Bay class to be converted to deliver ‘lethal littoral strike capability’

Still 72,000 troops and 147 tanks will not even do the tasks in the future conflicts doesn’t matter how much you reorganize and put new fancy names on units.

No but perhaps keeping minimum level of tanks just incase, let rest of nato do tanks, we bring lot of other capabilities to table. We have some if we need them but for 90% of who we will fight ifv IF unarmed with unmanned drones and new smart weapons will be fine. Let’s face it building our own tank like France did is something we can only do if we scrap lot of other stuff so it’s decision time. Public won’t up defence to 3% so how would you pay for tanks and bigger army? No navy? No f35 and carriers (most advanced warplane in sky) cutting fast jets? No type 26? No cyber or drones?
Let’s face it any pm that’s ups defence to 3% and slash’s spongers benefits will get my vote but will be out before half of it’s carried out.
At least we have some of everything, who else can say that except USA? No one, ie see France using our capabilities in Mali.
We have 10 years of modernising to do and a lot of people think we have just seen tanks smashed by drones in Azerbaijan so pick your poison, we need to be realistic

we currently only have 75500 troops, trimming the fat of the top, currently more EX servicemen claiming pensions. or dont you include that in youre defence spending.

The tanks are there just to keep the skills in place. We reallt need to lose them. It’s a very moot point that the MBT has a use.

Exactly as happened recently in Armenia/Azerbaijan war, tanks turned out to be utterly useless against cheap drones. The army needs to move with the times.

If MBTs are easily destroyed by drones, then every other military vehicle is even more vulnerable. Ajax and Boxer are just as big as an MBT but have only limited armour. If drones are so capable, do armies revert to footsoldiers camouflaged and widely dispersed?
Armour has always been vulnerable to airpower. Blitzkrieg worked only until Germany lost control of the air.
So the lesson is not that tanks are outdated but that control of the air is vital.

Macmillan’s famous statement is so apt….events dear boy, events!

I always think of that every time some carefully crafted plan goes wrong.

Just stay away from Megan Andy!

? I’ll plead the Fifth mate.

To be fair I’ve read books and books of opinion on this subject. But there are a couple of simple truths, for the English class is about your culture and we all pretty much instantly know each others class, as its about how we speak, act and interact. If your working class you can alway pretend to be one of the “smart” set, but they will know your not (of them) very quickly (you will use pronunciation in a way or use word like dinner in a specific context or any one of the thousands of combinations of differences in everyday speech). We are literal educated from birth in our class (it’s a fundamental part of how we are raised).

In places like the US class is a bit easier as it’s defined by what your socio economic position in society looks like at that time. So to a fellow Englishman I will aways be working class (well off and well educated, but who I am is working class. as it’s my background and childhood cannot be changed.But an American would identify me as very much upper middle class, boarding on upper class in some US definitions.

Now there is lots of discussion around how class has changed should we be using the cultural model or socio economic model (and in things like health determinants that debate matters). But for the basics of how we view each other and ourselves the cultural model of class does matter if you are English ( now I’m not going to even get involved in the Scots, welsh and Irish as we have another three library loads there.

quite frankly Andy, if you are still mummies little prince, I have some classes you can attend to help ?? ( my mum was still hovering my floor at 26, my wife finally put a stop to that).

You might be passionate about it Jonathan and your opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s on what is largely a very subjective matter but it really is just another way for people to define themselves and each other based on opinion and prejudice.

I wonder how many people would be so proud of their ‘working classness’ if the term was changed to ‘lower class’. The scale seems a bit rigged to me, ‘upper’, ok, ‘middle’ ok, pretty neutral then….. ‘working’.

Surely if you’re going to have a ‘working’ class then the next one should be something like ‘professional’ and the ones at the top ‘gentry’ or the like.

The meter seems a bit disingenuous really and more designed to fit peoples self perceptions and biases, whether straight forward snobbery or its inverted version.

To be honest any social scaling needs to be justified in why you are using it. I only really bother with socio economic scales professionally because they are really helpful in things like public health, health determinate and impacts of health literacy. But these social economic scales tend to be very complex and not usable for tabloid like descriptions of class or discussions down the pub or on the internet.

For me the whole working class, middle class and upper class thing is only really interesting In an academic study of our culture from an anthropological point for view of our society. I study it for the same reason, I study British history and the various aspects of imperial age and modern geopolitics. I love my culture and enjoy pulling it to bits.

From the actual point of view of class and my own life I purposefully tend to ignore it in my social interactions and judgements about people ( although I am proud of my working class roots from the matlows to the miners, I’m also proud of my revoltingly middle class children).

don’t you just love how we have somehow had a social class conversation on a what to do with the Bays article comments section… …I just can’t even describe how English that is.????

Interesting debate on class. I was born in a Council house in a village on the South Yorkshire coalfield and all the men in my family worked at the pit. I didn’t. I went to Grammar School and University, I would be considered by an observer as ‘middle class professional’. I still give myself away with my flat vowels. Lol. I recommend Jilly Cooper’s book ‘Class’. Hilarious, cutting and a great read.

Labour is never short on cheese though . . . as full of holes as their policies!

Yes, Cuts! F35…numbers cut. Tempest… Jam tomorrow…..it doesn’t exist and, given the history of military aircraft development in this country, probably never will. As for British soldiers in Boxers…..well, whatever your preference ducky. I hear they are better for your gonads than Y fronts!

You are plain prejudiced. You do not want to talk in relation to the real world. You want to live in fantasy. Your jam tomorrow mantra just shows you are a closed mind.

Indeed.

No. But where as every other country may not have as many capabilitys as us, at least they can truly use the cpapbiltys they do have. Where as all of ours are so finely spread that they have no usefulness.

So which other crown dependency is there being threatened?
Has anybody forgotten the UN?
Just what is there that is going to break international rules?

There is nothing but stupid hysteria here, not least from the sites tame tank commander.

It doesn’t have to be a crown dependency. We are focusing on Asia Pacific which is a region we have no real reason to be involved in as our key trade partners are more local. But never the less that is the focus and what is a military other than for fighting wars. We don’t need a military for peacetime policing roles, that could be done at a fraction of the cost and way more effectively with low spec ships in much higher numbers.

The question is can we still fight and win a war if we needed to.

The job of the military is to deter, not start wars, but to be in a suitable place to stop someone else starting a war. That’s why we should with local NATO partners be in the Baltic. It’s not our business to have 900 tanks in Germany or Poland. Although this Recce Brigade seems appropriate.

Deterence only works if you can step up and actually fight if called on. So the question of whether you can win a war, is the same question of whether you have an viable deterence.

The UN is handy until the country being an aggressor has a veto or an ally with a veto then its all but useless.

It didnt exactly do a great deal to help in the Falklands either.

Well in fact the UN did produce a resolution that suited us. It is one of the few diplomatic victories we have had in recent years.
The only aggressors on the security Council are Russia and China, and any such aggression is irrelevant in UN terms since we and NATO would be ignore the UN as well.

It depends what you mean by air cover, if you are taking in the enemy’s immediate region ( say within a few hundred miles of its border. It’s safe to say nobody could do that. The tyranny of distance is still king. The US could do that with many nations but they don’t have any peers at present.

But even then I suspect if you ask the US to undertake a contested amphibious landing close to China on its own ( say if China had taken Taiwan) the US would think more that twice about the understanding and make sure it had a coalition of regional powers to provide local support.

a better test is can we operate against a peer or more than peer power away from each other’s own regions, but in regions we want influence and ensure access to resources and markets. So could we threaten a Chinese operation in the BAT, Africa or South America. The answer to that is clearly yes, as all the studies I have read around equidistant power projection is that the U.K. is still only second to the US ( with the US obviously a long way ahead of everyone) and can project more power that China or Russia over distance.

This is pretty close to the scenario of the falklands though. Argentina’s ground and airforce were operating at close to max stretch. If the falklands were closer to the mainland and the Argentiean air force had more time on station, the story could have been very different.

I don’t however agree around power projection. I can’t see what our armed forces bring to the story that China doesn’t. Its navy is massively larger and so is its abiltiy to transport its ground forces. The only really thing its missing currently is the carriers, but if China is defending and using ground based air bases, i think we would have no chance.

Hi Steve

I am taking about a confrontation away from both the UKs own region ( Europe, North Sea, Irish Sea, western approaches, Med) and China’s ( South China Sea, east Asia).

So the falklands is not what I’m talking about. You have to remember that the Falkland Islands are literally Argentina’s front garden. The fact the the U.K. could have even undertaken a full amphibious operation against a regional power of any description 8-9000 miles away and in some of the most inhospitable conditions you can get was remarkable, winning was even more remarkable ( if you read the accounts of international leaders, the only people who though we would win were us). The falklands is only 300 odd miles from Argentine. You also have to remember that the the U.K. armed forces at the time were actually sculpted to be regional in focus. So although at that time they were more numerous than now, their focus was not power projection in another region, but fighting the next iteration of a European war.

In regard to U.K. power project at distance vs PLAN. it’s not me saying it, it was a number of studies And papers I’ve read. Simply put for this, it does not matter a jot what forces you have, it’s what you can bring and sustain beyond regional distances that matter. China’s military power ( like those of japan etc) is still focused on its local regions oceans and neighbours, the UKs is focused on Regions other than its own.

Put simply if it had the capability China would make a freedom of navigation with a carrier battle group, or large amphibious group through the channel and the North Sea, just to make the statement. But at present it can’t, The UK on the other hand can and is planning a freedom of navigation with a carrier battle group in China’s neighbourhood. That is a very significant difference in power project beyond your own region.

If there was a standoff between China and the U.K say around the gulf of Aden or around Freetown SL, the U.K. can sustain a meaningful force at those distances and PLAN cannot.

It does not in anyway mean we can challenge a regional power in its own back yard, but neither can China ( yet).

If we allow things to drift as they are China will in the not to distance future do that freedom of navigation, but not yet and maybe never.

Falklands are close to Argentina but for the day they were still a long way away. Argeninta jets could not freely operate, as they were on max fuel etc. If we had to fight in the asia pac region, chances are it would be the same, china or whoever we were proxy fighting would be on home terf or near it and we would need to be overcome it. The idea that 2 nations fighting over a remote island, where neither is the ‘home force’ is highly unlikely in post empire era.

Hi Steve, to be honest we will probably end up in conflict over access to unexploited resources or accessing waterways. So a lot of flash points are going to be at the arse end our lovely planet.

We are not going to fighting in Asia Pacific region other than to add a very same token to a coalition. But we very well maybe having to defend our claims in the BAT etc if someone decides to just go ahead and drill.

That I don’t know and these new numbers could just be those restated

🙂 same page as you Gunbuster, just from a slightly different angle. Cheers!