Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has announced today that The First Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland will lead the British Army’s new Ranger Regiment.

This is part of a major shake-up of the British Army.

British Army undergoing ‘most significant’ shake up in 20 years

According to a news release:

“This boost for Scotland comes under new plans announced as part of ‘Future Soldier’, the Army’s most radical transformation in over 20 years. 1 SCOTS will become 1st Battalion, The Ranger Regiment and will operate alongside three other battalions.

The Ranger Regiment sits at the heart of the Army’s new expeditionary posture and will be routinely deployed alongside partner forces around the world to counter extremist organisations and hostile state threats. It is part of the newly established Army Special Operations Brigade. Training and selection will commence from the 1st December 2021.”

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

“Future Soldier is reinforced by the ambition outlined in the Defence Command Paper to transform the Army into a more agile, integrated, lethal, expeditionary force. We have underpinned this generational work with an extra £8.6bn for Army equipment, bringing the total investment to £41.3 billion. Our army will operate across the globe, equipped with the capabilities to face down a myriad of threats from cyber warfare through to battlefield conflict.”

The British Army’s new Ranger Regiment – What will they be used for?

The Ministry of Defence also say that the 2nd and 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland will continue to be based in Scotland with 2 SCOTS staying in Edinburgh and 3 SCOTS staying in Inverness until 2029 before moving to Leuchars – forming an integral part of a new Security Force Assistance Brigade. The Scots Dragoon Guards will remain as a Light Cavalry Regiment based out of Leuchars.

Glencorse Barracks has been saved from closure, and an additional sub-unit will be based at Kinloss. Redford Barracks closure has been delayed by four years to 2029, with plans to close Fort George, Inverness continuing as planned.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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118 COMMENTS

    • The regular army has been cut about once or twice a decade since the end of the Korean War. I expect they are glad they have survived being axed, and just have to change their capbadge.

    • Why Rob? They should never knock having more work to do. The Scots having a long and distinquished war fighting history – long may it continue in whatever form it is needed.

      • They may have a long and distinguished history, the biggest problem is a lack of recruits. Most of the RRofS is under-mannned or full of Fijians.

    • MOD are well lacking in any understanding in UK regional differences.Why would you call a Scottish regiment “the rangers” you are going to vastly reduce recruiting incentives with that rebrand. They really did not think that idea out.

  3. Two things the first What happens if Bonnie Nichola gets her Indie Ref ,the Second Lads who Support Celtic aren’t going too be impressed

  5. Pathetic nonsense. Every regiment in the army is understrength. So now they dream up some kind of garbage ranger outfit. Why? What for? To what end?

    The last time the British Army had rangers was in 1754 or thereabouts, in the Anglo French wars in north America.

    Distraction tactics taking eyes off the ball of the serious problems and issues that the Army has been facing for years.

    • Because you have private companies doing it leaching the guys from the army. And the way forth isn’t large formations no more. We aren’t ruling a quarter of the world and anyone will tell you, you let your allies slog it out firstly before we send in our lot. Look at the JEF for example and all the Northern European nations included in that.

      • It’s not private companies that make 4 year service young soldiers decide to leave, its crap pay, crap conditions, crap food to name but 3.

      • So now those apparent soldiers who would leave for PMCs would stay?

        Bollocks. Getting nice toys to play with and fun exercises/operations to go on is only a minor, if even a reason, they leave.

        No, they leave mainly due to being offered much better pay (easy to be out and done in a few years) wnd generally better conditions.

        • Again, hailing from a uksf family, the reason it’s lower is to retain an army of volunteers not an army of opportunists. As you well know, the Russians have said we breed an army of warriors not conscript wets.

          • And with that brings some moving onto private security work.

            Now, it’s probably the best balance, but you were claiming it would decrease that flow. It won’t as pretty much nothing will have changed that causes people to go private.

        • Spot on! I chinned off the LE route half way through to go and work as a PMC! Money better, same banter with the blokes, bit of adrenaline as well, as the UK just ending combat ops in Afghan and the Army was starting to get back to its peacetime bullshit once more!

    • Royal Irish Rangers in existence until 1992.

      Anyway the Army is a very different beast now from the Monolithic organisation that i joined in 1996. Practicing Grand armoured warfare in Germany for a war that hadn’t been a likelihood for the last 10 years. The Army stagnated in this mindset until until we got pulled up pretty sharply with the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghan.

      At least this Ranger Regiment (although my pride can’t stand the US analogy) is an attempt for us to try and get ahead or at least level with the game.

      Why waste resources trying to prepare for a conventional war with a peer adversary when we haven’t got the numbers to win on the ground?

      • That BAOR armoured warfare practice was surely useful in Gulf War 1 and 2.
        The conventional war against a peer won’t just be us – it’ll be a US-led coalition or most/all of NATO.

    • The British Army had the Connaught Rangers that existed for well over a hundred years as a specialist force who fought all over the Empire.

  6. Could someone please explain what ’emotional intelligence’ means? I know the meaning of each word but don’t understand the meaning in context to these rangers and google is not being very helpful

    • Means these guys have the cultural awareness to appreciate local traditions and customs. Look at the likes of TE Lawrence, Percy Fawcett. They appreciated the land they were in. As you well know, British soldiers have had a poor reputation for public relations! I steer you toward the chronicles of army history since the Seven Years War. Did not the Govt empty the prisons and hire Germans to fight our own people in America?! Hardly a legacy.

      • Absolutely disagree with the cultural awareness comment in regard to British soldiers! Policy at Government level is one thing but seeing the average bloke on the ground doing what they do, cultural awareness was utilised and in operation.

          • Its expected at every level and is taught pre-deployment in regard to that nations culture and sensitivity. And is that DE or LE? As Sandhurst syllabus incorporates many many requirements but as an LE, “current affairs” as such isn’t on the syllabus.

          • I guess the army just wants it’s troops to be more aware generally of others and other cultures and even our own lot. Given the reports of uksf and the like executing prisoners, it’s no wonder. As with everything though there are always two sides.

          • Troops have always been taught the cultural sensitivities of nations we intend to deploy to, certainly since my time. As for talk of execution of prisoners, shit does happen, that’s not so much a cultural thing but a combat thing. War is a nasty, smelly, dirty business and individuals react in different ways to it, both at that time and 10 years later on mate.

      • But we need depth and the ability to reinforce and take losses of both people and equipment, and at the moment we are to small and to sparsely equipped.

        • To be honest, 85,000 in the army would be fine as long as they were fully equipped, with a decent amount of tanks, helicopters, artillery, armoured vehicles etc.

          Small but armed to the teeth.

        • Attritional losses for what? Why would we attempt to fight Russia on equal terms when we have several countries closer to Russia and China with more soldiers than us? UK brings the expertise as we have always. Nelson didn’t win by numbers did he?

          • Really? Additional losses in war! This may come as a surprise even small number of losses at Coy level will negate that Coys effectiveness (as we saw on Afghan and we only had that ongoing as a single operation) You may not think we will fight Russia, we wouldn’t alone, but any military organisation needs depth to be able to sustain even low level repetitive losses and to think any other way is a very civvy way of thinking I’m afraid! As for Nelson come on it’s a bit of an out of date comparison don’t you think!

          • Omg, Britain will always fight the clever war. Even Radakin said that this year. Read his speeches from 2021 for the IR and on the forces websites.

          • It would be foolish to assume that we’ll always outsmart our enemies. That’s a recipe for disaster.

            We do need depth in numbers – both of personnel and equipment – to be able to sustain losses in combat, which would be a certainty in a war against the likes of Russia or China.

            This is something that our forces, as a whole, have lost. The RAF and Royal Navy are similar; we lost ships in 1982 in the Falklands War but we had ships to replace them. We could sustain a few losses. Nowadays the loss of a single ship in combat would be near-catastrophic.

            The same with the RAF; we have so few combat aircraft that even before we take losses we’re relegated to a bit part in any NATO conflict, and when we do start taking losses it will have a bigger hit on our capabilities.

          • We fought the clever war against Germany in WW2, we still lost a quarter of a million troops, nearly 300 major warships were sank and over 8,000 RAF aircraft shot down.

          • 1940 was won by radar. Later the griffon engine, 1945 the atomic bomb that we’d shipped from north wales to the US along with our war production. Thankfully we have a US that doesn’t want to spitefully end our days and is again a team player in the great English speaking project!

          • What the hell are you talking about?!

            1940 was won by radar, yes. But guess what; we still lost a ton of planes. Radar would have meant bugger all if we had so few aircraft as to make a difference, or couldn’t replace our losses.

            Technical advantages only buy you so much advantages. Eventually the small numbers would be overwhelmed, or we’d lose assets and, very quickly, operational effectiveness.

          • Steve see my answer above in contribution to your answer 👍! Robert is thinking the same as us, the UK needs a professional, high tech deployable force able to fight and move, but has maybe a different way of describing it!

          • Yeah I think we are on the same page mate, as Radakin said we can’t compete with mass so best go with tech to fight the upper hand. Obviously why Boris wants more investment from uk investors and more r&d

          • About 600 if I remember right.
            Hey pal, we were on the back foot for a long while, the griffon engines made in USA were a great help. Those fw190 and bf109 chewed us up rotten. Radar was the clever war!

          • 1940 was won by the channel and the BF109s limited range and endurance, coupled with radar, a decent amount of spitfires, the ability to rotate pilots into and out of 10/11 group, and the control room at Uxbridge….,amongst many other smaller contributions such as Polish and Czech piloted etc

          • No war is clever let me assure you! And by saying that you are assuming we will be smarter than the future enemy, another arrogant assumption that will ensure people will die and kit will be lost! As I’ve stated, depth is required to sustain any ongoing operation at every level. So God isn’t involved at any stage.

          • Mate not sure, probably laziness if I’m honest, I did 2001/2003/2006/2008/20011 and 3 years as a PMC and always called it Afghan! Although do dislike the term some use “the ghan” ! Cheers mate.

          • I would of thought it’s as the first part of Afghanistan is afghan. Less syllables when speaking. Is there something wrong with saying afghan?

          • I have heard ‘Stan’ very occassionally – trouble is there are quite a few differnt ‘Stans’.

          • The army abbreviate or shorten everything – you must remember that: eg. ‘compo’ for composite ration etc

        • You would think that would be bloody obvious to the people who run this country , its bloody criminal the state of the army at the moment , defense is the prime responsibility and they keep selling the global Britain ethos while stretching our armed forces to its limits.

  8. The biggest threats today other than terrorism, is China and its confrontation with Taiwan and the rest of the world, plus Russia having a pop at Ukraine again … and the tory party decide again to reduce the size of the Army.

    Reality check, the Army has been haemorrhaging personnel for years. There isn’t the interest nor the will to stop people leaving the army.

    No one asks nor cares why a 24 year old in the prime of his life decides to leave the Army, and try their luck in the outside world.

    Last one out of the barrack block turn off the lights, and leave the key at the guardhouse.

    • A potentially bigger problem is getting them to join the Army in the first place. Capita makes it even harder when applications take forever now.

      I applied to join the army in 2012 and was told best-case would be 3 months from application to starting training, worst-case 9-12 months. I think now, 12 months would be the most optimistic timeframe.

      Didn’t matter for me, sadly I failed the medical and had to have a hip replacement shortly after.

  9. I think the plans are the best of a bad job considering we have reduced spending from 5% plus of GDP in the late 1980s to just 2% of GDP today. The problem with a democracy is that defence spending buys few votes at a General Election! What worries me most is will 1st Bn The Rangers retain the historic title of Royal Scots Borderers – the oldest regiment in the UK – the original 1st Regiment of Foot – known as “Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard” because they are so ancient. Under the Royal Regiment of Scotland they kept their ancient name – but will they as 1st Bn Rangers – I hope so for tradition’s sake.

  10. Hi folks hope all is well.
    Upon reading the articles on this subject, I do have concerns that our actual army personnel are reduced. It all sound very encouraging to hear the announcement of the new Rangers Regiment, however, it seems to be at the sacrifice of other army assets.
    As ever I’m going to be guided by you experts on this site.

    What worries me is what is going to happen if this country is faced with a threat. While politicians are debating who to partner with, we have to act fast before being overwhelmed in the conflict zone. How would current numbers cope? I wonder if our political leadership has factored this scenario when considering reductions?
    Any advice please as always is welcome.
    Cheers
    George

    • I am suspicious of the thought process that concluded we needed a 1,000 strong Ranger Regiment of 4 battalions. Is it because there are to be 4 (administrative) divisions of Infantry and one Ranger bn is drawn from each – thus the maths looks neat. Or is it to preserve 4 under-strength battalions in the Orbat (I hear that Ranger battalions are only 250-strong rather than a standard bn being a bit over 500).

      Is there enough work for 4 Ranger bns? If they are all out around the world doing good work, then that is 4 battalions less for UKplc to call on if the balloon really does go up.

  11. Why the hell are we forming a new regiment of rangers and spending all this money for them to do a job the paras could and have been doing 🤔

    • 1 PARA is lead component in SFSG; 2 and 3 PARA are early-entry forces, and need to be in the UK at high-readiness. They are not available to perform this world-wide Ranger role, and they are probably not best suited to the job – it is far more than teaching foreign armies how to be aggressive warriors with rifle, bayonet and Gimpy.

    • yes was a cadet till joined at 17 kosb all the way gone ,nothing against royal scots but kings own were good infantry battalion a waist

  14. They are going to take a regular Infantry Battalion, give it a new cap badge and it’s going to be “special?’ Really? Plus have they spoken to the families of all these Rangers who are going to be on deployment so much? Can’t see them being overly thrilled about it.

  15. Just watched a programme called Elite Regiments, one episode was about the US ARMY Rangers, formed and trained for the first time in of all places Northern Ireland 1942/43

  17. Gogs. The hierarchy obviously don’t think the “regular ” Army are capable of dealing with the future conflicts what ever may come . So Iraq Afghanistan Falklands or NI better hope they don’t start again?

  18. So as per usual the Scots take precedence as some sort of appeasement to the independence movement. As if anything this govt does matters one iota to that woman. A lot of nonsense being written about this regiment which is really 2, not 4 battalions. What happens to the 300 men in each battalion that doesn’t cut it for the ‘Rangers’?
    Are they for the chop? 500 troops ‘saved’. Whoopsie do. 9,500 still binned though by 2025 or sooner if Wallace gets his way. A smaller army than the smallest it’s ever been is apparently a more lethal weapon. The RAF losing Typhoon squadrons and a third of it’s lifting capacity makes us more flexible and adaptable. Absolute BS all of it. Nobody takes us seriously anymore as we insist on cutting forces whilst still making warlike noises with very little to back it up with.

    • The headline is misleading. A battalion of the Ranger Regiment is being formed from each of the new 4 (admin) divisions of Infantry. The Scots (RRS) contribution is for just one of those 4 bns.
      There will only be 300 spare men if a given battalion re-assigned to Ranger is at full-strength and most of them are not – however I am sure that any spare men will be re-distributed.
      You are right about the overall cuts to the army – we have heard it is the smallest since the Peninsular Wars for quite a few years now – and it still gets smaller.
      Wallace successfully gets more defence money yet the army and the RAF end up smaller – and the army’s equipment modernisation still seems to be years away.
      The MoD/army aspires to have a fully networked (digitised) warfighting Division by 2025-2030 (I think) – I am sure, though, that it will be quite a small division.

      • 2 Brigades plus the DAG! Our Divisions have had 3 brigades for as long as I remember.

        I find the idea of 7 LMBCT and 4 LBCT having 5 and 6 battalions of infantry ludicrous.

        Each should have 3 full size battalions and cut the rest and reinvest the manpower into CS and CSS to support 4 LBCT.

  20. a move intended to stealthily remove a Scottish regiment / battalion and replace it with a “loyalist” unit, named after a particular faction of supporter in Ireland, based in Ulster and entirely stripped of all Scottish association. Just as we now have a brand new unit called the “Scottish and Northern Irish Yeomanry” which uses the Gray beret of the RSDG and which will entirely replace the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards soon.
    Scotland is being stripped of all military assets.

      • wot are you goin on abaat this for?
        its not like we need to tab in
        its just stuff that pops up on an internet feed for god sake

        • WTF are you frothing about, I’ve recced all your previous and you are continuously months and years late answering posts and posters comments, which is an indication of sad trolling, with an avatar name change thrown in! And you have limited subjects matter knowledge. Also you answer these replies to your old posts very quickly, a little bit more verification of possible troll activity!

        • And now I’ve mentioned the sudden speed of replies in comparison with your previous months late contributions, in highlighting possible troll behaviour you now are not replying so soon! Cheers, more confirmation of troll activity!

          • your BPD is showin.
            stfu

            ps
            and this really is my last despite you being desperate to chitty chat
            You are givin me jip simply for standing up for my culture because i put that first and Britain second
            fact is, and you are a liar if you deny it, but you put being engerlish first and british second too
            so wots the effin problem. 🤡
            out

          • Very desperate response, with some very desperate spelling! Please try to make an effort! Remember you replied to me, a year late, and now you don’t like, and cannot handle, being taken to task about your nonsense. But it’s ok, the subject matter is beyond you and I can understand why you try to change the subject in order to cloud the original posts!

          • And I love the teenage txt speak….rather than defend your argument you tell me to “stfu” 😂😂😂🐒

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