Britain's way forward. A flexible military posture?

via EuropeanGeoStrategy

However, with a current strength of nineteen Escorts, and just HMS Ocean and the Dock Assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, it is now usually just six escorts and a single capital ship. In simple terms, in fifteen years the RN’s on call fully worked up and deployable strength has been cut by 50%. This was all done on the altars of peace, networking and financial hardship; unfortunately peace has not broken out, networking does not allow a ship (or any piece of equipment) to be in more than one place at any time and the financial hardship, while real, is starting to ease. The RAF has not fared much better. In fact, for a nation which has been involved in conflicts as continually as Britain has been (1968 was the last year Britain was not at war), the real surprise is not how little is spent on the armed forces but the fact that the armed forces still manage to deliver all that they do.
So with these few tanks, limited warship numbers and generally underfunded forces, how can Britain best contribute to NATO? The answer lies in how those forces are used.

Interesting.

The author of this piece is Alexander Clark of Naval History Blog.  Quite honestly its the most reasonable plan I've seen set forward on how the UK can continue to be a major player on the world's stage while acknowledging current budgets.

As critical as I am of Marine Corps leadership they're doing the same.

Let's hope that the USAF and Army get the memo.  Hope.  Hope that you can jerry rig some type of deal out of a divided Congress is not a plan.  Neither is whining for more money.

Plan for the worst, tell policy makers what they get with the budget they provide and be done with it.

That's what Alexander and HQMC is doing.  We need to extend that to the entire DoD.