British regular forces numbers broken down by rank

The political classes (if there is such a thing) merely reflect public opinion and public opinion has not connected the energy crisis with the world markets with the war in Ukraine. If Joe public has a problem it is the fault of the Government so your problem is solved with a new Government 😂. The current Government could put 50B more into defense it would just mean they were out of office by the end of next week rather than the end of next year and the increase reversed.

Well quite, the general public have zero interest in defence, our current socialist (sod all Conservative going on) government is more interested in shoveling money out to the public and subsidising everything until the cows come home.

Supermarket goods are next to get the great government pay out. All the while the national debt just swells and swells and that time bomb of debt is ticking louder and louder.

The more they hand out, the more the public demand….

Point being there is no votes in defence, absolutely none, hence it’s being left to wither on the vine…

It’s only Ben Wallace constantly fighting his corner that’s stopped further cuts….

People’s reaction to all things military is strange. Almost a fear of the unknown. Once they have exhausted scraps of nonsense they might remember from the media, the subject is changed to safer things like football. Public education might be needed.😀

“our current socialist government“

Well that ridiculous comment destroys your credibility! 😆

There is NO money going to subsidise supermarket goods.

You do realise our national debt is smaller than EVERY other G7 member aside from Germany? Size of debt doesn’t matter, it’s your ability to pay it is what matters, and the U.K. has no problems there.

Ben Wallace is fantastic, but he could have been replaced at any point during his period at defence.
Over the 4 years and under 3 PMs he’s served he could have been replaced at any time – ministers rarely last that long in post. But those PMs, including loony Liz, all recognised the good job he was doing. If he was ‘constantly fighting them’ they would have put someone more pliable into the post.

Well if we are using national debt as a test for socialism…then the Japanese government clearly come out as the most rampant communists the world have ever know.

Exactly 👍🏻

It’s a bit of an oxymoron equating having debt to be being communist: debt requires capital, and charging interest is the most capitalist practice imaginable.

That makes America the second most socialist government soon. 😀

Oh behave yourself Sean, there is absolutely nothing Conservative, I repeat ‘absolutely nothing ‘about the current mob in charge.

They believe in ‘huge’ controlling government, spending like it’s going out of fashion and constantly raising taxes.

They are acting in a totally socialist manner, so much so that most would see virtually no difference if Labour were actually in power!

Please enlighten us what is remotely Small government, low tax conservative about the current administration, I await the political lesson with great interest….

“The size of the debt dosen’t matter, it’s the ability to pay”

That alone is possibly the number one Labour fanboy slogan and pylosaphy Sean and you don’t even seem to realise it…

Righto, so you agree with running an economy like a teenager with a credit card, what could possibly go wrong there…

You certainly brightened my Monday morning 👍

You seem to think because the Conservative Party doesn’t ape Trump’s Republicans that it’s not conservative!! 😆 You should stop watching InfoWars and Fox News, and get back to reality.

They don’t believe in huge controlling government. If that was the case they would have left combatting the pandemic to the public sector. Instead they wisely used the private sector – hiring private hospitals to increase capacity, investing in the development and production of vaccines by corporations, booking hotels to house the homeless, etc. they’ve even taken a beating from the press for the money given in contracts to the private sector.
Civil servants wanted to keep testing whitely within state owned laboratories, it was the government that override them allowing the vast number of private sector labs to participate in the testing programme.

Yes taxes are higher than what everyone – except Labour – would like. But that because we’ve been through a financial crisis, a global pandemic, and a major European war in the last 15 years. Keeping an economy afloat during such unprecedented times costs money – otherwise you face economic collapse. Pretty much every other economy both right and left has had to do the same.

You clearly have no comprehension of macro economics if you think running the economy is like buying on a credit-card. That childish comment symbolises that your politics are that of a child; petulant, reactionary, and not grounded in either expertise or experience.

Oh dear, it’s toys out of the pram time, run along sunshine and bother someone who cares what you have to rant about….

Talk about no clue…

Unable to refute my points your resort to childish taunts. Exactly the response I’d expect from a closet fascist, you probably think the earth is flat too…

Oh lord, you actually called me a fascist, I suggest you cool off and stop making a fool of yourself.

Don’t bother responding Sean, I actually feel sorry for you embarrassing yourself like this…

The youth of today ….

Given you subscribe to the opinions of modern day fascists, don’t act all hurt when it you get labelled as one too. Maybe it’s time for you to indulge in some introspection as to the morality of your political beliefs?

As for “youth of today”, your powers of deduction are as flawed as your political analysis. In all my sports, I qualified as veteran competitor nearly 2 decades ago.

🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱 is there an annoying drone that’s just woken me up, must be Shaun, luckily his often repeated, recycled woke ‘right on’ drudgery will send we back to sleep soon enough….

Carry on Shaun, you know you ‘just have’ to have the last word, knock yourself out fella, you enjoy yourself👍

Just woken you up? I’m not surprised to hear you’re unemployed. Most fascists are incapable of holding down a real job.

You seriously think using an alternative spelling of my name will annoy me? That is the epitome of childishness. It’s not surprising though, as fascists are generally little more than schoolyard bullies. And we all know that bullies are insecure cowards.

And on, and on and on and on, 🥱🥱🥱🥱
I don’t suppose your veteran competitor status was in boring people to sleep by any any chance…

Hospitals could use you as an anesthetic you’re so brain numbing….

And next Sean rant in 3,2,1 …and away he goes🤣🤣

Obviously not, because you’re still awake and posting your lame responses.

I must confess, I have never encountered an individual so utterly lacking in imagination and originality. Your humour is a funny as a bucket of vomit and your insults as effective as a chocolate fireguard.

😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 It never shuts up, perhaps Sean is an AI gobshite bot🤔

You share the same traits; humourless, unimaginative, and inability to recognise that you’re beaten, with your heroes, Trump, Mussolini, Hitler. Causation or simply correlation, are people with these traits naturally drawn to fascism or does being a fascist result in these traits?
As a fascist, what is your opinion?

You have a few stability ‘issues’ I see Sean, sorry about that, I should have spotted it much earlier, dropped the ball there.

Keep taking the meds, seeking the help needed and most importantly get yourself well mate👍

You don’t see anything, you’re blind to everything but your opinions.
Such is the nature of a fascist.

I think he is in need of a dictionary, socialism has nothing to do with government spending and everything to do with ownership of the means of production. Conservatives oppose any form of change. Reagan and Thatcher Neo liberals all for reform and tearing down the state.

Trump is just corrupt and will spout the views of anyone he thinks will agree with him. Trump as publicly praised the NHS when it saves him paying for staff health insurance.

The level of political analysis in this site is laughable. One minute I’m accused of being extreme socialist, the next extreme right-winger. The ability to comprehend that there is anything other than someone who agrees 100% or ‘the enemy’ is laughable.

Fortunately politics in general is not this polarised, with the vast bulk of the population being centrist – drifting left or right on specific issues.

Trump has no political ideology other than opportunism. He just realised that the Republican Party would be the easiest to hijack to further his own interests.

Your Trump analysis is utter bull. You are as guilty of misinterpreting politics as the rest of us. Especially when it fails to meet your own agenda.

Are you aware that for two years before the election, Trump had a large team conducting telephone polls. Asking a very broad selection of people from all demographical groups, what they wanted from the Whitehouse. Jobs was the main one. Border control was another, especially from the Hispanic population. Rehabilitation of offenders and ensuring youngsters did not follow their fathers into crime, was high on the want list for the black population. They are the ones I can remember. Let me dig out the interview with the campaign organisers for you. It’s quite old now but well worth reading. It’s the rational behind his campaign and slogans. Until the CCP virus from the Wuhan lab hit us. The US economy was booming. Levels of employment were the highest they had been for decades. Especially true for the racial minorities. That is why more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016.

You are correct to say Trump was/is neither a true republican or democrat. He was/is/will be again, a very rare kind of politician. Someone who placed the needs of his electorate first and above the globalist agenda. He lost money being president and so did the family business, even refusing to cash his salary cheques. These days in western democracies, the norm is for the career politicians to make their family fortunes while in office.

GB needs the very same kind of PM and cabinet, regardless of their political label.

Please do not respond aggressively. We have already been there, done that and it is counterproductive.

Actually your equating conservativism with Neo liberalism, conservatives believe in not changing even if it’s from a socialist system. Stability is their major if not only goal. The current government is very conservative, they literally don’t have any policy in anything beyond balancing the books.

Thatcher who I’m guessing your emulating was not a conservative but a Neo Liberal. There is nothing is conservative doctrine about small government, that is Neo liberalism, conservatives are not inherently pro business or economy either just look at the corn laws that split the Conservative Party before.

Afternoon Jim, well I tend to take my political analysis from where many would consider conservatism to originate in its modern form, the Thatcherite general approach.

So, Small Government, low tax, low borrowing the smallest state owned infrastructure possible an people working hard and betting themselves, most importantly, their own homes and private pensions etc, etc… In other words, personal responsibility.

Outside of a degree in politics and harking back to the Wigs and pre WW1 Tories, this is the definition of Conservatism as most folks understand it, certainly people of my age.

I can quite understand why youngsters wouldn’t recognise the above as the current administration believes in overbearing governmental intervention, ‘massive’ levels of spending and unprecedented numbers of the population suckling on (and utterly dependent on) the States teet.

Now, you might not share the above view and that’s fine, that’s what the Tories stood for when I left school!!!

Lack of council house building since Thatcher combined with low wages through importing people increased dependence on the state ( family credit, housing benefit etc). Outsourcing , PFI and allowing hedge funds to asset strip often lowered tax take with profits going offshore and to rich who use legal tax avoidance schemes .

So you’re saying it’s Tony Blair’s fault Peter, he’s the one that truly put this country on a coarse for the rocks and popped a brick on the throttle before taking to the lifeboat!

I would have to agree, we imported plasterers, Carpenters and brick layers from Eastern Europe, while a generation went to University to become sociologists or got a degree in financial services…

What could possibly go wrong with this picture 🫣😬

Blair did waste a lot of money on futile wars and told us to go green and then took hundreds of private jet flights “laughingly as a peace envoy “

The irony is certainly breathtaking Peter!

If Wallace had bigger testicles, he could encourage the military to make it’s voice reverberate around Westminster. Several thousand peaceful, highly organised uniformed demonstrators against defence cuts. Supported by as many veterans and families as we could muster. Would have a sobering effect on members of Parliament. Particularly if supported by the Monarchy.
The global media would be talking about nothing else.

Congratulations, that would guarantee us having our most competent defence secretary in decades being sacked. Not to mention having uniformed servicemen demonstrating would be seen as the military interfering in politics – it’s the kind of thing you associate with banana republics.
I suspect our servicemen are far too sensible to get involved in such an idea.

Demonstrations is exactly the thing Charles needs to avoid involvement in if he wants a future for the monarchy. Political interference by the monarch would just hasten its end.

That I’m afraid would have catastrophic constitutional consequences and weaken the UK in the eyes of the world.

I don’t think catastrophic, even if a little British nationalistic state tweaking is desperately needed. Just the rumour that something like that was being talked about would have sphincters twitching! With civil servants running for their “safe spaces.”

It’s just an idea tabled for discussion. Which is exactly how BREXIT started.
Do we all agree funding cuts have ruined the armed forces.
Is there any merit in the following ideas and can they be improved.
What say you all?

Sorry, it’s another long one.
Do you remember the open letters the French Generals and Admirals sent to their government. If not, go read about them. The first was from semi-retired reservist types. It caused an uproar and politicians quickly threatened the signatories with legal action.
The second well coordinated letter, was from the regular armed forces in support of the generals. Serving notice. The message was received loud and clear. No further action was needed – because the open letters were very well supported by the French public. Evident in the polls and by the popularity of Le Penn who enthusiastically supported both letters. Changes in legislation quickly followed. Apparently, a little sabre rattling goes a long way in a western democratic republic.

In our case the suggestions (read demands) would be removal of the defence budget from the control of the chancellor. With a guaranteed 10%+ of GDP ring-fenced during peacetime for the renamed Guaranteed Defence Allocation GDA. Along with reducing ministerial control of the Armed Forces to messengers. Informing parliament of the military decisions of how the money will be spent and training conducted. I’d also have corruption/embezzlement of the GDA labelled as treason.

It would be a shift in our constitutional arrangements of tectonic proportions. HM.AF would still be sworn loyal to the Monarchy, as is HM.Gov. With deployment decisions agreed by all concerned. The main benefit being the Armed Forces would be considerably more influential within the nation and fully funded, regardless of the shifting political winds.
It would also restore some of the Crown Privy Council powers removed in 97 by that b’stard liar Tony Blair.

Another B’liar reversal. I’d bring back the death penalty for treason. Just to keep people like him honest.

It’s a little late for that….

Chip on shoulder time! Its ok, your not British, its ok, not everyone can be but its ok to cry.

What country are you from this week?

Joker 😂

I believe America tried something very similar on January the 6th 2021. 😀

Are you actually serious?

Then how do you explain BREXIT John?
The will of the British people to be independent and free on these islands is still strong. All they need is to be told the truth and asked to dig in. The political classes (Yes they exist.) have no idea what we all think. Until we are given a chance to show them. Don’t be fooled or disillusioned by the loud woke brigade.

Ah, hear hear. Bravo.

That is simply down to public ignorance of how dangerous the world is and how pathetic the numbers of armed forces personnel have become. If the military and veterans community united to re-educate Joe public. I think politicians would be surprised just how sympathetic the remaining British people would be. Just as they were by the BREXIT vote.

Exactly, why speculate when we’ll have the answers soon enough.

I’ll clear it up now Andy,

No more money, aside the 5 billion, no change in direction, further cuts in capabilities…

You can’t wet nurse a whole population (that you are expanding by hundreds of thousands a year with unchecked immigration) and pay for defence.

I expect little to absolutely no change…

So the unchecked immigration boosts the number of people in the economy with I grows the size of the economy and allows more spending on defence.

Low skilled people imported pay little tax and need to claim family credit and housing benefit etc . Remember companies like Rentokil said increasing the minimum wage would put them out of business lol !

No Mark. If that was the case, we would still be in the EU. So I call BS.

Interesting. What if we are not in the EU because people’s base instincts see the basic seat of power in the UK with the national Government. On defence the vast majority of people agree that we have should have a defence – the only question is how strong that defence needs to be.

The answer to the question how strong, is relatively easy. Strong enough to do the job of defending our national interests from known and perceived threats.

OK so defend our overseas territories (eg. Falklands) ourselves and enough to do the job in Europe as part of NATO or just the UK ourselves? Asia pacific?

Joe public interacts with the NHS so is pretty vocal yet defence is like an insurance policy yet to be used. Politicians are relied upon to ensure we are adequately covered balancing the premiums against what else needs to be bought which Joe Public is being very vocal about.The media attempts to pick holes but really fails to understand the whole thing so stays quiet most of the time.

Ben seems like a safe pair of hands at the moment but it might not always be that way.

Well said.

It’s almost as if, back in those days, the government had reasons to believe that a large standing army was not the most effective way to protect the UK from other countries’ large standing armies.

A stance that was proven wrong when, instead of ending the wars in 1914 and 1940 respectively they dragged for years and bankrupted the country while we built the army.

Very true however the post war doctrine of deterence both conventional and nuclear has put us where we are today. 70 odd years of (mostly) peace in NATO countries has been the result. It is the combined force of all the NATO countries and their resolve to stand united which is important

Agreed, and it’s telling that all of the countries that have been visited by rather large groups of slightly lost Russian speakers haven’t been in NATO, while Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, etc that haven’t been visited by the same slightly lost Russians, have had Article 5 protection.

Absolutely. It will be interesting to see if those countries who don’t have article 5 protection and have been bullied by Putin in the past become a little more assertive in the light of what is happening in Ukraine.

I feel that you are making some large leaps of faith there to come to that conclusion. The millions strong land armies of the continental powers didn’t do much to end the wars quickly either.

Don’t be snide newby.

No “leaps of faith” needed, simply looking at the situation and looking at what happened and extrapolating what would have happened if we’d invested in our army, sorry if something so simple seems like a black art to you.

Snide? Coming from someone calling me a newby? I’ve commented here a few times over the last few years but that is neither here nor there. Why the hostility? I don’t think you can make the sort of extrapolations with any certainty and also rule out any of the counter ‘what ifs.’

You lowered the tone, don’t get your knickers in the twist if someone uses the same tone back to you newby.

It seems that you are just intent on being pissy with me for reasons that I can’t fathom. I kind of thought I was agreeing with your original point vis-a-vis the historic disparity in the size of the British army in relation to other European armies. I guess we can’t easily tell someone’s tone in text format. I’ll have to start using emojis more often. 😘

Again, you chose to lower the tone, then cried about it.

How old are you newbie? Good God grow up.

Esteban, anymore comments like that and you’re ou of here.

Chop chop the socks and pants need drying, 2 PARA Mortars expects good service from their laundry cuck!

Thanks, I needed that. 😆😂

What’s a high school….sounds a bit poss to me…I went to a comprehensive school…that had been a secondary modern a decade before….they basically had great woodwork and metal work classrooms but everything else was a bit shit…

To be fair in both cases it was really a problem with our European allies (cough cough French third republic) armies being generally not as good or willing to fight as their German counterparts. Infact on paper in 1940 the French army should have been able to handle Germany on its own, with forces to spare…without the help from what was a very small ( by European standards ) BEF…on paper France could mobilise a force of over 5 million soldiers.

Indeed, the French had systemic issues, but then on the other hand it’s worth remembering that the British Army didn’t have a single Armoured Division until the battle was almost over, and that got deployed on it’s own after Dunkirk.

I think a line needs to be made to differentiate 1940 and 1914 however; 1914 the BEF was geniuenly tiny by the standards of the day, it just didn’t have the mass to effect the battlefield. In 1940 the BEF wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either, but it had grown rapidly, it hadn’t really worked on it’s doctrine, and althought it was more mechanised than any other army, it also was extremely light on Armour, and again, despite having been ahead of the game in the late 20’s/early 30’s, the budget hadn’t allowed the British Army to continue to work on armour in a meaningful way. So while Germany entered the 1940 with 8 Panzer Divisions, and even Italy had 3 Armoured Divisions, Britain had 1, and it wasn’t combat ready until after the Battle of France started. The Mobile Division became 1st Armoured Division in 1939, and was restructured, Mobile Force in Egypt would become 7th Armoured in 1940, and 2nd Armoured would be created in early 1940, but it wasn’t ready for action by May, and what units it did have where stripped to get 1st Armoured onto the continent after the Germans attacked.

It’s not hard to imagine a properly funded British Army entering the war with a handful of armoued divisions that had developed a coherent doctrine, and then what might have happened if 3 Armoured Divisions got launched at Arras instead of 1 Brigade. (And yes, with that kind of force at their disposal that situation might never have happened, dominos and all that, it’s just a good illustrative example).

The difficulty with comparing the size of land armies from WW1 to today is I suppose tricky. Armour, air power, drones, precision weapons means that in essence for each person deployed you have a far greater effective fire power. Ukraine might well get more than 1 million deployed but that is enhanced massively by the western weapons I presume.

Jim, are you puzzled that the army has more personnel than the other services? I’m happy to explain.

I served in Afghanistan – Task Force Helmand was about a third of what was really required.

Astonished you think the army is oversized. The regular army cannot now deploy a brigade group on an enduring operation – and could not deploy a warfighting division with three manouevre brigades with the ability to seize and hold ground – that is quite pathetic for a nation that spends what we spend on Defence.

Queens Regiment became the PWRR.
Special Forces I believe are listed under their parent Regiment.

I certainly have. I did try, actually, but the RAF rejected me! 😆

You’re too kind!! 😆 That boat sailed 30 years ago!

Having said that, being a civilian does not mean one is not knowledgeable or lacks an interest in the subject. It just means a lack of actual experience and knowledge on TTPs.
Maybe you need to increase your library? You might get more of the acronyms then. 😉

😋 I get the Ladybirds, they were classics. But how about “Commando” and War Picture Library? I have hundreds.
BTW, I recommend the new Ladybirds that are out for adults. Hilarious nostalgia.

That made me go and check mine. Not hundreds but 32 Combat Library including the first, 3 Commando and 5 WPL. I must have been more into words than pictures. My eyes must have been good as the typeface is tiny. I also have a decent collection of the booklets that were put out in WW2 describing what was happening in the war that were collected by my Grandmother. Some others I gave to the Shuttleworth Collection archives.

The regular army is too small to deploy a brigade group on an enduring operation such as Telic or Herrick.

You can’t help the feeling the “cuts” serve that issue..

Mate, are you saying that the cuts are to ensure that the army can’t deploy a bde on enduring operations?

The cuts are to save money – this serves only the Chancellor and the Treasury.

• Telic was Blair’s illegal invasion of another country based upon fake WMD claims
• Herrick was Afghanistan, where instead of simply destroying Al-Qaeda we stayed and tried to build a nation.

I hope to god we’re never so stupid as to try enduring operations such as those again, they were doomed from the start.
The U.K. and West can’t afford more failures like these. They embolden our enemies.

Do you have amy better examples of why we need a bigger army than the 2 deployable Divisions?

The issue is that our enemies are not sophisticated military analysts.

They still believe in volume and mass.

The fact that RAF could have taken out RuAF by itself and RN dealt with the Russian surface fleet didn’t calculate.

To Mad Vlad he had
– more and larger ships so it had to be better
– more planes that flew faster
– 100x the number of tanks

The fact the planes have the RCS of a block of flats and the ships are as survivable as bath toys and the tanks pop their turrets when they smell and NLAW gets missed.

Exactly, all that Russia has to offer us a ‘target rich environment’.
My only concern would be running out of shells and missiles to destroy Russia’s armed forces, rather than not having enough troops/ tanks/ planes/ ships to fire them.

Agreed re Herrick and Telic, in Afghan should have gone in and got out, if they return then dose them again. These people live by tribal warfare an infidel occupying them will never win.

I think Graham may have meant more of a NATO op mate than out of area ME, even though he used that as an example. In Estonia now we can only endure a reinforced BG.

The 2 Division level you mention, if they were properly resourced, which they’re not as you know, would enable that to be at Brigade level with the army’s previous rule of 5, which survived until 2015 A2020R when it was sacrificed on the altar of Strike. 🙄

As it is, our 3 UK Div has 2 brigades and a 3rd in DRSB not enabled properly and unable to deploy itself without one of the other 2, and as for the 1 UK Div…..well, it is a division in name only no matter how many understrength infantry brigades without supports they put in it!

Force level of 2 Divs, agreed, but they need to be improved. We need no more than that or the hundreds of hundreds of MBTs some here call for. CS, CSS, ISTAR, Drones, Artillery are what we need, with lashings of Javelin and NLAW.

Spot on, first went to Afghan in 2001, AQ were defeated both physically and morally by late 2003, and moved on to a number of East African nations! At the time the vast majority of Afghans either supported or at best were indifferent to the NATO troops being there! That is the time we should have left as an organisation and ensured we employed the “soft power” agenda with support, training and education, to the Afghans and Afghan mil! Alas, the West knew best and we fucked up what could have been a relatively friendly and supportive county on a very strategic location, by deciding that the Talibs were the enemy! Oops they weren’t, they were a vessel in which AQ used to achieve an aim!

The vast majority of Afghans only fought NATO due to the fact it was called a jihad, and therefore no option was allowed. In fact mate the amount of infighting when the western “jihads” turned up, with their overly twisted version of Islam, with the local head sheds was amazing! The western jihads didn’t give a flying fuck about the locals, and the locals hated the “foreigners” who claimed to be Islamic!!!!!

Anyway mate I digress, but as normal your post is full of information and knowledge, and those who understand warfare are aware amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics! CS and CSS are the enablers that win wars, wars which last longer than a few days! Overmatch at every level is required, at the tactical level, and that must include CS, to include deep strike, and CSS!!!!! Cheers mate.

One of your better posts.

I do try on occasion 😂

“Better” ? A’s posts are top notch. 😀

Not always. But in this case A+

Good post. The mission creep in Afghan was ridiculous – from taking out AQ to doing security work in Kabul to taking out Terry Taliban, to doing Provincial Reconstruction to destroying the poppy fields to guarding convoys of turbines for hydroelectric dams to mentoring the ANA and Police.

So hopeless – our politicians also failed to endorse sufficient manpower to do the job – such that Obama had to step in and surge US troops to Helmand – very embarrassing but very necessary.

We don’t have 2 deployable Divisions.

We should ideally have an Army commensurate with the size and value of what it protects. One figure cited in counter-insurgency literature is 1 infantryman or gendarme per 1,000 civilians. Also consider our GDP and where it comes from.

Not according to the British Army 🤷🏻‍♂️

Surely we should size the armed forces commensurate to the actual threats the U.K. faces. Which is why, as an island, our focus is on navy/air with the army as an expeditionary force.

Sizing on population is only credible when you’re occupying a country and you’re facing a counter-insurgency from that same population. We’re not currently occupying, or planning to occupy, any countries, and we aren’t facing a counter-insurgency in the U.K.

The British Army has laid out a goal of force-generating 1 deployable division in past defence whitepapers.
It’s not possible to size the Army to deal with all the threats it faces. The UK is no longer the world’s leading superpower. Defence of the British Isles is only one mission of many.
The point I was trying to make is that 1 in 1,000 is a very bare minimum figure.

Matt, I am not sure of your source for the stat. I use the RAND Corporation stats which have solid research behind them:

“RAND analyst James T. Quinlivan looked at 13 historical cases and concluded that success required 20 troops were needed per 1,000 local inhabitants.”
My source: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/manpower-and-counterinsurgency

Given that the settled population of Helmand is 1.446m, then we should have deployed in 2006 with a force of 28,920 (ie an Infantry division). We deployed with 2PARA BG with top cover from Comd 16AA Bde. Numbers were later stepped up to a Brigade Group (Task Force Helmand) of about 5,500.

No wonder many deemed that we failed.

Sorry, I tried but couldn’t find the source of the figure. I did however find that the postwar occupation force in Germany amounted to roughly 2 personnel per 1,000, though it is noted that Germany had ceased resistance by 1946.

I agree that OpTelic was an illegal invasion. Kofi Annan and John Chilcott (and John Prescott, deputy to Blair) have all said so.

Op Herrick’s focus on provincial reconstruction was a big mistke – the focus should have been to sutain work on the Glovbal War on Terror commenced with Op Veritas and Op Fingal.
However these two major deployments were those instigated by HMG – and the army exists to be a military intsrtument of HMG.

You may not ‘like’ the examples (above) of enduring brigade operations in the 21st Century but they were ordered by Government. The troops do the bidding of Government and don’t all necessarily agree with what they are sent to do.

One of the key reasons it is deemed that we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan (in addition to mission creep) is that we deployed insufficient forces – we sent just a BG(+) to Helmand in 2006 – soon increased to a bde – but needed an infantry division(-). The army was too small then – it is even smaller once we get to 73,000 regs.

I am not sure I can rustle up some better examples of enduring bde ops, excepting if eFP in Estonia were ever increased from the BG level of effort. Suffice to say that the army could not continue to conduct enduring ops at Bde(+) scale without recourse to the army reserve and /or Royal Marines. That was my main point. We do not have 5 broadly similar regular army brigades to ensure roulemeont with Harmony guideline touur intervals.

Some argue that we have not truly got two deployable divisions as several brigades therein lack CS and/or CSS and one combat brigade (1DSRBCT) lacks Infantry so restricts the way in which 3 Div can fight – and there is in part an odd mix of regular and army reserve in the same brigade, which may not work. A lot of smoke and mirrors have been employed to parade an exciting modern mix of capabilities but there are the doubts that I expressed above. 1 Div is a ‘golf bag’ of very different brigades and other troops and it is hard to see that Div as a whole being deployed on a single coherent mission, and it lacks AD and artillery.

What is wrong with a 73,000 regular army? Others suggest that only about 40,000 are actually deployable and several of those 40k are doing vital tasks (what used to be called Permanently Committed Forces) such that they could not be released for a newly emerging operation.

I think you’ve proven my point in that the only examples you could provide were either illegal, ill-judged, or both.

If there’s no legal or advisable scenarios where we need an army of that size, then why have it? So a future government can go it alone with another illegal war or naive exercise to parachute democracy into a backward society(?), no thanks.

NATO has 3.5million service personnel, why do we need more? The big issue for NATO seems to be having the munitions (ie shells and missiles) then the equipment (to replace attritional losses) for anything other than a brief campaign.

So we shouldn’t have a 80k (or larger) army just in case politicians send them into combat in wars that you do not approve of?

So have a small army then which can do very little?

Do you feel the same way about the RN and the RAF? How small would they have to be, such that they couldn’t be misused?

We elected these politicians – we have to trust they use our forces wisely – thats democracy. Sadly, perfect politicking does not exist.

Not a question of whether I approve of the wars or not, it’s a question of whether they are legal and/or bar-shit bonkers.

I was simply observing that needing an ally to act might act as a further brake on a gung-ho prime minister invoking the royal prerogative and going into an illegal war.

As it is, I see us needing far greater military forces once climate change starts to destabilise countries. I don’t think we should increase them simply because “that’s how many we had in the Cold War” or “that’s how many we had at the height of empire”.
We need cold, hard-headed analysis of future threats to determine our military size, not a wave of nostalgia which many on here indulge in.

Thanks Sean. Of course I have never advocated having forces of the size that we had in the Cold War or in the days of Empire – and I doubt anyone else does.
Just forces of the size that were agreed in 1991 for the post Cold War era – Options for Change was a good analytical defence review. Any cuts that happened since then were purely cost-cutting measures and were not because the threat had reduced.

Oh there are some on here who advocate Cold War or Imperial size forces, if not larger! 😆
I wouldn’t agree with the force-sizes planned in 1991 either, the world is a VERY different to what it was back then, with many new threats having appeared since.
I think a review, with no preconditions or expectations, is required. Beginning with the known threats we face, and then trying to anticipate future threats that we aren’t yet aware of – yes the latter is impossible to identify comprehensively. After that force capabilities, size and shape can be worked-out.
The one thing I’m sure that would come out, is that 2% GDP would prove to be insufficient.

It matters not if they were illegal, ill-judged or both. What matters is they were short of numbers when they shouldn’t have been. If it had been legal, they were still short. To be honest, legal – illegal, who cares? The basics remain.

Of course, sometimes you are on your own (eg Falklands). US supplied AA missiles. France was leaned on to supply no more AShM. The only other country (that I am aware of) to offer assistance was NZ – who offered to supply a frigate to the gulf to free up a RN frigate for the Falklands. Now I am not suggesting that further assistance would not have been forthcoming if required (ie asked for). However I think more than a few were shocked at how poorly UK operated overall. RM were outstanding. Gurkhas preformed as always. All troops on the ground did what was expected. But mistakes were made that a competent military should not have made. Ships were knowingly not up to scratch (but did the best they could with what they had). Army officers forgot that it was an amphibious operation. Ships were loaded without thought of where they were going & what they were doing. UK is a maritime nation, but got some of the basics wrong (after 300+ years of practice).

This is par for the course. You have to allow for the odd stuff up & have room to move. You always need 150-200% more than the experts suggest, because they always fail to predict the unexpected (which for some reason, everyone else saw well before they did).

“It matters not if they were illegal, ill-judged or both.”

I can’t believe any rational human being who believes in the rule of law or cares about the welfare of our servicemen could say that.

As for the Falkands, it was a mission the British military envisaged ever undertaking and so never prepared-for. A great many of our allies, as well as our opponents, feared if not expected a defeat. Consequently they were amazed at how well the U.K. performed overall.
There were mistakes made, humans were involved. Some of these could have been foreseen, and some of these prevented, others unforeseeable. But aside from the USA, no other nation at the time could have conducted such a campaign successfully.

Too small to anything unilaterally, except the smallest and shortest lasting of military actions Sean.

We lack the mass for independent action, so too small…..

Maybe that is a good thing, as it reduces the chances of future gung-ho politicians like Tony Blair taking us into another disastrous, illegal, war like Iraq.

Sorry but that’s a ridiculous ‘arguement’…we should have small forces so we cant do anything-really?
Its the political governance that should control power hungry sycophants not the size of the military- and it failed in that regards for Iraq.
I didnt realise quite how small we have become and critical mass is an issue.

“Political governance” did not fail to prevent Iraq, it does not exist. Royal prerogative means that the Prime Minister can act unilaterally without any ‘political governance’ as you phrase it. If Rishi decides to unleash the CASD at Russia there is nobody that can legally prevent it.
Are you up for abolishing the monarchy to put some political oversight into place?

And you’re disingenuously twisting my words to say something they didn’t. I pointed out that not being able to act unilaterally might prevent further illegal action, I didn’t say anything about not being able to act at all.
The USA wanted the U.K. on board for Iraq, even though they didn’t need need us, because they wanted another nation on board to ‘legitimise’ the action. They knew that acting unilaterally, on their own, unable to convince any ally to assist, undermined their credibility that it was a legal action.
(Oh and look, Putin couldn’t get a single ally, not even his Belorussian lapdog, to join him on his illegal invasion. Proves my point.)

wrong choice of phrase but you knew what I meant & no I didnt twist your words I took them to a logical conclusion.
You used the fact the forces were small as something that would stop us acting unilaterally then used the fact we joined up with the US in Bush/Blairs escapde when that contradicts your intial rationale regards ‘not having a large army’ to ensure we exercised some control in our decision making.
My assertion was simply that not having critical mass means that there will be times when we couldn’t/can’t act in our interests when required.
The fact we acted like some US puppet even when we had a small force doesn’t alter that statement.

I take your silence to mean you would abolish the monarchy to end the PM’s opportunity to use Royal Prerogative, interesting…

I try not to use my psychic powers when reading comments, being a straight talking Northerner I take comments at face value. I don’t try and guess if the author tried to mean something else but used a “wrong choice of phrase”. Similarly when I post I say what I mean, any “logical conclusion” extrapolated from what I write is your own delusion.

Fact, we have a fixed budget, we have two choices;
(a) lose some specialist capabilities which take a long time to regenerate
(b) lose some basic mass that can be generated quickly

I was initially in favour of (a), leaving some capabilities to allies. But as ‘Supportive Bloke’ pointed out, there is a lack of planning across NATO, ensuring that such capabilities might not be picked up by anyway.
This persuaded me option (b) was the better one for the obvious reasons.

Which would you choose?
Or like a politician are going to criticise everyone else’s solutions without offering one of your own?
(And no, stamping your feet demanding more money is not an option.)

As far as I am aware, the monarch can override the PM. He/she is commander in chief of the UK military. The PM can declare all the wars they like. But the military is under the command of the monarchy. The PM may disagree, but I doubt they want to test it out. Those pointy things on the end of the rifles hurt.

The UK constitution (such as it is) is deliberately cloudy. It would take a panel of eminent judges 10 years to come to a decision. By which time who cares? Do it again in 10 years time & get a different answer. It’s one of the beauties of the UK constitution. Keep away from it because nobody is quite sure what it might actually mean this week / year / century.

The monarch cannot override the PM, Charlie is commander-in-chief in name only: it’s purely ceremonial.
The military takes its orders from the government, which pays and finances it.

If you think the monarch is in charge, why is the Letter of Last Resort written by the PM? Nobody other than the PM decides or even knows what the letter dictates.

A good thing for the nation’s defences to be weak?

What politicians do with their forces is a different matter. We need strong forces to start with.

A good thing for the nation’s defences to be no stronger than they need to be – because that encourages misguided politicians to misuse them for offensive purposes rather than defensive purposes.

Sean, our armed forces have never,ever been solely for the defence of the UK homeland and the BOTs, but also to contribute to allied operations, be they US-led, NATO-led or UN-led. Some of those US and NATO-led operations are offensive in character. Future participation in alliance operations dictates their strength. We had an army of over 120,000 at one time as NATO required and expected us to put a substantial force into Germany (BAOR), not because that was required to defend the homeland.

In a democracy we have to trust our politicians to employ our forces wisely – granted, that does not always happen. Democracy is not without its faults.

Still living in the past I see.

The Warsaw Pact, apart from Russia and Belorussia, have all defected and joined NATO. So we don’t need a massive military to counter a threat which no-longer exists.

You wrongly assume that by defence I mean frightening on the beeches, in the streets in the hills. We’ve always had expeditionary forces because it’s far better to be defend ourselves against our opponents in other peoples countries. That way the U.K. doesn’t get flattened by land-warfare: it’s the advantage of being an island.
Since the end of empire, pretty much all of our military action has been defensive – from Korea in countering the spread of Communism, to Afghanistan in countering Islamic terrorism. All of these were forward defensive actions.
The only offensive action we did take, where there was no threat to the U.K., where there was no threat to defend against, was the illegal invasion if Iraq.

Sean,

Living in the past?- all my comments were about the post- Cold War army, so did not relate to the opposition being the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact etc.

Glad you recognise our historic, yet still relevant focus on expeditionary operations.

I served in Afghanistan and didn’t particularly recognise the NATO ISAF deployment as being defensive in nature, what with 404 KIA fatalities and 2,116 WIA – and our mission being principally to take out AQ and their Taliban backers.

You still seem to deny that the UK has got too small armed forces to meet our global Britain remit.
I contend that the navy has the minimum number of SSBNs, SSNs, carriers, escorts, MCMVs – and could not function with further cuts. Our Commando force at a single brigade is at a minimum.You must agree there, surely?

The initial intervention in Afghanistan was defensive, to take out Al-Qaeda after the USA was attacked and invoked NATO Article V.

The follow-on UN mandated ISAF mission was to establish an Afghanistan government, and rebuild its institutions and security forces. It was doomed to failure due to a lack of understanding of the culture.

I don’t know whether our armed forces are too small or too big, correctly configured, possess the needed capabilities or not, etc, etc. I haven’t performed a thorough analysis of current and possible future threats, I just hope that is what is currently being conducted.
But I find the knee-jerk reaction of many that we need more of everything without knowing what we’d use them for is ill-advised. The danger is we take comfort in having sheer mass rather than checking whether we have the required capabilities. This is one of the major blunders Putin’s military has made: lots of mass, not much use.

(My suspicion is though that we’re going to need an increase in defence budget to equip ourselves for the possible future conflicts.)

Taller you are, the bigger a target you are – you don’t need to be over 6ft to fire an assault-rifle. FYI average heights of elite units, such as USN Seals is under 6ft.

But then your follow-up comment about the U.K. armed forces shows that you’re a brainless idiot, so I shan’t bother wasting time trying to reason with you. Alas you can lead an idiot to facts, but you can’t make them think.

The kind of idiotic, incoherent ramblings I expected. I bet you even thought you were being clever or funny, possibly both with the response.
Utterly pathetic.

Your raging because I’m correct 😂

You’ve clearly had a sheltered upbringing if you think that is raging. A meaningless nonentity like yourself provokes no emotion in me whatsoever, just the observation that there is an awful lot of stupidity around these days.

As for being correct, I doubt you have been about anything in your entire time. But you probably have the memory of a goldfish so can’t recall all you’re previous errors. 😆

More predictable name calling and insults, so tiresome from a plastic field Marshal, got your cam crème on then, you’re certainly a would be military strategist who knows nothing

Nope, a fair assessment of your sad, inconsequential, existence.
I see you’re so hinged by this thread you’ve now lost the ability to even string together meaningful sentences and are throwing random words together – or is that your dementia?

What a nasty person, you would actually berate someone who suffers from an illness they have no control over, so you say I can’t string sentences together and use random words, which is utter rubbish of course, perhaps you should look at your ability to read & understand common everyday words & sentences, maybe you have some sort of dyslexia disorder which is affecting your ability to grasp an understanding of what you are trying to read, if so you have my sympathy, hopefully you can get some professional help with this affliction

It appears you don’t understand the concept of punctuation either. A single sentence of over 90 words, straddling multiple subjects, in a rambling rant that shows no evidence of any ability to present a coherent narrative case. Instead of separate sentences, grouped into a paragraph, you shove together various phrases with separate subjects into a single sentence clumsily concatenated with commas.
The use of an ampersands in sentences is also considered as very poor grammar.
Clearly you failed your English exams at school.

I know several people with dyslexia, and they would find your attitude insulting and discriminatory to not just them, but everybody within the neurodiversity community. If you said that in a work context, you’d face disciplinary action.
But I doubt you’re capable of holding down a real job.

You are a professor of English as well as a field Marshal, your talents seem never ending, so are you not being insulting & discriminatory towards me then

Not a professor of English, I simply had an education. Presumably you were asleep in class or playing truant?

Stupidly isn’t a legally protected characteristic, so I’m not discriminating against you when I accurately describe you based upon the evidence you present in your posts.

Clearly you have difficulty with reading & understanding, beginning to realise you could be lonely and you May have latched on to me as a substitute for your lack of friends too communicate with

That comment coming from someone who doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” and incorrectly uses “too” instead of “to” is hilarious.
I think you enjoy being publicly humiliated, how long have you had this masochistic perversion?

You powers of deduction are even worse than your grammar and spelling. You’re no Sherlock.

And you keep falling for it professor 😂 , anyway it would seem you have a perversion for trying to ridicule people and to try and make them feel small and insignificant, ok I’m stupid I can’t string a sentence together I’ve got dementia and all the other derogatory stuff you say I have, does that make you feel good that you get off on being a cyber bully and being such a superior being, guess you probably reach the ticklish bit whilst putting others down, what a great toy soldier you are 👍

I’m falling for nothing, you just keep demonstrating to everyone here how stupid and deranged you are.
That’s simply a cold hard fact.

Oh dear, More derogatory name calling from someone with a superiority complex, you know nothing about me so you’re making assumptions because you don’t like my opinions

Anybody reading your posts knows that
• your English, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and composition are all remedial
• that you jump to conclusions about people who disagree with you, all of which have been spectacularly wrong
• that you think it’s acceptable to mock the neurodiverse, such as dyslexics, probably the disabled too
• that you are quarrelsome, even picking a fight in this article with the hugely-respected and mild-mannered Daniele Mandelli

I don’t think you have opinions, you’re not intelligent enough to form your own. Instead I suspect you just parrot what you’ve heard others say.

Actually it’s you who miscall the disabled and afflicted, just look at all the derogatory comments you have directed at me and are still doing so

I’ve criticised your stupidity and insulting behaviour, those aren’t protected characteristics. And if you do coincidentally have protected a characteristic, such as neurodiversity or a disability, that still isn’t an an excuse or reason for you behaviour or attitude.

You can only prod a dog so many times eventually it will bite back

You’re comparing yourself to a dog now? I think that’s disrespectful to canines.

Obviously you’re unfamiliar with proverbs & sayings for such a so called educated creature

Proverbs and cliches are the refuge of those too stupid to have original thoughts of their own.

Really ? Well you have just used one yourself , nice own goal

Wrong yet again. 😆

Yawn 🥱, find another hobby ffs

As contrast to your hobby of being wrong all the time?

Never heard of such a pastime, obviously an obsession of yours

Well if being wrong isn’t a hobby of yours then I guess it’s just your defining character trait instead.

We should go back to middle English , no correct spellings lol

No thanks, bad spelling helps to identify the uneducated and stupid.

If someone wasn’t educated does that make them stupid ? Of course it doesn’t but maybe some don’t have the sense to see that

And clearly you have no comprehension of propositional logic, or is it just your inability to comprehend English again?

People can be;
• educated and not stupid
• educated and stupid
• uneducated and not stupid
• uneducated and stupid

You fall into the last category.

That’s interesting, so you want keep conversing with an uneducated stupid person, an educated intelligent person would not stoop to miscalling afflicted people with derogatory and cruel comments

You think an uneducated and stupid person can predict what an educated, intelligent person wants?!? 😆
By definition they can’t.

Maybe, perhaps, if you put as much effort into reading educational and scholarly articles as you do into insulting people you wouldn’t be so uneducated. Just a suggestion for self-improvement there…

What people have I insulted ? I see you’re still at it like the school bully, which you probably were

Wrong again asshole.

Well at least if I’m an asshole I get rid of shit , it just builds up in you Mr colostomy bag

Glad to see you finally admit that everything you dump on this website is shit.

Really ? Well you seem to revel in it , but that’s what dung flies do I suppose, can you not find something else to do, am bored with your garbage

No I’m sick of your dung, but glad to see you finally admit to the nature of the content you post here. The big question is why you feel the need to post what you now acknowledge to be shit on public forums?

Yawn 🥱 again, you have just repeated your same old story, find someone else to bore ffs

Same old story is you being too stupid not know when your beaten 🤷🏻‍♂️

Beaten at what ? It’s you that’s too stupid to see that you are just a pest with little else to do, in fact I would say you are probably stalking me as you can’t let go , perhaps you could find someone else to stalk

Given I was already on this thread when you suddenly jumped into it with an insult about me, that makes you the stalker. Idiot.

I made no personal comment about you with my first comment, your sending this comment at 02:11 you are clearly suffering from paranoia and are definitely stalking me with an unhealthy obsession, I think you should take a long look at yourself

“ponce about doing unnecessary ceremonial duties”
Why are they unnecessary? They are used at state events and are thus completely necessary? Unless you’re a republican?

“chocolate soldiers” Even the HD are first and foremost trained soldiers, unlike the ceremonial units of certain other nations, so why are you calling professional soldiers chocolate?

“with the police looking after their security”

Yes and no. The military themselves guard Royal residences as well as police, so the security of the army, both in London and elsewhere, is not solely in the hands of the police.

I am Republican

I thank you.

Presidents are worse than Royals as they are funded by corporations and their masters want payback and they like to leave office rich re Clinton’s !

They are probably corrupt l agree, but modern day royals are a very corrupt lot costing many millions when people are homeless & hungry , many of those troops you see on ceremonial parades will be homeless & begging on the streets when the army has no more need of them

There were homeless and hungry with the pharaohs.
There were homeless and hungry under the Emperors of Rome.
There would be homeless and hungry under a President.
No excuse to get rid of our Monarchy.
Costing millions, yes, and yet the monarchy makes a profit for the Exchequer, a point often ignored, so their cost for what they provide is irrelevant.

The profit is just unproven and basically not true, going back to ancient Egyptian times or Roman just doesn’t stand up as modern society is meant to be a caring society which clearly it is not and the government are the worst offenders in uncaring

Total utter balderdash.
Lets leave it there John, thanks.

If you say so, is balderdash a race horse 🏇 you lost a bet on 😂👍

Look it up, John.

No, I say leave it there as there is no point debating with you on a non defence subject on a defence forum after your previous contributions.

So far, your contributions to the subject of “defence” include –

“The anti Scottish comments arising again, but happy to use the country as an arms dump”

I pointed out to you that they are anti SNP comments. not the Scottish people, we are all Brits and Scots are one of us.
I also pointed out to you regarding “arms dumps” that there are actually more of them in England than in Scotland. Others have explained why places like Coulport exist regards the geography. So us Englanders are not dumping our weapons on Scottish land like your post implies.

No sensible reply or debate from you.

Your next gem concerning the QE Carrier…”just a floating scrapyard”
Again utter nonsense with no explanation from yourself as to why you think that is, or reply to any sensible replies to your one liner.

So on to this article thread, and the original post that caused your amusing row with Sean which has since been deleted, but which at the time I myself responded to, which is still showing further up the thread.

Your view on the Household Division carrying out state duties. “ponce about doing unnecessary ceremonial duties”

Your view on the soldiers themselves.
“chocolate soldiers”

And your view on the safety of their facilities.
“with the police looking after their security”

All of which is nonsense and I tried to explain why. Your only response was to confirm my suspicions that your a republican. Fine, that is your privilege, but it is the polar opposite of myself so what is the point of debating that?

I’m not going to rip you a new one like Sean does so well, just remaining amicable as you simply will not debate your position or even contribute discussing serious defence matters in any meaningful way, as evidenced by your contributions so far.

Look at arms storage per head of population look at the statistics, Faslane & Coulport are very close to Scotlands largest concentration of population, you mentioned anti- SNP so perhaps you are anti more than half the population of Scotland who has voted them in, and what you mention of Sean does so well so are you advocating his insults and derogatory comments? Well if so that’s very amicable of you

Just to say Daniele, I mean no animosity towards you at all even though your views and opinions maybe very different from mine, but some people don’t have the ability to recognise tongue in cheek comments or wind ups and then become nasty and aggressive, I don’t consider you as that type of person, best regards 👍

Likewise John. No worries.

You are assuming the next major war is NATO based. The world does not start & end with NATO. Most of the world’s nations are not part of NATO & NATO only comes into affect if NATO itself is attacked or you can get all the members to agree. NATO did not turn up to the Falklands. They won’t turn up for the French or UK Pacific & Indian Ocean Territories either or for old allies like Australia & New Zealand. Members like US, UK, Canada, France & Netherlands have alliances outside of NATO.

• The only existential threat to the U.K. lies within NATO’s region of operations. Our world starts with NATO and the collapse of NATO could certainly result in our end.
• The Falklands was outside NATO’s region of operations at the time. As it is, the Salvation Army could probably deal with Argentina’s armed forces, so no future threat there.
• You start your response dismissive of NATO, the worlds most powerful alliance, only to them start talking up all the other regional alliances we’re members of. Totally missing the point that we would act as part of an alliance, rather than that unilaterally.

I was simply pointing out that NATO has its limitations & that for certain members, there are other alliances & territories outside of NATO that could drag them into a war that won’t involve NATO. As you say, NATO is the worlds most powerful alliance, meaning any other alliance a nation is a member of is going to be far less powerful, especially if it doesn’t happen to include USA.

As an example, I would point out that there are UK troops based in Brunei, which adjoins & has claims in the South China Sea. I am not sure that Brunei has any other military allies (perhaps Singapore?). If Brunei comes under military attack due to SCS, where does UK stand? Especially if the Gurkha troops there become directly involved? One would hope that friends in the region might respond. But they don’t have to.

The collapse of NATO would not mean the end of the UK. Collapse of Europe might.

Ok – I can’t be too specific.

Some of these roles are the synthesis of many roles. Without the foundational roles the niche role cannot function.

The problem is NATO allies have zero interest in taking those on.

The lesson of Corporate is that we do need these capabilities otherwise there are major holes in what UK PLC can do.

I understand.

This sounds like a lack of integrated planning within NATO. It sounds like the U.K. has decided to retain/possess these specialist niches – albeit with hat-switching being done – at the cost of boots on the ground. Whereas other countries don’t have these at all, and simply gone for the headline grabbing figures number of soldiers.
While the latter is more politically expedient, I think the UK’s approach is the lesser of two evils, as specialisms take years to develop, whereas it’s faster to train infantry to a basic level in a crisis.

Corporate was an action without allied support, is such a thing still a possibility? There certainly won’t be a rerun of The Falklands as Argentina’s decades long financial crisis has left it with no credible military threat.

The thing with Corporate was the prior assumption that we would always act with NATO.

As it turned out it was a non NATO shout.

What we have seen is that we cannot depend on France and Germany stepping up to the plate and the increasingly erratic USA will do, as it always did & now more nakedly, what suits its own interests.

With regard to Russia we can depend on the Nordics (not massive militaries) and ex Warsaw pact (not terribly sophisticated but lots of boots) members of NATO.

So I think we have to keep the specialisms alive.

Yes, but there’s not going to be a repeat of Corporate – unless Argentina suddenly finds itself on vast diamond deposits or discovers the secret to nuclear fusion.

Do you really think France and Germany would not honour an Article V?…I would be very surprised because that would be the end of NATO.

Yes, the USA is going through erratic times – much to my American friends horror. While a nightmare scenario is possible, that Trump (or worse) might become President and pull-out of NATO. However even without the USA’s vast military, the remaining NATO alliance would be more than a match for any regional threats, such as Russia.

Agreed, keep the specialisms. For sheer numbers, Ukraine has shown how you can generate boots on the ground quickly in an existential crisis.

Try learning something about the US. No President has the authority to unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. NATO is an international treaty ratified by the US Senate and a President would need the consent of the US Senate to withdraw from it. But don’t let that stop you foaming out of the mouth about Trump.

It seems I know more about the USA than you…

While the American Constitution outlines the proceedings required for the United States to enter international treaties in Article II, Section 2, it does not lay out how the United States should extricate itself from treaties. Therefore, it is possible that any American president could remove the United States from Article II treaties – that is, those formally ratified by two-thirds of the United States Senate – without Congressional approval.

Aware of this loophole in the Constitution the Senate foreign relations committee has introduced a bipartisan bill (S.J.Res 17) specifically to prevent a President from withdrawing from NATO without congressional approval. Last news I heard it was still grinding it’s way through Senate…

Like most Trump fans, your grasp on facts and the law is somewhat lacking.

I’ve been trying to find your comment. The biggest threat to the UK is China. No where did I mention a bigger Army, did I?

Well this discussion is all about army size, so why bring up China then? 🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

The article is about the size of the Armed Forces.

The wealth of China is mainly coastal areas , rising sea levels through global warming, lack of babies and time will reduce the threat !

Making me nervous Daniele😂

Thanks Airborne. Imagine-15 000 Paras!!😉

Thanks George-yes sad. It could have been a multiracial success story and model for the rest of Africa

Holding thumbs John-not award winning stuff😃 but a true story and apt considering the topic at hand.Cheers

One we’ve not heard before mate…? 😉

😁I don’t think so but let me know-it has been approved!!

😜

It would be very interesting to see if the MiD numbers have fallen as far and as fast as military numbers. I suspect not!

Thanks for the dit, mate. Why is it all our options are poor options!
Interesting that the TA (as they were then) were expensive. I guess that MoD would have had to compensate bosses for their loss from the workplace and pay the Terriers too.

Yup, that, also the pay for reservists when mobilised can be more than you think. For example mobilising Pte Blogs who would be paid as a private if regular, may be paid a lot more depending on their civy job. Ie the Army pays them their civvies wage if its more than what a pte would earn. There are caps, and supposedly “intelligent” mobilisation, but in practice it generally costs a lot more to mobilise a reservist. When it’s a lot of them it can be very expensive.

Very good point mate. You were right in saying politicians were deluded in thinking that replacing Regs with reservists would save money.

Thanks Dern. That will also be of interest to ‘Vet’.

I’ll call 1 MWD then! 😀

yeah Thanks Dern, already acknowledged i misread! However it does still include workforce in non deployable Pids, soldiers still in training, medically downgraded etc, and not sure why they separated the Nursing Services from the regular Orbat!

I wonder how many that is lost on…

An excellent example.

The IHO role is probably equivalent to a Board of Directors in a large Multinational Company. You are not going to send Terry from the IT dept. To Send a comparable level CS it would probably be equal to or more expensive.

Thanks GB, that makes absolute sense to me and I kind of suspected that would be the case, but I don’t know enough about CS levels so I decided to keep my mouth shut rather than risk saying something wrong 😛

I agree with you in so many points you make pay, allowances , accommodations to name but a few , I believe the services do a fantastic job , and I am proud to have served 12 years in the Royal Air Force and would do it again in a heart beat if required to protect the country ,although at 62 I feel my contribution may be lacking ha ha , I’m sure you agree that friends you make during your service are brothers for life . I think I digressed from the point I was trying to make , that being our services that were once feared and admired as the finest fighting forces in the world bar none , are being taken for granted by politicians of whatever hue , continue to be cut and cut and cut . Every station I was posted to no longer exists as an raf unit raf swinderby gone raf Newton gone raf st athan gone raf Bruggen gone raf kinloss gone , and so many more all confined to the history books .I hold anyone who served in the highest esteem I just wish our politicians would do so as well especially our veterans who are struggling with their mental health and homelessness issues , but since when do our political masters care about others when theirs money to suck up from the public purse and many other jobs to earn more millions , I hope their 30 pieces of silver can calm their conscience .

Thanks James. I mostly enjoyed my career but it was short on op tours – two in 34 years! I enjoyed the places I served in as a singlie and as a pad. I felt that the job wherever it was, was fulfilling and worthwhile. I too have seen many of my old posting points having closed down – especially all those in Germany. Our forces today have so many problems – understrength, underpaid, and often working with kit far older than the soldiers, sailors and airmen.
The biggest enemy was always politicians and the Treasury!

We agree on so much, and our differences are minimal,we all want the best for our past friends and future service personnel thank you for your service

Apologies for the grammatical errors, I did post it before, spotted the mistakes, changed them and then found my post sent to mod. So I had to search back on word and couldn’t be arsed to go through that effort again. Saying that I expect some wonk to be offended with said post removed.

Best thread in ages Farouk, as ever beautifully written!

I’m still not seeing it mate…

Morning mate. I know you weren’t, I just thought I’d take a look at the ORBAT at who could be at short notice who are not committed to another formation elsewhere.

I have mentioned the HSF here before, if I remember 5,000 strong and made up of over 55s or something for KPs only?

I imagine if we face that situation again the AR do the same again to some extent.

Hi Daniele, HSF – a blast from the past. A short-lived ‘Home Guard’ who were well-recruited.

Wikipedia is good.
“The Home Service Force (HSF) was a Home Guard type force established in the United Kingdom in 1982. Each HSF unit was placed with either a Regular Army or Territorial Army regiment or battalion for administrative purposes and given that formation’s title, cap badge and recruited from volunteers aged 18–60 with previous British forces (TA or regular) experience. It was introduced to guard key points and installations likely to be the target of enemy special forces and saboteurs, so releasing other units for mobile defence roles. It was stood down in 1992”.
Wiki has more details, ‘cos I know you like details!

What is a concern is that the end of the Cold War heralded the demise of the HSF, UKWMO, ROC and the abandonment of nearly all the underground bunkers (whether used as seats of regional government or for other purposes), scrapping of Civil Defence, the siren system, Protect & Survive info, MHD plans and training exercises etc etc. We have nothing now (and no BMD defence or public shelters).

If MHD were re-established all the above would be unlikely to be restablished. Would the AR fill the role of the HSF in guarding KPs etc – I’m really not sure. I guess so. I hope someone in Government is thinking about this.

Take a look at this:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61965/defenceconrtibution1.pdf

as there are references to MHD, I understand:

Hi Graham.

Funnily enough, I thought I recognised that Doc! And I was right. And old one too. However.

“Military Home Defence (MHD) of UK territory7 against an external military threat. Although MHD is a dormant UK operation, details have been included to reflect its close association with both MACA and the Standing Home Commitment (SHC) military tasks.”  

We know MoD have contingency plans in place, even if forces are not allocated on a day to day basis, so a skeleton set up that could be expanded as needed. That is how I read into that.

I think, obviously, the recent mobile phone emergency test system replaces the sirens to some extent?
ROC & UKWMO long gone, but I believe some of the sensors still remain, usually close to airfields.
Yes the RSGs ( another of my interests ) were stood down, but some I understand HMG have a right to reoccupy if needed, though their locations are now well known and some are museums.
On Underground bunkers, I believe there are more than meets the eye, certainly those at the top of the chain regards military and central government were kept, and upgraded. The much discussed Site 3 at Burlington was kept as a “decoy” until the early 2000s, which to me implies they have something better, somewhere else, and indeed a better one is close by, but with a different role. I also hear that Site 3 leaked, thus the name of the quarry in which it resides, Spring Quarry.
Other organisations, such as the BBC and certain other government agencies and organisations, have their own facilities, some of which I’m aware of, like the BBCs at Wood Norton.

KPs still exist, the list is secret, but we could certainly guess many of them, as would an adversary.

No idea who would look after them now if there is no HSF, but they will have a plan to activate if necessary.

The MPGS and MDP also guard various sites.

Given the state of some in society today and the inability of millions to even follow simple Covid precautions I don’t know what use publishing more Protect and Survive info would be? People don’t trust or listen.

I understand Central Government, the military, and the agencies all have survivable, hardened communications networks in place, and various companies have their business continuity plans.

Jonathan is probably the best to comment here as I think he has been involved in that side in liaison with the Civil Contingencies Secretariat?

Another note, I have read that a Home Office Duty Officer ( HODO ) remains in place at the NADOC regards warning from the BMEWS. Assume that is still the case.

Thanks for this. It is puzzling that politicians like to spout that the first duty of Government is to protect the people then do little MHD, except to dismantle what we had.

Interesting that the RM have a Cdo that protects SSBN related facilities – scope to expand the concept to many KPs? Not saying it would have to be Royals, of course.

I am sure there are contingency plans for MHD – perhaps I over-ranted. I used to do the REME input for contingency plans in the MACC/MACA domain, which was of course rather different.

I think there is a plan to prevent ‘enemy’ use of the Channel Tunnel to infiltrate Blighty! I heard that a few years ago.

I don’t think you ranted at all mate. It is fair comment, where is the prep, if any? I think it is there, but very low key and in certain key areas only.

Yes, 43 Commando. Used to be known as Commachio Group RM, then Fleet Protection Group RM. I believe they provide final denial within Faslane and Coulport, so in the inner secure areas around the nuclear facilities and boats, and the outer defence is left to MoD Police.

Interestingly, I believe they also provide escort, along with the SEG of the MoD Police, for “Green” convoys which transport nuclear warheads to and from Aldermaston and Coulport, with stops as needed at Wittering, Honington, using the old SSA’s at those sites, and most often, Ouston, which has its own secure compound away from the rest of the barracks.

We have had a poster here who I recall did that job who no doubt could add more detail than I ever can.

I’m sure you’re right re the Channel Tunnel, we can but speculate what it is.

Morning Dern.

Good to know re the Guards Coys, thank you. Where did I get that PD term from I wonder?

Yes, I did not include the varied RC HQs with local units allocated to the Field Army or deployable formations, I was looking at the odd ones out from that, which are exremely small. But yes, all true, form them into an ad hoc unit like the German Kampfgruppe if need be. It is fantasy world anyway as no threat like that is likely.

It’s the name given to the new-quasi Battalion,
So it’s the Public Duty Teams with the Incremental Coys as it’s sub units.
Pretty daft if you ask me they should have just gone the whole 9 yards and “We’ve almagamated the Incremental Coys into a new Foot Guards Battalion.” But nope.

Right, now I get it, thanks.

120,000 was realistic from 1991 when this lower figure was set as the figure for the post Cold war army ie 40k less than it had been. What reduction in threat has occurred since 1991? Has the country got poorer since 1991? No and No. Therefore we should still have a 120k army. The only reason for about six cuts since then is ‘to save money’ to spend elsewhere in Government, especially in Health, Social Services and Education and to service an ever increasing National Debt.

You accept an ever reducing army, but not an ever reducing navy. Is that illogical?

You look at defending ‘our island nation’. Our forces have never just done that. Even if they had that as our sole defence remit, we would not today need assets such as 2 carriers.
Our forces not only defend the homeland & BOTs and contribute to defence of the continent – but are deployed as required further afield on deterrence duties and expeditionary operations – and that requires a significant army as well as RN and RAF. The army has borne the brunt of warfighting numerous times since WW2 – it should therefore not be cut repeatedly.

Good luck persuading the politicos and Treasury into investing in BMD – its not a vote winner. Do we really want 9 T83s stooging about all the time in our territorial waters on anti-BMD duties and not deployed more widely?

The US army is roughly 440,000 but wants to be 480,000. Their economy is 8 times larger than ours. We can’t model of anybody else other than the US if we want to be expeditionary future increases in personnel need to go to the Navy or RAF.

We are an island nation. If we were to invest more in home defence, the first thing to buy wouldn’t be an extra regiment of tanks. It would be more Typhoons, F35B, ASHM, SSN, P8, T26, T83, Sea Guardian, SSK etc. The army would buy more GBAD and NSM launchers and more MLRS.

If you want to be expeditionary, large air force and navy are a must. If you look at the US, both the air force and navy are 3/4 the size of the army. The USN has a huge carrier and amphibious fleet. The USAF has a massive airlift and air refuelling fleet, as well as long range strike. Our expeditionary capabilities are one of the best as well, but even then, we have struggled to provide large armoured formations. Gulf war was excusable because the military wasn’t focused on being expeditionary. Iraq was a large armoured brigade, but still not enough for what we were expected to do.

9 T83s would be the minimum to have AAW for the carriers and BMD for the mainland. It wouldn’t be enough for permanent overseas deployment. Of course T83 won’t be a vote winner, but most defence related things aren’t vote winners. AAW destroyers aren’t vote winners but to have a carrier force you need them. T83 will likely have to be BMD anyway.

Why do you think you only need naval and air forces for expeditionary operations? How many army bods do you think deployed to both Gulf Wars, the Balkans, Afghanistan? You can’t ignore the army’s role in deploying overseas and doing deterrence, warfighting or stability operations.

How does F35B, ASHM, SSN, P8, T26, T83, Sea Guardian, SSK – help with Home Defence? F35Bs are on the carriers miles from our shores, as are the escorts and S/Ms.

Tanks – true the army does not need tanks for MHD within the UK. We invented the tank and first deployed it in 1916, and ever since then, used them on expeditionary operations.

Didn’t say you done need an army for expeditionary ops. Just said you need a large air force and navy.
Unless the threat of invasion was from France, escorts would be very useful, SSN is our best way of sinking ships. The enemy can’t teleport here so the invasion would have to be seaborne with airborne as well. Attack is the best form of defence as the saying goes, you wouldn’t wait for ships to land, or aircraft to land, you’d destroy them as soon as possible.
Army Reserve are best placed for disaster relief etc.

I just thought as you didn’t mention the army, you had written them out!
Pity we don’t have enough SSNs – rule of three suggests you may only have 2 available and one is protecting the CASD bomber.
I am having a discussion with Daniele about who would defend KPs with the demise of the HSF in 1993. Surely that is one for the AR.

It’s a shame HSF was disbanded. The army doesn’t make any use of the Regular Reserve, it has lots of expertise and manpower. IIRC HSF companies were going to be stood up on the continent for the countless ex army living there but the end of the Cold War put an end to that.

I had not heard there was a plan to raise HSF on the continent (probably meaning Germany).
We now have no troops specifically roled and trained to defend KPs in the UK (AFAIK).
Good point on use of the Regular Reserve – I left the army at 53 and was in RARO (Regular Army Reserve of Officers) to the age of 65 (I think) – they had even abandoned the annual Reporting Day by the time I left the Regs in 2009. Reg Reservists could have had a Military Home Defence (MHD) role – that’s a great idea.

That’s my mistake. It was a ‘continental TA’ they were looking to set up. 2,000 personnel. The roles were mainly logistics and RAMC with a some RE and RA and very small amount of RAC and infantry. The units were mainly section/platoon, with a few guard companies planned. This is all from the national archives.

You are correct. The size hardly qualifies as an army. More of an expeditionary force. It’s certainly not capable of sustained fighting in a world war, for more than a few days. It’s a poor comparison given their situation but the Israeli Army has a regular standing force of over 125,000 and a reserve of 400,000. The population is less than 10,000,000.

But Israel has national service. Our Armed Force’s are all volunteers.

That’s not the point Robert. The population size is and they can sustain such a large armed force. Necessity and political will.

But you cannot compare our geographical location. Look who Israel has on its door step. And Israel cannot deploy across the globe like we can. Completely different situation.

I did say. “It’s a poor comparison given their situation but ..”
The relative national populations and economies still make the necessary point. If they can afford it, then so can we. Given the political will to do so. The world is a dangerous place.

It is, and UK Armed Force’s are still a key players on the world stage. We can’t keep comparing to what we had in 1990. We had more numbers then, but a lot of totally shite equipment, that was very much highlighted during the Gulf War.

George – if there was another world war, I am sure we would quickly expand the army as we did before (so long as we had some notice!). Prior to WW1, the UK-based army was just over 100k (Total was 275k), but expanded and at its peak in WW1 was 3,820,000 men and could field over 70 divisions. 
WW2 – army numbers increased to 3.12m

The Israeli example does not stand up as a comparator, as you yourself admit – they are surrounded by hostile/potentially hostile nations who they have had many serious wars with over the years.
Better to compare ourselves with other of the larger western European nations – Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland perhaps.

You wrote: “At the time it would have been impossible to get away with not decreasing the size of the military.”

I must call BS on that statement. Despite everything you mention and more. The people think otherwise, read on. Three main areas to cover.

Our country/economy has just absorbed two years of lockdown. Had we made that effort in the name of defence, the income from our indigenous strategically important, military industrial complex. Would not have been lost. Along with everything that entails. Closing one factory devastates an entire community and numerous supporting businesses. The nation would have been in a far better state keeping a large military, all branches. Money spent on the military is not lost. It is an investment in the nation that is recycled. A measure of the nations resolve to not simply exist but to prevail and win. (I’m beginning to sound like a politician, yuk!)

What you describe is simply the lack of will and self belief of the political classes. The curable disease of the modern age. That is why defence matters should be separated from the political swamp. Well away from it’s changing foibles. The military budget should be guaranteed before the elected parliament is permitted to touch a penny of the national cophers. If we need to reinvigorate the constitutional monarchy to achieve that aim, then so be it.

Do not forget or be fooled by the woke brigade. Without a strong defence and national borders, we simply cease to exist as a separate and independent nation state. The British people hold that sentiment close to the heart. It gave us BREXIT and is the reason Scotland rejected splitting from the union. The spirit of the people on these islands is still strong.

Defence cuts did not only happen in 2010!

Why do the air force and navy need more personnel? What is it that they cannot do with their existing head count?

For the army, defence cuts mainly happened in 2010 though. 107,000 personnel I think right before the SDSR. That means only 13,000 were cut in the 20 years between the end of the Cold War and 2010 which isn’t unreasonable.
In Options for Change, RAF size was placed at 75,000 and RN at 60,000. The Navy is now at half that, and the RAF even less.
RN and RAF would both benefit from increased headcount. Granted they would benefit far more from more money.

Army was cut from 120,000 to 73,000 between 1991 (post Cold War start state) and now. Cuts to manpower affect the army disproportionately as the army equips the man and the RAF and RN man the equipment. That amount of cuts equate to the loss of 47 units (be they infantry battalions or artillery regiments).

RN has been cut from 60k to 33.4k and RAF from 75k to 32.7k

All cuts are bad, particularly as they are not in accord with any reduction in threat or workload, so I call them all unreasonable.
There would be outrage if the same percentage of doctors, nurses and teachers were cut.

I agree, the most noticeable cut was the 2010 reduction of 25,000 army personnel, there should’ve been a lot more outrage to that.
RAF and RN of course do man the equipment as you put it but extra manpower would benefit them a lot.
Extra RAF manpower would allow for proper dispersal of aircraft in case of war, or a rejuvenated RAF reg with AD systems (they’ve recently started operating LMM in CUAS which is good to see).
Extra RN manpower could allow T45 sonars to be manned, or both Albion and Bulwark to be manned.

In reality RN numbers have change more because RM numbers haven’t changed as much, so real RN percentage change is higher.

Louis, you are going to have to say why CR1 was ‘a terrible tank’ compared to the developmental MBT80 – they were not such very different tanks in spec terms – and CR1 could be fielded several years earlier (due to the fall of the Shah of course).

CR1 was a great tank in my eyes – and a big step forward from Chieftain, with its Chobham armour, 1200 hp engine giving a 10mph higher speed and better acceleration, better transmission, hydrogas suspension for better cross country performance. Better reliability than Chieftain too.

It gave a good account of itself in the Gulf War proving to be far more reliable than the naysayers had expected, achieved the longest range tank kill ever, had an exceptional kill ratio and survivability was stellar (no CR1s being destroyed by the enemy).

It is speculation that MBT80 would have been a runaway export success.

Why might MoD have bought 727 Chally2s? If the Cold War had continued, did you say?

Inability to produce armoured vehicles? We are currently building AFVs at GDUK, RBSL and WFEL. I do take your point that the tank factories at Leeds and Newcastle closed though.

I was being overly negative about CH1. It was indeed a very good tank with manoeuvrability being a particular good thing about it.

Of course it is speculation that MBT 80 would’ve been an export success but considering at the time 1,000 Cheiftain and 400+ Vickers MBT had been exported, surely a proper program would’ve got export orders.

The planned number for Chally 2 was around 800, not 727 my mistake, to replace both Chally 1 and Cheiftain in 13 RAC regiments. This was just speculated however, as it ended before Chally 2 was anywhere near production, the numbers won’t have been finalised.

RBSL doesn’t really build anything, WFEL granted. GDUK, ignoring Ajax’s woes, are they actually building the hulls? I heard that they were all imported from
Spain but I’m not sure. If you count RBSL you have to count LMUK as well considering they built 500+ turrets for Ajax/Warrior.

Reply now found! CR1 was superior in so many ways to other tanks fielded about that time – M1 Abrams only had a 105mm gun and a very poor range and was exceptionally complicated. Leopard 2 had many good features but its armour was not as good as the Chally.

RBSL is of course building CR3 ( a remanufacturing project using CR2 as a donor) and Boxer.
WFEL is also building Boxers.
GDUK are not building the Ajax hulls as that is a bought-in item, but they of course are the manufacturers for Ajax.

We can be sniffy that the above are ‘only’ Assembly Halls and do not manufacture the majority of a vehicles components, but then so is Rolls Royce as most of their luxury cars come in boxes from Germany. My examples count as military vehicle manufacturers.

I believe MBT 80 also had a more advanced hunter killer sights, similar to Challenger 2.

I don’t think it’s being sniffy to say that the only proper manufacturers is WFEL AND RBSL for Boxer.

GDUK really is just assembling Ajax as hills are built in Spain, engines in Germany, turrets by LMUK and the sights and other electronics are most likely from smaller manufacturers, although I’m not sure on that.

There was outrage when the Tides were built in Korea and even more outrage when the FSSS contract went to Navantia and Harland & Wolff despite the fact it would rejuvenate the shipyard. Why should the two other services have to buy British when the army cannot. The RN was and still is the only customer for British shipyards for a long time so is effectively propping them up, as seen by the B2 OPV buy, partly due to their unwillingness to modernise.

Apache deal was done poorly so Brimstone integration wasn’t agreed before contract was signed, making it extremely expensive now. Same with LMM although not as big of an issue.
MFP likely won’t be built in Britain unless K9 is chosen.
SA80 replacement also likely won’t be a British development.
Challenger 3 being an upgraded Challenger 2 isn’t an issue, but whatever replaces Challenger 3 likely won’t be built in Britain.
Companies like Supacat have great potential but the army keep dithering about instead of ordering more, and potentially getting more export orders.
Warrior upgrade cancellation damaged LMUK a lot.
There is virtually no UK truck production. Such a large part of the army’s vehicle fleet therefore will likely never come from the UK. If replacements for MAN SV, Unipower TBT, Oshkosh tanker, EPLS and the HET and LET fleets could be coordinated, 10,000+ orders could potentially be enough to have a production line in the UK.
3 H-UGV’s trialled with 2 Yorks, none from UK companies. This one especially should invite new companies, like Aeralis.

It’s not an issue if the army doesn’t want to buy British, but then the two other services that do should be rewarded for doing so.

Good post. I have forced myself to be relaxed over the fact that we mostly have Assembly Halls to build AFVs with even quite major items being bought-in, as opposed to full-house manufacturing facilities as we once had. At least there are three companies building complete AFVs in the UK plus LM (was Hunting Engineering) building turrets in Ampthill, Beds.

Contrast with the fact that we no longer build complete fast RAF jets in the UK – or design fast jets.

CR3 successor (could be the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System (MGCS)) might be built in the UK under licence by RBSL – UK has observor status on the programme , but I personally think this tank wil not be advanced enough.

The British Army has generally bought British tanks, APCs and IFVs – but has sourced equipment from many different nations over the years.

Little UK truck production? Leyland (aka Daf) Trucks UK is still going strong (but have not made a mil truck for many years now). MAN Truck & Bus UK Ltd built the SV family.

Which three would you count?
I guess if you add it all together there are 2 that are producing turrets and 1 that is producing hulls. Supacat is producing ‘AFV’s’.
At least BAE still has multiple ammo/shell factories.

On aircraft production, BAE can effectively build an entire jet.
Realistically Tempest could’ve been procured alone, for most of the beginning Italy hadn’t funded much. It doesn’t make sense to do that though.
Majority of UK Tempests will be UK built. There is a lot more separation between countries in production of Tempest. Normally joint programmes don’t have duplicate parts made by other countries, but partly due to Japan’s distance, that wouldn’t be feasible. All I can really pick out that we don’t build are the wings and centre fuselage.

I doubt MGCS will be what it is expected to be now. I suspect it is in part the French wanting to cling onto MBT production in some form. In reality there is little the French could add to such a programme. The current plan of Leclerc turret and Leopard 2 hull won’t be advanced enough for anybody. Given Rheinmetall has their KF51 and KMW is still building Leopard 2 with 2a8 and 2ax for the future, I doubt Germany would settle for just building the hull.

I had forgotten MAN UK built Man SV trucks for the army, certainly a good thing.

All three build complete AFVs, admittedly much of the manufacturing work is assembly of items that are bought-out including hulls in the case of GDUK. You can’t say that GDUK do not make AFVs just because the hulls are made in Spain. Just as you can’t say that Rolls Royce don’t make luxury cars just because many of the items including the engines are made in Germany.
I missed out Supacat but it should be counted as an AFV, even though the armour does not provide all-round protection.

BAE probably could build a whole military combat jet, but don’t. Their last British designed and built combat fast jet was the Harrier.

I agree that MGCS is unexciting and breaks little to no new ground – I am surprised we have bothered to ask for and get Observer status. CR3 will see us through to maybe 2045 or so and MGCS would be an unworthy, outdated successor.

In contrast I did a posting to RARDE Chertsey once – it and its predecessors MVEE and FVRDE were truly innovative and introduced much new technology and concepts to military vehicles – all gone now – not many clever ideas around now.

My issue with the UK AFV industry is that it is reliant on foreign companies. Sure countries like Poland will have a strong AFV industry, but most of the designs are Korean. What a strong AFV industry brings you is the innovation, which is far more important than whether Ajax hulls are imported or built here. As your last paragraph draws attention to, lots of the innovation for AFV’s isn’t there.

For all the faults of the UK aerospace and shipbuilding industries, they are unique designs that countries actually want, and cannot get anywhere else. Tech transfers with countries like Turkey etc. T45 truly is one of the best AAW vessels, T26 will be the best ASW ship, Astutes are the best submarine, Tempest will only be rivalled by US and potentially Chinese designs, Aeralis will be revolutionary.
There just isn’t the same for most of the land industry.

People often focus too much on where the platform is built, me included, but that isn’t the point. 623 Boxers aren’t going to save the economy. When we are at the point where MPF won’t have a British design, it doesn’t matter whether it’ll be UK built it’s already a loss.

The army will have to become more generic, it is hard to innovate in terms of structure if you operate the same kit as everybody else. The army will obviously maintain much better training than every other army, but in terms of new structures, all I can really see is Recce. The army focusses a lot more on recce than other nations, and the capabilities of Ajax (for all its faults) reflects that.

The army should be able to create a vehicle on a capability that they want, rather than create a capability on the vehicle they get- strike is a good example.

Unfortunately it does mean in the future, capabilities like these will have to be given up if there is no AFV industry.
It is why companies like GDUK are more important than WFEL. Any factory could make armoured vehicle hulls, it is the design that is key.

It is often posted on this site that the 80/20 approach (if that’s the correct term) where you 80% of the capability for 20% of the cost, but that’s not a very good approach. For the recent RFA ship buys, it works fine, they aren’t warfighting vessels, but settling for an 80% capability frontline asset doesn’t make sense. In my opinion it would be better to offer a smaller army that is very well equipped than a larger less well equipped army. The army and RAF cut corners in previous conflicts, leading to unnecessary deaths.

After that rant, I’ll just muse on MGCS.
French demand of 50% of the production of each tank seems weird when you consider Germany has double the tanks, 2 next generation tank designs, and a tank in production that has done very well in the export market.
There is definitely more to it, potentially something to do with FCAS and Germany wanting to have a say in 6th gen aircraft, FCAS being their only option for that now.

Thanks Louis, good post. It doesn’t seem long ago that we had 5 independent AFV manufacturers, all British-owned, who built mainly good AFVs quickly and to a good price. We had 2 modern tank factories in Leeds and Newcastle, who could make hulls and turrets and bought in much less than the Assembly Halls of today. I digress.
Your point about foreign involvement also hit the car industry many years ago.
Also,it is hard to see that British built AFVs will have much export success, which means the British Army’s kit will be form a limited production run and more costly. Also the build duration will be much longer to keep the workers employed for longer, so AFVs will take much longer to field as a fleet, whch creates massuve difficulties.
You make a good point about recce – I don’t see that just about every brigade needs a full recce regiment – nearly every other nation has a squadron – this is wasteful in terms of manpower which is very scarce. In equipment terms we are buying 245 very expensive turretted Ajax and that seems to be a lot for a single ‘armoured’ division (and Trg Org, Repair Pool and Attrition Reserve).
In terms of how equipment is procured, the army does Combat Devlopment and kicks around concepts, then writes a Requirement document, then the procurement guys at Abbey Wood issues Requests for Tenders etc etc – short list created – equipments tested and a recommendation goes to the Minister. It is always a political pick in the end. Sometimes it all goes wrong, the process is short-circuited and the Minister screws up the decision, and the army then has to make do with the Minister’s pick – hence our armoured infantry now have to accept wheeled Boxer, rather that to get upgraded Warrior.
On the 80/20 Pareto principle, that becomes increasingly less valid for a very small army – we cannot live with an 80% solution, if the enemy has got the 100% solution and more of those equipments than we have.
I am envious of the naval shipbuilding strategy which seems tighter than the ‘only just written’ Land one. All RN vessels have to be made in UK by British owned contractors, I think? That forces UK to keeep a naval shipbuilding industry. If we had similar for Land equipments 20 or more years ago, we might still have a strong British-owned AFV industry.

For industries like cars, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. All it does is reduce the security of the industry.
Once vehicles like warrior or challenger leave service, there will be no opportunities to refit vehicles and maintain some sort of industry. We will then have to standardise on either European or US kit.

I somewhat understand the process of procurement, but if you are at the forefront of innovation of tactics and structures, there will likely be no off the shelf design, meaning you have to design it yourself. If you have no domestic industry you can’t design this vehicle. It likely means we will follow in the shadow of Europe/US/SK in creating new ideas.

Cancelling Warrior also had the knock on effect of damaging LMUK. Upgrades of that kind are the perfect stepping stone to brand new designs.
Even if we wanted a new tracked IFV, what would we do?
BAE would really struggle to build CV90 here and either way the design is nearly 40 years old. We can’t design our own IFV. Other options would be German, US, or SK, but they may not fit the requirement we have.
Th best way forward that I can see is buying K21 IFV and K9A2. Hanwha have already said that they will build K9 in UK if bought. I would go one step further and create a UK subsidiary. This could easily be created as they probably need a subsidiary in Europe in order to reach the market easier. All we would need to do is beat Poland’s order.
Poland ordered 672 K9. Obviously that will never happen, which is why k21 should be bought as well.
100 K9, 100 K10, 600 K21 isn’t unrealistic.

RBSL and Hanwha UK could then compete for future designs
Future Boxer orders would be reduced. They are built incredibly slow- just 260 by 2030. That would be presumably around 40 ICV variants, enough to equip one battalion. Warrior won’t be going anywhere any time soon so the IFV capability won’t be lost.

All ‘warships’ have to be built in UK. This is why there is controversy over RFA vessels. The good thing about the shipbuilding here is the design. BMT for an example designed Tide class, despite them being built in Korea.

Not sure I agree with everything here. In the past our AFVs were base overhauled by static REME workshops every 7 yeras or so – not sure if this still happens by Babcock, which replaced the REME static units.
But very major modifications and upgrades would be done by Industry – but this has not been happening for decades – it should be reinstated.
Chieftain had a huge number of modifications/upgrades and a different Mark number was then declared – take a look at Chieftain Wiki entry – such regular and major upgrades did not happen with CR1 or CR2 (up till now) or Warrior or AS90 – due to bean-counters I suspect. It has lead to a parlous state of our entire heavy fleet.

Irrespective of Warrior going out of service (in about 2-3 years time) – UK Industry could still do upgrades on all the other in-service AFVs.

The main activity for Industry though is to manufacture new vehicles – and we have Industry that does that – GDUK make the Ajax family; RSBL and WFEL make the Boxer family. LM make turrets. The AFV manufacturing industry has not totally died out (I have just mentioned 4 UK-based companies, plus BAE of course (although not sure if they currently have AFV facilities), so we will not be forced to buy from Europe or the USA.

We can of course design AFVs – those companies mentioned have design teams. Ajax is a British design (albeit very loosely based on a GD Spain vehicle). CR3 is a German/British design.

You say to buy K21 IFV – but we have ordered Boxer to replace Warrior IFV – so its too late.

K9 Thunder SPG purchase is feasible. K10 looks like a good ammo resupply vehicle but bean-counters will say a wheeled truck is cheaper!

GDUK will really struggle to get another contract. They took an in service vehicle, let MTU make the engines, LM the turrets, Thales the sights, hulls made in Spain and they still messed up.
Boxer isn’t a British design.
RBSL is BAE and Rheinmetall so BAE doesn’t really have any independent UK land systems manufacturing.
WFEL is just a sub-contractor, as is LMUK (with Warrior cancellation), they aren’t the same as RBSL.

Boxer wasn’t originally bought to replace Warrior so there is no reason it has to stay that way. We may as well wait and see if K21 wins Land 400 phase 3 in Australia.
There is no way Warrior will leave service in the next few years unless we gap mechanised infantry. 260 Boxers to be delivered by 2030 still won’t fully replace all the Warriors in service.

A Hanwha UK could compete with RBSL. Would you trust GDUK with another major contract? Even if it goes smoothly from now on, a very simple contract for a very important vehicle has had severe delays.

There is lots that a Hanwha subsidiary could bring to the table. Artillery production for starters.

I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the differences between Warrior and Warrior upgrade and CH2 and 3 were significantly larger than the differences between the different Marks of Chieftain.

I agree that GDUK will struggle to get another contract to supply the British Army, but as the OEM for the Ajax family they will at least lobby to do upgrade work in the future.

Sure Boxer isn’t a British design – I never said it was. I said that those British-based companies have design teams – so they (well, BAE or RBSL, or GDUK) could design a new British AFV. Of course there has to be question marks about the competence of the GDUK design team!

Fair point about WFEL and their part in the Boxer build – they are as you say a subcontractor to ARTEC – but they are doing quite a lot of work – “WFEL’s slice of the workshare includes fabricating hulls, assembling finished vehicles, and integrating and testing finished vehicles”. They could develop into an AFV Assembly Hall operation.

Thus we could go into the future with several companies that can design and build AFVs, so we wouldnt be forced to buy off the shelf from the US and Europe.

My point about the Chieftain is that we used to do regular and frequent upgrades, which is as it should be. Its a collosal error to do almost nothing to Warrior for 30 years (except fit BGTI and upgrade comms to Bowman) then create one giant upgrade plan (WCSP) that runs into trouble and is cancelled, and the army is then left with no tracked IFV, so has to take a replacement decided on by politicians which won’t do the job. Imagine if the Navy or RAF did similar!

I somewhat misquoted the March 2021 statement. It said that Warrior will not be upgraded but will be kept on until replaced by Boxer in the middle of this decade – as you say, that is quite impossible, given the timeline for the Boxer build.

Louis, additional to my earlier reply. You might want to check this out:

https://defence.nridigital.com/global_defence_technology_jun21/wfel_boxer_miv_facility

My reply went missing. Why was CR1 a ‘terrible tank’?

Your reply hasn’t gone missing for me.
I replied to your comment saying that CH1 was indeed a good tank, especially with manoeuvrability compared to previous tanks. I was being overly negative. I just think MBT 80 would’ve produced what the army wanted, rather than having a tank not specific to their needs.

Reply now back in place! MBT80 spec was almost identical to CR1 – but it did have a modern HVAC system.

No, I hadn’t mate. All well before my time my friend so keep them coming.

I concur, it’s an interesting perspective, I’m sure the Woke brigade will be along to condemn it before long….

It’s a bit of an extension to the often rumoured stories of PM threatened British military action (against the country we aren’t allowed to mention) and it being ‘strongly advised’ by senior British military officers at the time, that such orders weren’t given, as it would have potentially caused serious split loyalties and trouble in some ‘Special’ quarters….

Hi Andrew – the Ukraine war could turn very hot for NATO very suddenly. Putin and his flunkey Medvedev are clearly mentaly unstable; WW3 may have already started. Our defence establishment is clearly top-heavy and we could save a lot of taxpayers money by having a good old clear-out. They won’t do that of course, they will cut military capability first to save their jobs and pensions

They’re not mentally unstable.

They are unscrupulous, they lack any humanity, and certainly seem to qualify for the term “evil”.

They are also misguided. Misguided in their belief the Ukrainians would roll-over as happened in 2014. Misguided in their belief the West would be too cowardly to supply weapons to Ukraine. And they most certainly have been misled by their military as to its capabilities and successes on the ground.

But mentally unstable? No. If that were the case they would have attacked NATO long before now. They know that would be suicidal, which is why they have not.