via UKAFC.
If it is true, the British Army is deadRead the whole thing here.
The Telegraph says that in October all the 31 remaining battalions of the army under Army 2020 will be cut back further, to 520-man establishments.
This is a completely new thing. The Army has been planning to reach the 82.000 regulars figure having only Light Role infantry battalions cut back to comparable levels, and even those actually higher: 561 men. Considering that this means removing one rifle platoon from each Company, hoping in a top-up coming from paired reserve battalion before deployment, i can't even begin to imagine what a battalion of 520 men would look like. It would probably be utterly useless.
The reduction to Light Role Infantry battalions and Gurkhas already can't be described as smart because the Reserves recruitment is, so far at least, going horribly, and there are three such downsized infantry battalions which do not have at all a paired reserve battalion from which to draw manpower: 1 SCOTS battalion and the two Gurkha battalions are left unpaired in the announced Army 2020 plan, because there are not enough reserve infantry battalions.
Add another kill to the belt of the F-35. You either buy the F-35 and nothing else or you have a military. Seems like the Brits have decided to have the F-35 instead of a military.
NOTE: Don't ignore this development. The Brits are the canary in the coal mine.
In a fucked up way, it's Douhet and the Air Cowboys final blow to ground forces. If you can't bomb your enemy to submission, you can force them to buy expensive aircraft so they must decrease the size of their ground forces to afford them.
ReplyDeleteThis could be reflection of two possibilities. Either Western militaries want to be able to establish air superiority to protect ground forces OR they want to be able offer disgusting panaceas to weak-willed politicians who are squeamish about casualties AND this platform will provide them with the ability to do Kosovo '99 and Libya type air-missions without fear of casualties.
I fear it is the latter because I don't see a lot of Western governments with guts willing to risk their expensive military and want to use military action as a PR gimmick that they can point to and say, "see, we protected the [insert oppressed group of the week] and bombed their enemies with our stealth bombers. We are mighty and strong, vote for us".
And the military hacks who serve these politicians but suck it up and offer up these shitty military options and defense contractor platforms are worse because they know war doesn't work like that, but they do it any ways because they can get a nice defense contractor job and play golf at a private golf during retirement.
I seriously don't know how people who love the military can abide by these actions by their political leaders without blowing their brains out or resigning en masse. Why support a corrupt system or its leaders with your dedication and service?
Run for the exits.
yup pretty much...
DeleteSince moving to the BCT formation aren't our Army battalions around this size? I know we have more battalions but the point still remains.
ReplyDeleteyeah but the Army is built around BRIGADE combat teams...not battalions. the Brits are similar to the USMC in that they form around Battalions
DeleteAt least 3 combat battalions in a Mech Infantry/Armor BCT, 3 companies+hq in a Battalion sometimes more. Plus attached units as available/needed. Though I believe its changed a bit since I got out. Not as many as there should be but geez still a lot more than 500....
DeleteNothing new to this, in Denmark we are living with politicians cutting off almost a quarter of our economy...
ReplyDeleteThe World is not dangerous anymore, at least not if you ask our politicians and their advisors, that have never seen any other soldier than the ones on the big screen!
Those cutting our ranks, economy and gear should be send to the frontline and try it out for themselves!
well said. remember all this is happening with the backdrop of what is essentially a regional war in the Middle East happening.
DeleteSyria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan are all seeing violence occur and no one is willing to connect the dots.
Who cares.
DeleteEurope has been militarily irrelevant for a decade now.
France has no F-35, yet it is cutting more and more to appease the socialists.
Stop blaming the F-35 for everything.
i care. remember the "red dragon" to our east? how is Europe militarily irrelevant when the very basis of our naval doctrine is based on interoperablity with allies? France's Rafale is also an expensive airplane. its about a military industrial complex that has morphed into something obscene.
Deletethe future is in advanced but affordable airplanes. you can scream and holler but the issue is simple. do you want a balanced force that can fly and fight or do you want an F-35 and nothing else.
i wish i had come up with that quote but i didn't. the SecDef said it and the Commandant verified it.
A rampant, unrestricted welfare state environment destroys military capability.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
DeleteSolomon seems to blame EVERYTHING on the F-35, yet never offers up any viable alternative.
social spending is an issue. but its not the only problem. anyone anywhere would call an airplane in development over more than a decade a failure just begging to be killed.
Deleteyou make excuses for the failure we've seen and even when senior pentagon officials tell you that its going to cost people and weapon systems to keep it going you sit back and say thank you, may i have another.
to me thats craziness. better to shoot the failed program in the face, drag it out into the deep woods and let the wild pigs eat it than to let the thing muddle along zombie like for another ten years.
The F35, for now, cannot be blamed for british forces cuts. They have expended on F35 perhaps 2 and a half billion pounds since 2001. The big expenditure is, eventually, coming along in the future.
DeleteIf you have to blame an airplane at all costs, you should look at Typhoon. 10 years in service, and its ground attack capability is still ridiculously basic, with integration of weaponry to take up to seven more years according to the MOD.
160 airplanes bought at huge cost, only to (if plans do not change) throw in the trash over fifty of them after just about 10 years of service (the Tranche 1, from 2016), never standing up more than five combat squadrons.
32 airplanes bought, for every single 12-plane frontline squadron fielded, when any air force normally has a ratio of between 19 to 24 airplanes per each squadron of 12. It is so demented that the F35 issues in comparison aren't even worth bothering.
It might be stupid to buy a plane while it is still in development, but putting a fighter jet in service and taking nearly twenty more years to integrate on it capabilities and weapons is much worse.
Especially since these capabilities have little to nothing of really innovative: AESA radar, conformal fuel tanks, Brimstone and Storm Shadow have been around for years and are already available on planes which have been around for decades.
Especially since you've acquired 53 of them (out of 160) in an early production standard which does not only have computer differences, but airframe differences, which make it way to expensive to bother with upgrading them, so that in a period of budget restrictions they just end retired ridiculously early.
The only issue with the UK is they are spending too little on defense as a percentage of GDP, just like the rest of Europe, and additionally have their nuclear forces paid from the same budget. There aren't buying the F-35 yet and frankly the Typhoon costs them more. If you include the development cost for the Typhoon, we pay for the F-35 development costs so the UK just pays the unit cost, then the Tranche 3's are $178 million.
ReplyDeleteThis report comes from the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that is well known for getting it wrong. If the report about the British army is true, then it means one platoon in every company will be reservists. An armoured infantry battalion has 729 men and a mechanized battalion has 709 so even with the loss of 4 platoons, that's 3 rifle platoons and a heavy weapons platoon, then its not going to be 520 men, more like 600. The original plan was to have 6 brigades made up of regulars and reservists, it was these light role battalions that would have 520 men. I don't believe this report, the numbers don't add up, more than likely this is just the usual dim bunch of journalists who do not understand anything about the military
ReplyDelete