British aircraft continue to ship weapons to Ukraine

Totally agree…..

And we hoth know that.

However, there are two UAF Brigades yraining in the UK, so equip both of them.

Leopards will hopefully be available to fill that role.

I think a total of 30 are are on the cards.

In reality we need to send upwards of 70, 50 to equip their equivalent of an Armoured regiment and 20 reserves.

An Armoured formation with 50 Chally 2’s would be exceptionally difficult to stop, add more Leopard 2 equipped formations of a similar size and the Russians would have a major headache stopping them.

There are 400 Challenger I tanks in Jordan

They may have been a political statement but the uk is giving some and training crews so might as well do it properly. The uk can manage with -50 tanks at least. If they can’t sort out more challenger 2 if needed for the British army it’s time to move onto a new built tank or if there is no appetite for that a foreign tank.
If Ukraine falls the consequences will Cost much more than some vehicles.
Other countries are watching and depending on the outcome that will help them decide what they do in the future.

‘The uk can manage with -50 tanks at least. If they can’t sort out more challenger 2 if needed for the British army it’s time to move onto a new built tank or if there is no appetite for that a foreign ….’

I doubt the British Army or HMG see it that way.

If it was up to me I would get every spare tank running and give a loan of 100 to Ukraine leaving 150 for the British army. They can return what’s left of them in a couple of years.
They need them. The British army probably doesn’t need more than the 2 strike groups worth for 2 years.
It might even be quicker than that.

‘If it was up to me…….’

Tbh if it was up to me I’d be giving the big 4 EU nations a kick up the a***e and getting THEM to start handing over buckets of THEIR tanks to Ukraine. Understand none of them care if the UK forces are beggared helping Ukraine. Just as they never cared about the great sacrifices the UK went thro in two world wars to save Europe. Neither France (never paid its ww1 debts to UK – still on BOE’s books – but UK had to fork for brexit) and Germany which paid only a fraction of real war debt to europe post ww2 have shouldered a proportionate burden.

Here endeth the lesson.

What is the issue of just building more challenger 2’s with the challenger 3 upgrades as standard. Are the jigs gone? Is it too difficult to restart that? What do we need to do to get a production line running. Do we really bread a brand new design or will C3 do?

Bread -> need! 🤬 autocorrect

In the myriad of information put out about the state of CR2 stocks etc,i read that the Jigs miraculously still exist ,only the Hull ones would be needed anyway.

It’s also worth noting that there are 302 CR2 definitely in existence… (288 minus the 14 going to Ukraine) perhaps there are some hulls of the remaining ’80’ left as well…they were apparently being scrapped but someone from the Army did say they’d managed to stop the process….how far along is a good question.

Interesting. I was always amazed as a former MoD Equipment Support Manager to hear that 80 tanks that had not been formally declared ‘Obsolete’ had been scrapped.
[I am assuming people are using the term ‘scrapped’ correctly ie that usable parts are removed and the main remaining hull and turret structures have been smelted.]

From my information the 80 were literally cut up, no amount of work could bring them back to any usable condition.

Really? I am amazed – I would have thought they would have been scrapped when the Newcastle and Leeds tank factories closed.

From what I have read, Pearson Engineering reside in one of the old Tank factory buildings, can’t remember if it’s Newcastle or Leeds, but the Jigs are still there.

Incredible – but we don’t want to build more CR2s for any reason. If we want more CR3s we convert more of the CR2s that we already have.

CR2 production ended in 2002. The tank factory no longer exists. I would think the jigs were scrapped 20 years ago – why keep them? I could list what it would take to start a CR2 production line from scratch, but readers will be bored with the length of my post, suffice to say it would take uge capital investement which could only be justified by a build of several hundred. No-one inGovernment or Treasury would support this.

Why build more CR2s – we have 227 in-service (less the 14 going to UA) and there should be about 80 out-of-service.
227 is enough for the three armoured regiments we have (even allowing for the 6% of the fleet that are going to UA).

The army is going down to two armoured regiments (part of that appalling business of losing another 10,000 troops). So how can you justify starting a production line to build tanks designed in the 1990s and then to put them through a hyper-expensive CR3 programme. Who is going to crew all these extra tanks you want to build?

It is a bit late to have doubts about CR3 – I worked on the project for Rheinmetall way back in 2016, contract was signed in 2021, PV company set up, premises configured, design milestones achieved and now they are about to build some prototypes.

Yes all the jigs are gone. And the people as well. Possibly we could buy the chal 1 hulls from Oman. I’m not sure if that feasible though

You must have heard that our next tank is CR3! Contract was signed in 2021, we are though PDR and CDR and work is well underway to start to build some prototypes.

CR3 is not a new tank. It is an upgrade of existing CR2 platforms.

I said it was our next tank, not a new tank.

We have only given away 6% of our active in-service tank fleet, and to a very good cause.

Yes 6% doesn’t sound much but I think we need to wait to see if any additional Chally’s will be upgraded before giving away more.

In addition, how many L2’s and Leclerc’s have been given (L2 much less than 6% of those available I’d imagine and as for Leclerc’s – absolutely zero – no surprise there of course!).

We had 227 in-service CR2s so that is down to 213 following gifting 14 tks to UA. We are currently upgrading 148 to CR3.

I wonder if we will increase the number of CR3s – the obvious thing to do is to retain the third T56 regiment, but that would be a big decision for Sunak/Hunt.

We need MBTs, but only as a pre-emptive precaution.

There is no foreseeable likely situation that we will need them anytime soon. Ukraine need them now. We are probably one of the countries that needs MBTs right now the least in the world as we are an island nation surrounded by allies.

And just to be clear, I do think we need a tank force. But we absolutely can afford to temporarily significantly reduce it in order to help Ukraine (and ourselves).

To be honest, it’s not going to be a blatant attack..after all the Russian invasion of Ukraine has actually been going on for 8 years.. But if he wins in Ukraine he will need a new war..so I would suspect he would us agitators in Russian communities in the Baltic states to attempt destabilising these NATO nations…he would gamble that if it’s not a blatant attack and their is deniability that NATO would suffer political turmoil….then if one of those states got desperate and started a crack down on the ethnic Russian population you have yourself a civil war …not an invasion by Russia…he will also push in the Balkans..distracting the west and NATO…maybe another push in Georgia or even work for a civil war and overthrow in Slovakia….some many pressure points and geopolitical fault lines still left from the break up of the USSR so May places he can slip up and push NATO to far.

Those words were straight from NATO. I’ll dig out the video speech by NATO Sec Gen. It shocked me because I thought we had “surge capacity.”

Thanks. I personally never make light jokes about any casualty figures whether our own or the enemy’s.

More a dig at media and Twitter types, I’d wager/hope a large part of the regular russian army personnel don’t want to be there at all- especially witnessing all the horrific crimes committed by wagner. Imagine if we had lost 100K that’s the entire British army regular/reserve totally destroyed in a year quite shocking actually and we know the problems in recruitment-time it takes that’s us lost the war.

Of course we wouldn’t be fighting Russia (or any peer/near-peer threat) on our own. But, yes, we could not cope with a very high casualty rate. If we deployed our one and only armoured division, that probably amounts to 20,000 troops.
[First Battle of the Somme in 1916, we had 57,470 British casualties, of which 19,240 men had been killed in action].

The MOD should have been more prudent in getting 2 more C17’s before the production line closed,but obviously more A400 ( and even C130 if there is a major change in policy) can be increased so it’s not all bad news.

Military/industrial complexes have long been disparage by the peaceniks.

It was the US arsenal that greatly assisted the heroic Soviet people to defeat Germany.

Now we need that same arsenal to arm NATO to combat the Russian Genocidal Fascists.

This rearmimg of NATO is vital.
I read on Quora that Germany had at one time 7000 tanks.
They DONT even have half that now.

It needs that number again and then some.

Will Germany be up for bolstering an expanded NATO!?

The big problem is convincing national electorates that defence spending needs to increase.

For a start ALL NATO countries need to commit to 3% of GDP for defence.

It is after all the prime commitment of any Nation state to defend itself.

The Russian military/industrial complex must be matched by NATO.

That means all of NATO are going to have to work together to produce the materiel required.

Standardisation is required.

NATO cannot gave lots of different war materiel.

A NATO standard for all equipment should be striven for.

Though National politics often prevents this.

Russia doesn’t suffer these problems.

This gives them strategic advantage.

NATO must recognise that it needs to have commonality of weapons.

The only thing Russia understands is a big stick.

At the moment NATO has a twig!!!

Paul, I don’t think the Quora figure of formerly 7,000 tanks in the Bundesweher can be right – I thought it was once a figure a bit over 3,000.

Wikipedia reports the following:
“As of May 2022, the German Army has a total of 312 Leopard 2s with 99 of them being repaired by the armaments industry. Of these Leopard 2s, 53 are the 2A7V version and 19 the A5 version, although the A5 tanks are only used by the German Army to represent enemy tanks in the army’s combat training center and have been retired from combat,”

According to the article in Der Spiegel in January that precipitated the resignation of the Defence Minister, the Germans had 5,000 tanks of all types in 1989.
Number now is 300, but only 130 are actually operational.

If it was 1989 was that the west German supply or were they talking about the total stock post unification including all the East German T numbers.

Purely West Germany’s I believe.

That’s interesting we forget how many tanks everyone had stashed and ready for the Soviet invasion. Even we had 1200MBTs hanging around in 1990.

To be fair if there was a Russian NATO war it would not be a long one at all. All Russia really has against NATO is:

1) the hope of political disunity ( breaking NATO)
2) the nuclear threat.

If Russian and NATO went to war, the Russian airforce and Navy would be removed quickly and the Russian army cannot overcome one of the poorest nations in Europe how would it do against NATO divisions with complete dominance of the air.

Not saying we should be complacent, we always need to ensure our forces are up to being deployed, but our greatest danger is in the Political…either a lack of will to fight within NATO causing a break or Putin underestimating the Wests will to fight and forcing a war he cannot win….because then all he has is nuclear weapons.

As for (2) the nuclear threat, Russia had a test of a Satan II ICBM to coincide with Putin’s big state of the nation speech. It was a failure 😆

Though NATO seems to have that twig shoved right up Putin’s ass at the moment 😏

With the utter morons we have in Government (and opposition) it’s not bloody likely.

Has anyone reminded Rishi recently that defence is the first duty of Government! It is time to rearm after decades of cuts to manpower and platforms.

I’m sure if you actually asked our policy classes they would say the first duty of a government was to get re-elected.

👍

China is also untested. Every power thinks it can win a major war…. Until it is in a war. Logistics is the Achilles heel for modern armies and the West are the best at it. It’s how Russia’s flopped attempt of taking Kyiv the “Western way” failed miserably. They lack logistics and in modern warfare it is more crucial than numbers, superiority etc.

I think our Gvernment can only handle one external threat at a time – and then not very well – or we would have increased defence expenditure and reversed army cuts in the last year.

Or wouldn’t have made them in the first place.

I’m hoping for a collapse into its constituent republics. Individually they won’t be able to maintain the strategic nuclear forces, so in time their threat to the West would disintegrate.

Sure, a Russian civil war would be great for international security. Especially with the nukes scattered around constituent republics. I’m sure when the victor reforms Russia from Moscow or St. Petersburg, it will look on the West as a staunch friend and ally for making them endure that again. 🙄

I didn’t suggest a civil war. I suggested an unravelling, much as the USSR did in 1991.

But I should have guessed someone would step forward to take up the mantle of Corporal Jones 🤦🏻‍♂️

Or you just another Putin-bot?

The MBT is still a very effective method of delivering combat power.

It is after all very mobile artillery and the Western tanks are relatively resistant to NLAW etc.

In open country ranks are still very effective which is what the Ukraine js.

Despite effective anti-tank weapons the MBT is still am effective weapon.

Thousands of them to combat the Russian ones would be a real deterrent.

Due to very effective anti-aircraft systems the supposed mighty RAF has largely been emasculated.

For NATO countries tanks are still an effective weapon.

This is how Germany succeeded so well in WW2.

Tanks delivered the Blitzkrieg which is what the Russians tried.

Only their incompetence in their tactics caused the failure to take Kiev.

Perhaps if the Russians had seen the film
A Bridge Too Far

They would have realised that sending a column of tanks down one road wasn’t a very good idea.

But whatever happens the Russians have proven themselves incompetent.

When more Western MBT join the fray we will see an effective rerun of the Iraq wars where Western MBT wiped out T72.

Russia has incompetently used tank power.

Had they used it correctly the war would have been won months ago by Russia.

Mass Ukrainian tanks will be what facilitate Ukrainian victory.

Currently there just aren’t enough to make a strategic difference.

The day of the tank definitely isn’t over!

Some nations have good tanks and handle them well – we have not lost a tank to enemy fire since the Korean War.

Not done so well though with ‘friendly fire’!

But I contend that Western MBT as deployed in Europe have a significant advantage over the current Russian tanks.

The only slight oroblem is there are sufficient Western MBT.

Not sure if the Russian quantity can beat our star smaller quality.

Most of the Russian quantity seems fit for a museum.

That is not to denigrate their undoubted capabilities.

So it is for NATO to provision the same quantity but of quality tanks.

Whether there is the political will to achieve this in I have no idea

Western electorates are reluctant for increased defence spending to occur and who can blame them.

Unfortunately the Putin situation has jolted the West into realisation that the days of another Hitler certainly aren’t over.

So unfortunately the West needs to rearm to deter Russia.

I can easily see the BAOR returning or whatever the equivalent would be for being stationed in Poland and other former Warsaw Pact countries who are now mostly NATO countries.

Britain needs to now increase Army capabilities rather than reduce.

The peace dividend has gone and in hindsight was rather naive.

We have lost one CR2 tank to friendly fire – regrettable but not a high number.

Quality of Russian tanks is low but they are also handling them very badly. If they deployed them tactically soundly within combined arms groups it might be a different story.

With our western tanks being of higher quality and well handled we don’t need as many as Russia – we ((NATO) could not afford a fleet matching Russias in size.

Interesting comment about the return of BAOR – our last major contingent only returned to the UK a couple of years ago. Perhaps Poland is a better location, being closer to Ivan, and has still got large training areas.

its interesting that I don’t think the west really absorbed how much better it’s armoured forces were compared tosoviet based forces…the absolute appalling effectiveness of T class tanks in the Iraq wars were sort of explained away with bad use and possibly export models..when it turns out western tanks and tactics are just so much better and soviet based tanks really are very bad.

I suppose all that time facing the massed soviet armies and considering the fact that even the mighty BAOR was consider a sacrifice unit….how could we then think the soviet armies were driving around in death traps and paper tigers.

Not just the poor quality of T-series tanks. The Russians tactically handled them badly, and both engineering and logistics were second rate.

I found it bizarre that people contemplated the end of the tank due to NLAW – there have been anti-tank weapons since 1916, starting with anti-tank rifles, then bazookas from the early 1940s and ATGW since the late 50s. Throughout this long period the tank evolved and got better armour and tank troops used smarter tactics (some of them anyway).
If the best armed, best protected, most mobile, direct fire weapons platform is obsolete due to ‘vulnerability’ then so is everything else that is less well protected – and we are back to the foot soldier alone (except that he too is vulnerable!)

I suppose if you look at how badly soviet designed MBTs have performed as well as soviet type tactics you could fall into that trap..but it sort of ignores how effective western combined arms units have been and how utterly effective challenger is in its role.

I hope the fact that Chally2 has not been modernised in 25 years will not count against it.

But I suppose from the point of view of protection the challenger 2 was better protected than other western MBTs 25 years ago…so from an armour point of view it’s probably not that far of point, If a bit behind..weight is still a good indicator of protection and challenger2 is I believe still the heaviest western tank even after other MBTs armour upgrades. I’m. Assuming they will be sent to Ukraine with either Dorchester 2F or Dorchester2I protection package.. The L30A1 with charm3 which I believe still have an extra 75m/sec muzzle velocity over US Abrahams M8229A1 round (1575m/sec vs 1650m/sec) the US and German guns have a longer penetrator but velocity counts always..so I don’t actually believe a lot of the how bad is the the L30A1 talk, ( especially as challenger still has the longest MBT vs MBT kill record) not sure if Ukraine will get get Charm3 but the L28A2 export rounds are still good..yes it’s night fighting capability is not quite up to modern western peers..but it’s probably far above Russian standards…as with its Fire control system…dated but it only has to be better than the Russian T series tanks fire control systems. Yes it’s a bit slow and the 1200ho Perkins CV12 Diesel is not up to moving at high road speed of an abrams or leopard 2. But it’s my understanding that the challengers hydrogas suspension and hydraulic track tensioner’s make it a lot more of a peer mobility wise when you get into the mud…and there’s a lot of mud in Ukraine. also it’s still probably got better crew survival than other western MBTs with is split propellant charge.

All in all I think the challenger 2 is probably the better tank for Ukraine than Abrams or leopard 2..after all abrams and leopard two were optimised for high speed offensive armoured warfare…challenger2 was designed to stand and kill as many soviet tanks as it could before getting knocked out as well as directly supporting infantry. It’s probably the tank you want for attritional warfare.

I agree with all of that, except for the line that ‘challenger2 was designed to stand and kill as many soviet tanks as it could before getting knocked out’ 
We haven’t lost a tank to enemy fire since the Korean War, so I don’t think we were pondering on losing too many!
Protection will still be ‘up there’.

Surprising how many people write down Chally2’s cannon without putting numbers out there – I just think they have a thing against rifled guns – I am sure it would still rip apart a T-series tank.
I don’t consider a speed of 37mph on the road to be slow, for a 72 tonne tank (at TES) – it is only 4-5mph slower than Leo2 and M1 Abrams. Besides tanks shouldn’t spend a lot of combat time drag racing on a metalled road, unless you are a poorly trained Russian.
Then there is the considerable plus point in having a BV! The UA lads in Bovvy are very surprised and chuffed with that.

I do believe they actually did some proper analysis around crew casualties and stuff and realised that things like BV and toilet are actually quite important crew survival aids.

Yes, certainly not luxuries. A study by The War Office of WW2 casualties revealed a lot of casualties caused by troops brewing up on an open fire just by their tank and being engaged by enemy fire . Hence the BV was quickly designed and has been a feature of British tanks since the late 1940s. Also extended to APCs at some time – FV430s have a BV and of course Warriors do.
Toilet for tank crews – same sort of logic.
Other nations have been very slow to copy our practice.

The question is can you really ever have a conscript based army do effective combined arms…I suppose you have Israel and Finland..but they are more nations with a total mobilisation policy than a tradition conscript army.

An interesting point. The Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) is of course a combined arms unit. Perhaps they are poorly trained and led.

As far as I’m aware Russia has still not accepted a professional NCO as leader model…they have now got contracted NCOs but they are focused on being developed as technical experts not leaders..the role of the western NCO is still undertake by junior officers who as far as I’m aware have to do the NCO leadership role and subaltern leadership role….also they have massive confusion around what a soldier is..( they want a conscript army for mass but recognised you need a profession military in a modern conflict…so ended up with a bizarre hybrid)

1) one year conscription solders…
2) two year contract solders ( these are conscripted solders who sign a 2 year done and out contract to get better treatment than the conscripts who are by all accounts pretty much physically abused why western standards)
3) longer term contract solders

now interestingly Russia claimed a “professional army of 380k contracted troops…but it’s very unclear how many were true professional solders and how many were actually 2 year and done conscripts with a contract…infact some say it’s possibly over half so Russia may only have had just over 100k do professional soldiers…when you consider the casualty rates in Ukraine they may actually no longer have a functional professional army and are instead just sending waves of fresh recruits and conscripts WW1 style.

I was thinking more of the officer leadership in a BTG. Your observation is a good one. The Russian OR rank structure puzzles me – 10 grades, of which the first 4 are Pte ranks, no LCpl or Cpl, then 4 Sgt ranks and the normal 2 WO ranks. Totally mad.
https://www.militaryfactory.com/ranks/russia/russian-army-ranks.php
The hazing is particularly cruel. Much else wrong with the Russian Army.

I understand hazing became endemic with new conscripts being treated like animals. The officers simply left the bases at night and with no professional NCO they turned into hell holes.

it seems it’s junior officer core is very focused on managing the basic training and discipline of each new wave of conscripts or 2 year contact solders and does not have a lot of time to develop skill sets that western officers are trained in. If the junior officers are spending time doing basic troop training and discipline and not learning the next stages in their own craft no wonder their leadership of the BTGs is so poor. From what I understand that is why there are so many general and field grade officer deaths.. there are estimates senior officer losses are staggering..that a total of 20 generals ( they have even had a retired major general killed, which says something)..350+ field grade officers(half of which were colonels) …which means their field grade officers have higher loss rate than their captains….that shows that their leadership is pretty much buggered…

I know the worry is the Russian army will learn and get better but it cannot get better if it’s senior officers are dying at those rates….how many thousands of years experience is lost with the death of 350+ field grade officers..a mixture of Putins insanity and Ukraines fighting sprite must have pretty much decimated the Russian armies ability to fight a modern combined arms peer war for years to come ( if indeed is was ever able to after the fall of the USSR).

5,000 troops by other accounts. I wonder if it is still an issue that some deem this too high a figure for our small army to bear?!

Correct, or possibly China in the future.

Personally, I’d sooner be prepared for the worst-case scenario than have to suffer the consequences.

Nigel, I’d be very interested in hearing how we intend to defend the homeland from Russian or Chinese attack or invasion – but we will probably never find out.
I recall the Military Home Defence (MHD) exercises of the 1980s and being on Ex Brave Defender in 1985.
This was a Parliamentary Answer on that exercise, for interest:
EXERCISE “BRAVE DEFENDER”
HL Deb 21 March 1985 vol 461 c756WA
756WA

§

The Earl of Lindsey and Abingdon asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they will give details of the aims and scope of Exercise “Brave Defender”.

§

Lord Trefgarne “Brave Defender” is a national military home defence exercise. The aims of the exercise are to test plans and procedures for the ground defence of vital establishments; liaison between the military and civil authorities over military home defence matters; and to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to Home Defence. It is planned that about 65,000 servicemen, both regular and reservist, who would have a home defence role on mobilisation will take part. The Territorial Army, including the Home Service Force, will have an important role to play in the exercise. There will also be some United States forces involved in the exercise.

The exercise, which comprises two phases and a preparatory period, is scheduled for 2nd-13th September 1985. It will take place in various locations around Great Britain, and will test the revised Home Defence Plans described in the Statement on the Defence Estimates 1984 (Cmnd. 9227, paragraph 413).

The first phase consists of practice mobilisation of Home Defence forces and their deployment to the installations they are to defend. A representative selection of installations will be chosen as key points for exercise purposes. The second phase will involve guarding a variety of installations, practising defending them against simulated attack and forming mobile reaction forces. The installations used in the exercise will not necessarily be actual key points, information about which is classified. Enemy forces will be drawn from units with roles outside the United kingdom and will include a small element from British Army of the Rhine.

Where possible and realistic, all exercise activity will be confined to Ministry of Defence land and training areas, but it will be necessary to use some private land. Appropriate arangements will be made with the landowners concerned. While inevitably there will be greater than average military movement during the exercise, every effort will be made to minimise inconvenience to the public.

Very wise, we need to wake up to our key vulnerabilities.

Exactly, and after seeing this, if true, you really do start to wonder where we are headed.

LINK

You make a really valid contribution. Thankyou.

It should be remembered that the Polish and Czechoslovak pilots were not part of our Empire, indeed, we had failed the Czechs in their own defence by reneging on our commitments and allowed German forces to roll into the Czech Republic carte blanched – one might pull similarities out of the Ukraine debacle!

However, the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles came to us and delivered our freedom that we would then hand them and their Countries over to Communism.

Arm Ukraine now with Tranche 1 tiffies with all the gear.

In short order, they’ll get the idea.

Tiffies = RAF slang for Typhoon specifically, or a more general reference to any advanced fighter? 🤔

Tonka: Tornadoes
Tiffies: Typhoons

👍

Yep totally agree with your points.
Of course it WASN’T just those of the Empire that assisted Britain.

Can’t ignore the Yanks that formed Eagle Squadrons in Fighter Command.

Volunteers all of them that came to the aid of Britain.

Indeed there was much sacrifice by foreigners who came to assist Britain in her hour of need.

I for one bever realised that the ANZACs etc were all volunteers.

No conscription!!

All truly astounding
I guess all these types saw little alternative than to join the fight to defeat the evil that was Hitler.

Now we have to defeat the evil that is Putin who had the nerve to state that the West caused the war of his ‘special military operation’!!!!

Apparently we also have 70% of Russians to defeat as well as they believe the SMO is correct.

Do stupid Russians really believe they have the right to invade Sovereign countries.

If they do the West will have to fight unlike the last time as you suggest with Chezhslovakia.

Yes very sad what the victorious Allies did to those former free countries.

But I believe the Allies had no stomach for further war with the SU.

You could say the War didn’t really end before 1989 and the overthrow of all Communist regimes.

Appeasement won’t work again and the West or NATO will fight any Russian incursions in NATO territory.

A truly horrifying prospect which I DONT believe Western populations fully understand.

At least during the Cold War we had rational Soviet leaders.

This latest idiot is a megalomaniac.

The similarity to Dr. STRANGELOVE is troubling.

That film could be the world’s epitaph!

All a bit worrying to say the least!

Ukraine is a smaller country with a smaller population (and hence armed forces by manpower and platforms) than her opponent. Ukraine cannot engage in an attritional war and should avoid fighting in built up areas (especially in large towns and cities) if possible.

Ukraine has done exceptionally well so far and has been sensible to adopt a broadly defensive posture combined with ambushes and localised counter attacks – and uses technology and intelligence very well. Ukraine’s ability to secure western military, monetary and morale support from the west has been invaluable, but much more is required.

Her enemy is across a broad front and Ukraine will need to ratchet up offensive operations to conduct manouevre warfare with skill and daring and must get greater artillery and air assets to be brought to bear.

Key is greater weapons and munitions supply from the West including attack helicopters and fast jets.

Ukraine needs to effectively interdict/cut Russian supply lines, particularly from Crimea.

A propaganda campaign to further disaffect Russian soldiers and encourage them to desert or (better) to surrender would be useful.

It would help if the West can: feed true news to the Russian people; to warn Byelorussia not to intervene (as well as China); to interdict the supply of Iranian and North Korean weapons and munitions.

Ukraine needs to block any further Russian encroachment to the west and prevent Odesa or any further coastline being lost.

My six penn’rth for now. I am sure more thoughts will come to me!

Recent development in December, when it was decided to develop a common manned fighter to cover U.K./ Italian/Japanese requirements for a 6th generation fighter rather than sharing and developing common technologies.

👌👍🖖

Just send vodka. Free of charge. They’ll do the rest.

Outside Russia it’s mainly the SVR and GRU, along with the IRA (which you could describe as the cyber-arm of Wagner), that have been spreading disinformation and discord. Unfortunately it’s the price of a free and open society that that leaves the West vulnerable to these activities. We don’t oppress/execute our malcontents the way Russia does.

The West does know what is going. The big alarm bells rang after it became apparent that the IRA was attempting to influence the US presidential election against Clinton by leaking to Assange confidential information obtained by SVR hacking the DNC in Washington. After Assange published, despite knowing it was Russia supplying the information, the IRA and SVR spread his leaks over social media. Using Assange as a useful idiot middle-man allowed the to hide their involvement.

Unfortunately social media has been too long allowed to claim it is not responsible for the material published on it. Yet if a journalist in a newspaper libelled someone or committed sun-judice then you can be sure that legal action would be taken against both the journalist AND the newspaper. Social media and the internet must be made responsible for content.
(As way of example, Facebook has recently taken-down a page from its platform that has been a home for anti-vaccine, climate-change denial, and pro-Putin disinformation. I’ve reported the latest posts on a daily basis for 2 years, yet it has only now taken action. While the page has been removed, no action has been taken against the social media personality who made all these posts.)

Climate change denial is perfectly correct.

Or rather man-made climate change is ridiculous.

The climate always changes.
It has nothing to do with man.

There is nothing that man can do to influence the climate.

Man just has to adapt.

Those who promote man-made climate change are promoting a false ideology and should be stopped.

The whole green agenda is a false premise ad is the stupid net zero.
Such ideology js causing massive economic harm.

As such the green agenda must be abandoned and a return to using cheap fossil fuels is required.

Of course nothing wrong in using alternative energy sources but mostly that is made viable as a result of massive subsidies which the fossil fuel industries can’t obtain.

The whole man-made climate change idiocy just shows how powerful mass brainwashing can be.

The green agenda is destroying wealth and must be stopped.

See, even you’ve been fooled by the anti-science stupidity of climate-change denial pushed by Putin’s useful idiots. 🤷🏻‍♂️

And there you go fooled by an autistic twit dear Greta.

There is no conclusive evidence of man-made climate change.

Indeed the evidence js that there is no such thing as man-made climate change and there is certainly nothing man can do to influence the climate.

Putin has no influence over the climate and it matters not whatever he states.

I’m afraid man-made climate change is a fantasy and always will be.

The only reason it may make sense to invest in green programmes is to cover for fossil fuel shortages though I DONT believe there is a fossil fuel shortage.

In the UK there is a thousand years of coal.

We need to start digging it up again!

Maximum exploitation of all fossil fuels needs to occur.

Doing so is what has grown the world economy.

A green agenda simply cannot provide for an ever increasing world population.

There is no sign of any programmes to restrict breeding.

There is definitely NOT a climate crisis but there is an overpopulation one.

The world needs about 5 billion fewer people.

Shame covid didn’t kill more than it did.

We need a few more pandemics to reduce this overpopulation crisis.

The climate crisis might be for man but it isn’t for the world which will continue to do it’s thing irrespective of man.

If man is affected by world climate well that is just TOUGH!!

Putin’s propaganda apparatus, the IRA/ GRU/ SVR, depend on reactionary types in the west to believe their lies and run with it in order to undermine belief in western science, politics, authority, etc.

You’ve demonstrated like all reactionaries that you jump to conclusions. I cannot stand Greta Thunberg because;
* she pontificates on a subject she has no academic or scientific credentials for
* she makes excessive claims that go beyond what the science says, which undermines the climate-change case
* I dislike stroppy, tantrum prone, kids.

And like most reactionaries, you like to RANT.

There’s is overwhelming conclusive proof of man-made climate change published in peer-reviewed and validated scientific journals.

Is it 100% certain, no it’s not. But then there’s no 100% certainly that gravity exists. We can observe the effects of what we think is gravity, and we have theories such as gravitational waves, and gravitons, but not 100% proof.
However I doubt you’ll be jumping off any tall buildings simply because there isn’t 100% proof.

Man-made climate-change is inconvenient to you. You dislike the changes that are going to be necessary to combat and mitigate its impact. So you adopt the emu approach of sticking your head in the ground and refusing to believe the science.
It’s understandable as it’s similar to the grieving process of denial then anger, etc. but the sooner you move on to acceptance of the facts the easier it will be for you.

In the meantime your continued denial is another small win for Putin disinformation and discord campaign.

PS: there is no need for a programme to restrict breeding. Once a society reaches a certain level wealth with decent healthcare the birth-rate drops. So across the western world, and beyond even to countries like China the birth rate is plummeting such that populations are in decline.

PPS: Having come from a colliery town, good luck finding anybody who wants to go down a coal mine now. And when ours was finally shut, the miners were spending half their shift travelling to/from the coal face 9 mikes out to sea. Completely uneconomic.

PPPS: Link/source for this totally unfounded claim that the U.K. has 1,000 years of coal reserves?

The reality is that here is no such thing as nan-made climate change.

On that simple premise everything should be based.

If the world economy in totality stopped there would be absolutely no effect on the climate forever.

The green agenda is so much bunk.

I for one will never support the doing away with fossil fuels on a green agenda basis.

If fossil fuels are abandoned for economic/pollution reasons have no problem with that.

The reality is you reduce to accept that man-made climate change exists. Your beliefs don’t change the facts, the science, that it exists.

You trust science to provide new weapons to defeat Putin, you trust science to provide vaccines to stop pandemics, but you don’t believe science when it has evidence of man-made climate change. The technical term is cognitive dissonance.

The science does not validate man-made climate change.

The green propaganda does.

Peer reviewed items also discuss the concept of man-made climate change as a fantasy.

A fantasy it remains.

Weird because the vast majority of scientists believe the overwhelming body evidence as published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Do you think they’re all part of some great evil conspiracy? Spectre or the Illuminati perhaps?

No peer-reviewed articles in any scientific journal would ever use the word “fantasy”, so you’ve just blatantly lied about that.

Well said

Had some good comments going in this thread and then just completely fucked it with this one. What a moronic comment.

Indeed to advocate that man-made climate change is a reality is indeed moronic!

No it’s the going in on a young girl who believes passionately in a cause whether you agree or not and wishing people dead that’s the moronic part bud.

Troll.

Agreed 😕

Like when he annexed Crimea and we did nothing.

Troll

Who is this troll. CERTAINLY not me.

I am a former LL and fnow retired fireman.My opinions are as valid as others .
That doesn’t make my comments any less valid than others.
Disagreeing with the opinions I espouse doesn’t make my comments any less valid if others disagree with them.

Trolling is espousing incorrect opinions.

Mine aren’t.

Your opinions are incorrect. You have provided no evidence that a Labour government under Labour’s current leadership wouldn’t support Ukraine.

Starmer was just last week in Kyiv visiting Zelensky.

LL?

Landlord

Absolutely Russia’s fault, yes. Perhaps not the best answer though. A well (western) armed and trained Visigrad group that was not part of NATO would have been less provocative.

Where has NATO actually stated any intention to set one foot into Russia? Even now there would not be any preemptive attack! NATO will only react to Russians attacking a member country.

They have the right to apply. Personally I would have rejected it. In fact I feel we should have a referendum before HMGOV gives any new applicants the nod.

Why reject any application from Eastern European countries? Referendum why? What gives “Western” nations the right?

Why reject any application from Eastern European countries? Referendum why? What gives “Western” nations the right? Not a great answer Luke, no justification or admission the problem lies with Putin.

The right is ours, not theirs. It imposes obligations up to and including nuclear annihilation so the people who would face the consequences of such an alliance should have a say in who is in it. It’s called democracy no matter how much you may hate the outcome.

Democracy is for everyone and they should be given the option. No one would/is forcing NATO to accept applications, it would be assessed as if it’s best for all. Why would I hate the outcome? That’s presumptive and quite immature comment to say so. I’m fact do you hate Eastern Europeans? Are they not allowed to apply for the strongest defensive organisation on the planet? Why?

“Presumptive and immature”.
“Why do you hate Eastern Europeans?”

Yeah, we’re done here you clown.

Clown! I see you are limited in your ability to debate and think clearly! And try not to be so scared for your future that you lose the ability to show a little courage. Tissues and blue roll end row, Tescos.

Good lad, your reply verifies my previous response to you. But as you appear not to like having your opinion challenged it’s fine by me, there are physical and moral cowards in every walk of life, it’s fine, cheers.

Yes it’s an adapter casing to mate a M26 rocket to a SDB. But Boeing / Saab who developed it hadn’t received any actual orders for the thing.
They’ll need to create a production line to create the adapters, verify the quality of existing stocks of M26 and SDB, then a production line to mate all 3 together.
Boeing estimated 9 months, though maybe they’ve been able to accelerate 🤷🏻‍♂️