Army Cuts – Homeland Warfighters

Yet more leaks from the Ministry of Sieves and Agendas…

I think we all knew it was coming but if the latest from the Telegraph is to be believed, no real surprises.

Combat Support, Combat Service Support and the less fashionable Regiments get hammered in favour of the ‘untouchables’ in the Household Division. The infantry will then be down to 25 battalions, with significant chunks of the armour, armoured artillery and armoured engineers going into reduced readiness or farmed out to the TA. Expect plenty of discussions about whether the county regiments will go before the Gurkhas.

Again, no surprises.

The trendy new buzzword for conflict prevention, mentoring or forward presence, if the article is to be believed, is upstream engagement, expect to be seeing a lot of that.

The article in the Telegraph talks of a change in approach from enduring operations to contingent operations but then goes on to mention the Multi Role Brigades, those MRB’s that are predicated on maintaining enduring engagements.

Libya is now to be the model for the future, the same for every single operation we have ever done, until the next one that is.

We have discussed the MRB concept quite a few times, this was our last go at it, wonder what structure will shake itself out or of the enduring deployment MRB will remain. Getting a quart out of a pint pot was always going to be impossible, the extra Army reductions post SDSR made sure of that.

After a decade of doing the hard yards on operations those left in the Army now face a peace dividend and future filled with driving petrol tankers and filling sandbags,  or homeland resilience as it is now seemingly called, cheers Dave.

Homeland has such an American ring to to it, why not got the whole hog with our slavish devotion to US buzzwords and call the British Army, the Homeland Warfighter Service.

Puts a lot of what we discuss here into perspective, I was going to do an April Fools post about flying surplus to requirements South African Air Force Searchwater and refueling pod equipped Turbo Dakota’s off a CVF ski jump but can’t be arsed now, someone else will probably do something similar

The only thing one could realistically wish for is that any reductions are made without political interference or undue lobbying from the various tribes (Regiments and Corps) within the Army but perhaps that is asking too much.

I am probably being over sentimental and after decades of grueling operations and financial mismanagement these reductions are necessary to coincide with stepping out of the limelight for a period of regeneration, but which ever way you look at it, sad times.