just because great power politics will do great power politics, that doesn’t mean we aren’t taking defending ourselves seriously. And tbh, outside of a major world war? This has always been a thing.

When we stopped national service the same debates would have been happening on forums about taking defence seriously, when we had to strip the BAOR of everything useable to generate 2 deployable brigades the same would have been said, hell the view was that the BAOR would last 72 hours against the Soviets in many quarters.

You obviously have a bit of a beef with the Royals but I think that is healthy, however, i am not going to count tours for either them or the Para’s to prove a point.

All of those who served were equally brave and deserve recognition.

As for using a 65,000t carrier as an assault ship it might look good in an exercise but would be insane in anything other than a humanitarian mission. The use of drones has added to that risk and is never going to happen. The accommodation and adaption of one of the carriers was wisely dropped.

The army is certainly beyond stretched but how specialised would a brigade have to be to regularly deploy to the northern flank and much of the equipment could be equally used in Central Europe.

Although I appreciate when the Army is so under resourced and underfunded spending what cash you have on additional and in some instances specialist equipment is not likely to happen.

You will have to forgive my wind up about sending squaddies to Lympstone but you did bite rather well!

I am well aware of the ‘all arms’ courses and as such Lympstone turns out far more than just RMs.

As for the Rangers, why do we need them now because we haven’t in yours and my lifetime. It is a role that has been found for them as the Army has been cut and denuded of equipment.

Let’s agree to disagree on whether the U.K. is taking its defence seriously but given there is a war in Europe you will be aware the recent financial settlement for MOD is a real times cut because of inflation.

When the follow up Command Paper is published you will see further cuts.

However, it is reassuring the Chancellor has given future wealthy pensioners a tax break and on that note I rest my case.

All the best and up the Royals

I don’t have a beef with the Royals, I’ve served with them and generally a good bunch. I prefer them to the Paras in fact, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re not worth the expenditure. It’s not a beef, it’s pragmatism and realism.

Depends? You could keep it a light mechanised brigade relatively easily, but then there’d be no point in dedicating it to the Scandinavia, (remember 1XX is the UK’s exped forces that would be used if anything enduring where ever to happen, since that’s effectively just 7X right now… if 7X is dedicated in the north, what do you send?).
Or you can go into deep specialisation, send everyone on AWIC (raising questions about rotating people around battalions but okay), make sure everyone can cross country ski, buy snow adapted ATV’s to replace Foxhound, maybe designate a Battalion as Mountain Warfare, and then you’ve really placed you bets on that brigade only ever fighting in Scandinavia.

If it’s just an attempt at a bite then whatever, but the point isn’t “the commando course isn’t for squaddies” it’s “The Commando Course is not suitable for Ranger training.” There two completely different operating concepts, and completing the Commando Course a Ranger does not make. (And yes there are both Army and RM Commandos in the Rangers. Just as there are Paras).

Is that another attempt at a bite? Because if not that’s simply wrong. The Rangers where created out of an operational need to reduce the burden on UKSF, and had been growing pretty organically into the role for years before the MoD created the Regiment (and have been used a lot since their inception by the way, it just doesn’t get reported on, so the “not used in our lifetime” comment is also factually wrong). It’s also not true that the Rangers are a “cut,” considering that the change from SpecInf to Rangers has involved a considerable uplift in funding and manpower. As I said, the problem with people commenting on the Rangers is they pretty much have zero clue what they are talking about because almost nothing is available on OS.

But lets take a step back and look at the operational concept: Have the Green Berets been used in our lifetime?

As I said, everything you say could equally have been said in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s about defence. If you think we’re not taking defence seriously right now, then we haven’t since WW2.

I am glad you are not CDS and what you have said about the RM’s could equally be said about the Para’s.

You have to forgive my sense of humour but I have read a fair bit of what is available about the Rangers, which you are right isn’t much.

I get the concept and certainly a good idea to work regularly across the globe with partner nations but if there has been such a need why has it taken until 2021 for them to be formed.

Whilst they have received new equipment and more training I can’t help but think ordering more CR3’s and associated support equipment would be far more expensive than training and equipping a 1000 existing personnel.

Unfortunately in the era of capability holidays the military are faced with in my opinion impossible choices. There will be another round of cuts quietly announced just at the start of the summer recess.

Like the bit about the Royals having been used in our lifetime! Well that’s a yes from me because I was born in 1968.

Have a good weekend and always good to be able to discuss with someone who can debate without becoming a key board warrior.

Except that the Paras do not have a completely seperate training pipeline, separate training establishment, separate promotion and battle courses, seperate equipment procurement and seperate doctrinal school. So my main objection to the RM doesn’t apply at all to the Paras.

The thing is: It hasn’t taken until 2021 to address the need. The expansion of SF has been a fairly constant running theme since 2000. That’s why SRR was created to take over specific tasks from the SAS, that’s why SFSG was created to support the SAS, and that’s why the Rangers where created. So it’s not like this was a sudden turn from nowhere (and, as pointed out, the road from SpecInf to Rangers was pretty organic, in someways there was a bit of tail wagging the dog going on with the MoD).

Of course creating more armoured formations would be more expensive. But you can’t hold up a unit that on it’s creation gained a massive budget and a considerable manpower boost and then go “well that’s a cut.” Because it’s not.

The Royals are not the Green Berets mate, the Green Berets are the Green Berets 😂. And the Green Berets are what the Rangers are conceptually based on.

I guess from you’re statement you won’t be on here over the weekend so same to you.

Well that serves me right for reading too fast and not actually responding to what you had clearly written. That’s what happens when you reply whist walking the dog.
I will certainly be on here over the weekend having a nose around although the articles are normally only added during the week.
It is a really good source of news and articles, which most of the main stream media seldom if ever touch.
Cheers

I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help but bite here, this is a belter!
Seems a bit like you have a serious bee in your bonnet about PARA Reg, and the RM, especially so?
There are so many holes in your appraisal that to go over them individually would take an answer that would probably exceed the character count limit!
Safe to say though, the ‘facts & figures’ you allude to regarding just about all, apart from maybe, “They, and the Paras are very often first to deploy because they are lightly armed” is extremely misinformed, a little insulting to the troops you are describing and wrong.
I wasn’t aware there was a score card kept on units deploying to theatre, but to make a point about your claim for instance that the Light Dragoons completed 5 tours, then surely each Cdo Unit doing 3 each, which is also wrong, would make the total 9. Which I think is more than 5 and that probably is a disproportionate amount in anyone’s book…
But everyone is entitled to an opinion, I just wish that those opinions were based on something other than what is clearly a bit of a grudge and a bizarre view of 2 organisations that have been at the vanguard of pretty much every British military operation since 1942. And I am 100% not taking anything away from ANY other unit/regiment etc, they do their thing.
Open source is one thing but it can be misleading, but to make a statement like you have here has to backed up with facts and this one I’m afraid is more of a rant about 2 particular units that are very different hence why they are given the roles and are/will be by definition the theatre entry choice for ‘many’ operations There is a world of difference between Pte Atkins of 1 LANCS and a Mne from 45Cdo, or Pte from 2 PARA, that should not be forgotten. And again no disrespect to the LANCS or any other infantry unit. They do their thing.
That’s not an elitist view (although the training & preparation a Cdo or Paratrooper goes through just to become a trained rank is very different, especially culturally) but the specialist role PARA Reg & the Corps carry out takes a certain type. That role isn’t something that can be dropped and then just picked up again, it takes years to develop.
Come to think of it, your statement about doctrinal ‘lag’ would be worth the fair chunk of memory data it would take to show what the army has plagiarised from the RM over the last 20 years. That ‘quiet secret’ must be extremely quiet. Some pretty impressive listening device would be needed to pick that one up.

Had a lovely polite conversation with SJB, along comes little Richard with his Para complex and opens wi8th name calling. Not even going to bother reading the rest if your opening like that. I have less obnoxious ways to waste my monday.

Name calling? Really?
It makes no difference to me whether you read or not, but if you are looking for a less obnoxious things to waste your Monday on, maybe run through a scenario or 2 which includes being able to back up a statement(s) or what you write if someone questions you on it , or is this just a one way forum where people make comments without challenging perceived or otherwise inaccuracies?
Genuinely, what is a PARA complex?

You’re right it’s not PATA, it’s not even a training area.

There was some talk about making a SpecInf focused training area in BATSUB, but that died before it got off the ground I think. Kind of like the “Regional Hubs” that where suggested but then quietly shelved.

Yes, plus the only reason I can see for having a coy fwd deployed on a ship is if you’re planning to deploy to islands without good infrastructure.

Yep. Found it. Wasn’t hard, and location makes sense.

Cue me being flummoxed at the idea that the armoured brigades where even smaller before.

I think maybe that redistribution of armour enable some, if not all, brigades in Germany to be square brigades. We sent a square bde to GW1, I think.

GW1 was
7X
-Royal Scots DG
-Queers Royal Irish Hussars
-1st Staffords

4X
-14/20th KRH
-1 R. Scots
-3 Fusiliers

QRL directly under the division

and then 4 Infantry Battalions under theatre command. The orbat chart I have of the BAOR (1989) states that (not including TA) only 22nd Armd was square, the rest triangular.
I can only assume that’s accurate because god knows where they got their data from.

Thanks Dern. Good info. I’m impressed you have a 1989 BAOR Orbat chart!

Yup

👍

AWIC’s is running and now taking Army applicants from outside 3 Cmdo too, not sure how widespread the uptake in the Army is though. Slots seems few and far between.