Despite the MoD having a dim view of people speculating about what is to be cut it seems we are about to reach fever pitch.
This from Defence Management
The results of a three-month study designed to eliminate the Ministry of Defence’s budget deficit and tackle unfunded liabilities are due to be announced soon. The study was launched by Defence Secretary Liam Fox earlier this year and announced by the Ministry of Defence as looking to manage “defence priorities and the budget over the long-term”.
Recent media reports have indicated a £10b funding shortfall, better known as Hole, Black, Mk7
The various rumours include yet more salami slicing, cancelling projects and reducing force levels but rumours are just that.
It remains to be seen when and what cuts actually materialise but its a depressingly familiar story somewhat out of tune with political hot air
To balance the books you cut equipment or people – simples!
From the army perspective they have an awful lot of people but (at the moment) a relatively large amount of commitment. On the equipment side most of the equipment currently being used on operations is not ‘core’ equipment and is funded by Central Government Reserves. The issue, as CGS pointed out at the recent RUSI Land Warfare Conference is that the Army is now heavily focused on Afghanistan in eveything it does and is equipped with. How does the army re-shape to operations outside of AFghanistan, especially if it has had to make (rampant speculation here) further cuts to its core equipment capabilities?
Of course a large part of the MOD black hole would not have happened if the Treasurey had not imposed Resource Account Budgeting on the MOD in 2000 which overnight made the MOD appear filthy rich overnight.
Astute 7 (Ajax) for the chop. ASW escorts chopped to 8 T23. T26 cancelled. Lease for Rivers not renewed (though we may need them if EU goes belly up!) CVF sold to India. Freeze on recruitment for 3 years.
I bet the mortgage money.
CVF (Calm down gabs it’s only speculation)
Followed by biggish army cuts.
Tornado’s etc out ASAP
Some combination of above.
Isn’t a lot of this driven by trying to budget for the F-35, and CVF? Future weapons systems at the cost of current capability. I wonder if the politicians aren’t just using them to hollow out your forces now, then say.. opps gonna sell the CVF, and buy a cheaper aircraft, except you lose that part of the budget too…
F35 isnt in the current budget period. If this is a short term deficit/budget cut then cutting it save not much now. The problem any government would have in cutting cvf/f35 is it effective kills a large portion of the manufacturing industry in real economy.
So for me bin ladens dead time to follow the french out of afghan limits our roles to traing and sf support its a US show after all and reduce the army to a more appropriate size of around 60000. Cant see what else is really left to cut from the other services that would save enough money in the short term.
Yes that is why CVF will built and sold. Perhaps we should sell India some Astutes…………
@ChrisinV ‘Isn’t a lot of this driven by trying to budget for the F-35, and CVF? Future weapons systems at the cost of current capability.’
Correct. Don’t expect anything in Futureforce2020 to get the axe, Fox was touting the future as CVF, F35, Astutes, Type 26, A400M only yesterday (which means after these ongoing meetings).
The FT ran an excellent piece on the potential latest cuts entitled ‘Funding gap pits Cameron against MoD chiefs’ :-
“The SDSR will significantly cut spending over the next four years to meet the tighter financial squeeze, scrapping the Harrier jets, the carrier capability and so on. But the SDSR proposes that defence grows again from 2015 to 2020, with a revamped nuclear deterrent, the new Joint Strike Fighter and a new operational aircraft carrier.
“This means that after 2015 we need a real terms increase in defence spending of 2 per cent a year. Without a guarantee now that we will get this, we do not know today whether we can start making equipment purchases. “They need to know the reality,” says a senior MoD civil servant. “The prime minister has an ambitious view for defence in 2020. Either he makes clear that this will be paid for, or he must be honest with the public and scale back that vision now.”
Basically the blackhole is nearly £10bn because of extra risk assesment in post 2015 procurement spending meaning that in reality the gap is only as big as Cameron isn’t prepared to fill to meet his own SDSR he signed off on 10 months ago.
I expect one of the nuclear options to be taken up – down to 12 DD/FF (because T26 will bulk up those numbers later) – Army reduced to 80-85,000 or perhaps Tornado completely taken out of service after Libya.
This really does depend on how Cameron views the military (not promising in that regard) or whether he can withstand more media pressure over defence cuts.
how is 60,000 appropriate? as present strength is approx 102,000 tell me where you’re going to get rid of 42,000 and more importantly justify it. ‘kin hell 85,000 i can live with…just!
@ Andy
We shall see. But I can’t be bothered to speculate realistically on doom and gloom. And just because Fox said something yesterday it doesn’t mean it can’t change tomorrow.
Perhaps we should out source defence? I bet the Indians would jump at it for £10billion……
well 6000 is maximum deployed strength for sustained ops. 5:1 is required to maintain that without creating overstretch which is 30000. Other ops is a one off of 2000 and 1000 respectively using similar ratio I rounded it up to another 30000 to total 60000. The army drasticly need to improve its force generation capability. The navy and airforce will be down to 65000 total combined to meet all there standing commitments. Whats an army of 85000 going to do after afghan? We aint gonna be invaded countries for a long time.
There’s always another fight or war around the corner.
All these numbers are arbitrary. What matters is capabilities!
Phil, you are right another war is bound to be just around the corner. However in my view since probably the first Gulf war we have been a country looking for wars to fight. I’m not saying that all have not been just causes (Kosovo and Sierra Leone for example), but we have chosen ones that on the surface fit our capabilities (though as in Iraq we find ourselves subsequently wanting). Short of WW3 breaking out, we will just be more picky and get involved in less (as will the US). I leave it to individuals to decide if that is a good or bad thing.
In terms of cuts, I agree the loss of the 5 non ASW T23s is possible (even though the SDSR stated 19). We’ve touched on this before, but actually based on the expected fleet size it may not be a bad thing if replaced by something cheaper.
Looking at the published numbers I understand that a Clyde type vessel is a 1/3 of the cost of a T23 to run (including the leasing costs). If a upgraded vessel could be designed to include a retractable hanger, simple mission bay and possibly a 76mm gun then these could easily perform Caribbean, anti-piracy and even APT(S) duties. Leasing say 6 – 8 of these would actually take the pressure off the fleet, provide sales proceeds and cut significantly the running costs of the surface fleet.
@ repulse
It won’t be replaced with something cheaper. Nothing they ever build is cheaper
Removing 5 type23 saves very little as we would still need all the supt infrastructure to support the ones we have left. And I would add this if we cutting numbers we must cut commitments too if it’s more type 23 which patrols do we no longer do. the biggest saving right now is to get out of afghan we’ve done what we went there 10 years ago to do
RE ” 6000 is maximum deployed strength for sustained ops. 5:1 is required to maintain that without creating overstretch which is 30000. Other ops is a one off of 2000 and 1000 respectively using similar ratio I rounded it up to another 30000 to total 60000. The army drasticly need to improve its force generation capability.” – Well, I am not going with this calculation
But, one can arrive at a similar number through lip or mind reading>>>
Lately, it was stated that TA could account for 30% of the regular force strength. It is unlikely that the size of TA would go up much, but deployability and training intensity should (or, would have to, in such a scenario).
Then we will not be far off from the 60 k regulars?
Hi x,
Not a bad idea “Perhaps we should sell India some Astutes………”
- they just took another Russian nuclear sub on lease, while building their own. Go back to their carrier saga, and a 20 year window of opportunity beckons?
Talking about strategic co-operation: when will we get Diego Garcia back? No good as a navy base, but something to bring to the party, when others have such in the general area
The TA has a Volunteer culture. It means essentially that if you insist, you only have to attend the TA events you want to. Now in reality most people are varying shades of grey on this, some almost try to make the TA a living, others make an effort to attend important training events and others do something in between. This means that you can lay on the best training but you cannot force people to go (despite what some PSIs think). This can be both a good or bad thing, it means the TA is self selecting in that the most motivated and most suitable for Ops will make the effort and it means you have good Officers and SNCO’s who can organise good training. Its also bad in that good training events can be cancelled because nobody or too few rock up.
To intensify TA training you need a complete culture change into something like the US Army Reserves or National Guard with compulsory monthly drills.
I think this would be a mistake, I don’t think the US Reservists are any more deployable than ours and we’d sacrifice the entire Volunteer ethos and the flexibility of the TA – it would cost a lot of the best and brightest who bring something other than their TA rank to the game. IMHO.
The TA is like a low powered car, you actually have to drive it. What I mean is that the Officers, SNCOs and Permanent Staff need to always be on their toes and make the TA events meaningful and drive attendance. You can’t just whack it into cruise control and sit back and wait. Excuse the drawn out analogy!
What the regulars could do though is stop posting end of career Colour and Staff Sgts who just want to mark time in local TA units until their resettlement comes through.
But like any organisation, even if you have higher intensity training, if the movers and shakers are lazy or lacklustre then this will be reflected in the unit.
The TA does have a big problem in terms of junior officers though, especially infantry ones as they just aren’t very often being deployed in their infantry roles.
I wonder where the BBC got their “pre” report release facts from
- PM’s intervention at first, and now the report soon coming out
- 1 in 18 or 19 currently deployable?
- 30 % of total army strength? as a target,
- or, 30 % on top of the regular army strength
- TA vs Reserves; must be a different deployability ratio?
Well, we’ll soon see the whole report
“Don’t expect anything in Futureforce2020 to get the axe, Fox was touting the future as CVF, F35, Astutes, Type 26, A400M only yesterday (which means after these ongoing meetings).”
Astutes are indispensable, the carriers, whatever you think of them, are there and the contract cannot be broken, the A400 is also needed and it is realistically impossible to see a way to get out of it with the political and economic backlash it would cause, the Type 26 you can cut if you want, but all that is being expended on it are 124 millions on four years, of which one already gone, so you might recoup… like… 90 million at the very, very most.
F35 has also orders not yet placed, and most of the development cost has already been covered, so that stepping out of it now would save nearly nothing in the short term. Cancelling it would, again, compromise the future and the economic revenues for industry while doing actually little to fill the gap.
More than the post-2015 overspend prospect, which is hard to estimate realistically anyway, the real problem is the entity of the unfunded liabilities next year, in 2013 and 2014: if really there’s a billion of hole in 2012, trying to cover it with cuts in equipment would be simply devastating, and wholly out of proportion: the damage caused by a cut in equipment is massively oversized compared to the money saved, and there are disposals costs as well, further eating into the effect of the cut.
Indeed, the disposal costs of some of the cuts delivered by the SDSR are responsible for the new budget crisis, as the cuts delivered far less savings than hoped once everything was completed.
I still hope in some kind of political agreement, to cover at least good part of the hole.
The MOD has still to receive from the Treasury the payments for the “rebuilding” from Iraq, which was paid almost entirely from the core budget. According to Parliament, the MOD has seen zero pounds of those payments yet… hopefully they can be used to fill the gap some.
Trying to fill the hole with cuts will never really work. To give an idea, the whole surface fleet of the RN runs with just over a billion of funding per year.
Even cutting 5 Type 23, the saving is risible and not immediate, while the damage is massive and readily felt.
The way they are doing things mostly makes no sense at all.
Presumably the things we would have to cut would be things like: SPEAR capability 2, CAMM/FLAADS and all the other quite R&D programmes which are mostly joint with the French and are quietly giving us cutting capabilities with real export opportunities, and we could likely cut without any messy headlines in the Daily Telegraph.
BTW does anyone know what if any research we are doing on adding powered range extender kits to Paveway IV as given the French have demonstrated the success of AASM shouldn’t we be looking at something similar under SPEAR?
We binned Largs Bay to save a mere £10m per year, thats how bad things were at SDSR so nothing is off the table I would imagine, others than ceremonial and the Red Arrows
I know TD, but this does not mean that it makes sense.
“powered range extender kits to Paveway IV”
Along with wing kits, improved secure GPS and anti-bunker warhead this is/was indeed part of SPEAR.
I heard insistently that Airseeker is seen as very attractive a cut option, as it is a quick way to shave a billion in acquisition cost alone.
But the Rivet Joint is good capability, and a piece of kit that i believe should be pursued, so i hope it can be avoided.
@armchaircivvy ‘I wonder where the BBC got their “pre” report release facts from’
Is there a pre report release on the BBC then?
I’ll take the 5 type23 for starters. Then immediately commence Afghan drawdown. Sell off C17, learn to live with A330/A400 only. Challenger2 out now, an ASCOD based replacement in ten years time. Retire 2 and 3Para. Ignore or reinterpret UN res1973, heavily arm the rebels for a quick win, then go home and scrap the Tornados that took part. Begin unilateral nuclear disarmament. Demilitarise the Falklands. Corporate sponsorship to fund the Red Arrows, or no Red Arrows. Loads of savings – and it only took seconds to come up with them.
Brian Black said “Begin unilateral nuclear disarmament. Demilitarise the Falklands.”
We are a broad church aren’t we?
I don’t think the cuts will come in capability I think they will come from bases and from selling parts of the estate
For example RAF Northolt
either sell and release (100 years)… for an investor the asset keeps increasing in value and is great on the balance sheet.
or lease the airfield to an operator such as City of London Airport and turn a cost into a revenue generator (arrange for free use up to a certain capacity)
or parcel the site into sections and sell by auction for development (with outline residential planning approval ) use something like the 3G auction process
or split the costs with other departments and countries, “allowing an elite” (at a cost) for those with more cash than time
or …………….
Any assets in the south east can be turned into lovely wonga if you have half a brain and Bernard Gray has a whole one and it understands investments
‘ “powered range extender kits to Paveway IV”
Along with wing kits, improved secure GPS and anti-bunker warhead this is/was indeed part of SPEAR.’
Thanks Gabriele, do you have a link to the powered bit, as all I have found is a reference to using different wing kits to double the un-powered range, and I have not found any mention of adding solid rocket booster to tail of Paveway IV like the French have done on AASM.
reducing any ships from the royal navy would be insane!!! Reducing any combat aircraft from the Royal air force would be foolish considering commitements , also withdrawing the Tornado ! Replaced by What?. Selling any new equipment to emerging Powers like India!!no way. Savings , withdraw army from afghanistan and Germany and bring them lads home asap.
I cannot see much being saved from a further round of cuts in equipment. Personal will be one of the main targets along with the majority of programmes curretnly underway with the exception of CVF. The will either be cancelled all together or put on hold to gain short term saving. You can see where this is going, with the porgramme ocst increases swallowing up any funding increase post 2015 and we are back where we started. All this really emphasises the ham fisted approach taken with the SDSR. It seems that the treasury ia using the “Poor management” headline for the MoD to punish it by witholding extra funding that is affordable to close the funding gap, with the sole aim ofr saving money.
SO any programmes essential to FF2020 will be slowed down delayed and any programmes not deemed essential for this will be gone. AS a final thought, the Army in Germany could be butchered to try to save relocation costs.
@Phil. Good synopsis on the TA ethos. However, unless the TA culture does change it is unlikely to become more useable.
The problem across all Arms and Services is that the TA does on average 30 days training a year, and this training is mostly focused at the individual or platoon level. This has created a huge training gap between the TA and it’s regular counterpart, a training gap which is mist clearly seen in officers and SNCOs. This has to close.
In WW2 it took on average 6 months focused training to bring TA units and formations up to the same level of operational effectiveness as their regular counterparts.
The US experience is that Reserve and National Guard units start from a lower start point and require additional pre-deployment training, but are effective on operations. Under our current construct the TA struggles to provide individuals for operations in all except rifleman or driver roles, struggles to provide officers and SNCOs of sufficient competence to deploy in role and does not provide formed sub-units for operations (although this latter point is partially because the Field Army does not require the TA to do so).
I am a fan of the TA, but think that we do need to change the model, not least by looking at the limitation on how long we can mobilise individuals for; I would prefer 15 or 18 months.
The TA has struggled because it, along with the Regulars have not been imaginative enough in their mobilisation schemes. Only on H12/13 have things really started to come together with bespoke pre-deployment pathways for different trades. Now that this has been realised and the extra training it involves is accepted and planned for things are much better. The key now is not to forget these lessons when Afghanistan is over.
The time limits are artificial – you just sign an extension, takes 5 seconds.
Individually there are some very good TA soldiers, Officers and SNCOs, some much better potentially than their Regular counterparts. But the problem is, overall, TA personnel are often a risk because there is less individual training as you say and the pathways are there to de-risk the personnel and it works very well.
I think the model is sound once you accept that part-timers are a risk and you need to de-risk them before they deploy. The US ANG and Reserves are no better in this regard.
The big problem as you say is Officers, young officers especially. I do not believe there is a shortage of young thrusters in the Regular Army who want to go on ops and command men. There are not so many young ones keen to do Watchkeeper etc and this is where TA Officers go. If TA Officers were needed in command roles in Regular units it could be done but would no doubt require rigorous selection (not because TA Officers are bad but because you’d need ones that could learn quick and had the best aptitude) and at least 6-8 months with their unit before deployment.
I don’t think the model needs to particularly change. The leaders and managers in it need to stay on their toes and organise good training and discharge those that are inefficient. There seems to me always more volunteers for Ops than can be fitted into the force packages.
There’s still some way to go but the Regulars and TA are working much more closely in the sense that they are working together to de-risk rather than the Regulars just moaning they are risky.
The question is what is the TA for? Are they the A team to the Army first team? Are they for home defence? Are they for both? Do we want a US National Guard system? Or a Scandinavian style home guard (stop laughing Pike?)
I find the TA a curious organisation (and its supporting organisation(s) the RFCAs even more curious.) One TA centre here as just shut and that leaves us with 3 (one field hospital, one Mercian, one RLC/RE) The are big buildings but apart from drill nights and the occasional weekend not used much. Yes the PSI and officer and staff are there during the week (and perhaps on site caretaker too) aAnd I suppose kit has to be stored somewhere (everything from rifles to lorries.) But for the infrastructure in place it seems under utilised to the point of waste. It isn’t as if on a Tuesday night a whole company turns up only about a platoons worth with attendance that varies. All shop front and no depth. And dare I say laissez-faire?
The trouble is I can’t see anyway around it apart from spending money. I have been thinking about an extreme example of “paying” TA soldiers £10k pa. (If for no other reason to make the maths easier!) But in return getting a solid contractual commitment from the TA soldier to turn up; I think 6 out of 8 weeknights and one weekend per month for 3 years. I have wondered to about legislating too to force employers to give soldiers an extra 10 days holiday for training. And having two exercise periods per unit in early Spring and early Autumn. This would only suit a high end national guard type model. And I think many of the billets would be filled by ex-regulars.
But until we know what the TA if for its hard even to speculate………..
I have also thought about a low end model that is basically what a called a government sponsored shooting club. Here the “consideration” for joining would be the shooting in return for a time commitment. But I would think this would be discounted because there is no threat. Though this doesn’t seem to trouble our Scandinavian friends who put the defence of the state (the state’s primary duty) at the centre of their thinking. Just look at the havoc caused in Iraq because the US failed to secure the Iraqi government arsenals.
I have even whackier ideas about the RNR……
First, I think this media hype is telling not the truth.
My bet re.cuts:
* some 20k men
* Tornado fleet cut down to half, the rest to be replaced starting in 2018.
* FSTA cancelled, replaced by jumping on the USAF contract
* A400M cut to 14 (one squadron)
* all team Complex Weapons contracts, as this is too much sanity for the MoD
* 3 T23 + upgrade of the fleet to Artisan + FLAADS cancelled
* 2 T45 selled to Saudi-Arabia
Result: 18 billion s(h)aved, a billion cash for the warships.
Instead, to appease the RAF and the RN, HMG will propose the following:
* F-35 replacing Tornado
* CVF gets retained
* RAF gets fewer and cheaper tankers
* T26 will be enhanced to provide a AAW-version and units raised to 15, just to be cut to 10 in 2020.
* SSN and SSBN fleet remains untouched
Army? I don’t know. We are the US Infantry reserve, as such the Army will go through relatively unscathed.
The TA is there to support the Army. It hasn’t been dedicated to Home Defence since August 1914. If you change the emphasis of the TA to Home Defence you will simply end up with a Home Defence force that is unsuited to being used on operations and it will be used on operations. Currently Danish Home Guard soldiers are doing tours, Canadian reservists are doing tours, Australian reservists do tours and in the past the Militia and Volunteers were used on campaign when the Army needed them.
Home Defence is the easiest mission capability to regenerate meaning as it does in this country, Key Point defence.
To try to organise the TA as a Home Defence force and then use it on ops (as it will be, history tells us this) would be a gross inefficiency and cost lives.
If you start to make people go to training etc then you will loose a LOT of people who enjoy the flexibility it offers.
The TA is to support the Army, it does this very well and is getting better at it. It provides some small sub units for tours but mostly uplifts for regular units. I agree there is a lot of the structure that still exists to support a Corps level committment which I don’t think we need anymore but that is a question about balancing current needs with abilities to re-generate larger forces if we ever needed to.
The structure of the TA needs to change slightly again, but I do not think it needs a culture change. Operations has already changed its culture so much, there are plenty of reservists with more tours under their belts than Regulars nowadays and all volunteered for it.
As for better utilisation of TA Centres, the RFCAs should be making more of their assets, my old local one used to be used by the community as well for such things as Karate Clubs, BBQs etc. Funnily enough, they recruited from people who attended such events.
There needs to be more drive and imagination not a change in culture.
And you’d NEVER get legislation to make employers give TA soldiers more leave.
The rifle shooting club thing has been tried before I believe. They called it the Volunteers! Which turned into the TA!
Hi x,
Me too “. I have wondered to about legislating too to force employers to give soldiers an extra 10 days holiday for training. ”
I tried to raise the question about how secure is the job on your return (once mobilized) but that discussion took a “wrong” turn.
RE ” RAF gets fewer and cheaper tankers”
- isn’t the contract signed and sealed?
- on-going commenting shows that we all expect 1st set to go to tie-break?
It appears the 12 new Chinook’s are in trouble:
http://m.mirror.co.uk/article?a=m4:23243149
You’d never get it passed. And to be fair a lot of smaller employers wouldn’t be able to afford it. It would be very disruptive – you can’t hire a new person for two weeks and it would mean a lot of smaller business just wouldn’t hire or support TA personnel. That would be illegal but we all know that there is a real world out there. As it is a lot of employers do give extra leave, sometimes paid as well. It is just part of the pros and cons you have to think of when you think about joining the TA. Most people seem to get along fine and legislating would turn a lot of support quite sour I think.
Your job is protected but only to an extent – the legislation does not force an employer to reinstate you in all scenario’s, which considering the complexity of the real world is a good thing.
@ Phil
I know most of the problems. Like most things here if we discussed purely realities we wouldn’t have much to discuss. Truth be told I would probably get rid of 90% of the TA and put it on a similar footing to the RNR. Just keep specialists like the medical bods.
As for role. Well again this site is about thinking about defence in a different way. That is why I ask what is the TA for. It is a perfectly legitimate to ask what are they for?
I am fully aware of the history of the “civilian military” thank you. Probably I have more books on the shelf about various aspects of the topic than you do.
I think most people here would save time by limiting their comments to purely “lets keep it as it is.”
X
I would do almost the exact opposite. For me the regulars should be trained and equipped for war fighting only. Ready to deploy around the world in short order to take on the most demanding tasking in a coalition or alone and in non enduring roles. The ta would enlarge in size and deploy at full unit strength ( often a reason expressed by the ta for feeling inferior to the regulars) for either stabilisation or home security tasks in response to emergencies. As with the Rfa in the navy there’s no reason why RAF tanker and transport a/c can’t be manned by a large number of reservists. The cost to the RAF of keeping a330 trained pilots and engineers is going to be huge.
This will require a complete change in terms of service almost to full time reserve type force effectively equipped with the medium weight wheeled vehicles. It’s al most always about 6 months from when the regulars start to deploy to when the end of initial combat phase of resent wars and stabilisation operations start in Ernest enough time to get the reserves up to spec and deployed if we plan it right
@ Mark
To be honest I would can most of the Army. We don’t gain anything fiddling in the affairs of others. If we have to, as TD asserts, is specialise I would specialise in amphibious warfare. 3 well equipped marine brigades and the shipping to move them would put us at the top table. We could go around rescuing Westerners, fighting pirates, we would be the enablers in the campaign nearly all of over the world. I know TD likes it when we say we are an island don’t you know? Well let others with land borders worry about tanks and heavy artillery. We only consider them because too many are to busy fighting WW2 again……..
As for RFA-ing the air tankers I don’t know. I would lean to RAF crews for this task. But I would to be honest contract out most of the airframe maintenance to BAE. I would civilianise most of the RAF RADAR and comms too under GCHQ. I would just keep a core of uniformed technicians to support the RAF at the sharp end. (Of course in my world it would be FAA deploying outside the UK……
)
‘It appears the 12 new Chinook’s are in trouble’
Wouldn’t that make sense considering they were a political buy in the first place. We already have the 2nd largest Chinook fleet and the additional ones will not arrive till Afghanistan is long gone.
I dont like the new format of TD :I I miss posts!
The general feeling for this round is more internal saving and shaving… a lot of hype over the TA and part timers…so perhaps this is where the main changes will begin, that and a shaving off a few numbers of aircraft, ships and personell/vehicles…perhaps the Amry’s massive fleets within fleets will actually be looked at?
The feeling is, it should be the Army/MoD’s turn for cuts, but the former is too involved in current ops and the latter already has been hacked a fair bit.
I think those new choppers will be under threat, and maybe the possibility or a carrier sharing/deal with one of our QE class tubs could happen/feels closer.
That and cutting an Astute, as good as they are, they arent ‘current’ in operations, apparently, but then that’d do huge damage again to our sub building industry, one of the few ‘big’ indiustries we have left (even that needed an American influance to get started).
then again we were all surprised by a few elements of the SDSR… this may have a few other bites to our niche military capacity/capability.
@x
I thought this site was for serious discussion which is what I am engaging in. I didn’t believe it was a place for fiction.
You asked a question and I responded: just because I don’t want to engage in a fantasy discussion when the context of the site suggests it is a site for serious discussion there’s no need to get the huff.
I also did not say lets keep it how it is – I just simply think that at the root of a lot of troubled organisations are the people who run that particular organisation. There is no point changing the window dressing if you still have uninspired and mediocre people running the show and do not address the root of the problem.
Sorry it is not a sexy answer and I am not of the abstract fantasy army bent in this particular case.
I think all serious discussion should be tempered by reality.
Enjoy your extensive library.
@ Mark
I think your distinction between war fighting and stabilisation missions is an artificial one. What we are doing in Afghan is stabilisation. Could a TA battalion hold its own out there – of course it could if it had the same beat up as regular unit. What I am trying to get at is war fighting and stabilisation has a lot of overlap if we are to insist they are two separate missions and that having two distinct forces seems a waste when both forces are flexible enough to do both.
@ Andy
No official decision has been announced. The press seize on every single discussion and announce it as policy. Wranglings happen all the time.
I agree to an extent. What I’m saying is were not engaging in armoured warfare or artillery duals or air assaults (for the most part) or amphid assualts ect. The general thing appears to be patrol among the populous a insurgents war were winning the people is more important than which tank is left standing. There no reason why one of these specialisms couldnt be attached at battlegroup level to a ta stabilisation brigade. It would mean a much smaller regular army more specialised. It also means those interacting with the people have perhaps a better understanding of civilian life if there not full time regulars. It may also make the politians think a little harder about committing to these things if they have to call them up first
X
Stop asking questions about whether we need much of an army. Of course we don’t!
But it will upset people (Poss like Phill), after all ‘we are great power you know’ and have a right to go arround interfereing in everybuggers business, we’re british after all….