Think Defence hopes to start sensible conversations about UK defence issues, no agenda or no campaign but there might be one or two posts on containers, bridges and mexeflotes!
85 thoughts on “The State of the Nations Armed Forces”
martin
A few nice comments from this one.
“In Admiral Lord West’s view, defence funding must be increased to the equivalent of 3% of GDP. An increased defence budget is “vital to the survival and wealth of our nation and people”.”
S**t and I thought I liked playing fantasy fleet’s. Not sure were the nation would find the extra £15 billion from exactly. Maybe cut child benefit again.
“Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, writes that “whole capabilities are absent today, such as Maritime Patrol and Long Range Electronic Reconnaissance, whilst the loss of the Harrier GR9 fleet has left the nation with no sea-borne offensive air support in addition to a serious reduction in numbers of close air support aircraft so vital in operations such as Libya or Afghanistan.”
Yeah but the RAF managed to keep it’s precious tornado fleet so what are you moaning about.
martin
“without the United States we are severely restricted in what we can actually achieve.”
Pretty much the same since around 1979 then.
John Hartley
As Private Fraser said “were Doomed,DOOMED”.
Challenger
‘Our nation needs more and the Type 26 (frigate) programme is crucial, but we should plan for a class of 26 hulls if we really intend to meet the UK’s strategic need’
We would all like to see more escort hulls, but that’s just wild fantasy! It seems that the idea here is to take the fleet back to the 1998 SDR levels without any thought of what’s actually needed and why.
A lot of other stuff is pretty standard. A minimum of 8 SSN, the lunacy of selling Largs Bay, inadequate helicopter and transport numbers, the dangers of losing AEW for 5 years and so on…
Interesting, but fairly run of the mill really.
elizzar
since originally we were building 12 type 45s for a one-for-one type 42 replacement, and we ended up with 6, and it’s been stated i’m sure by the mod-squad that we will likely order 13 type 26s for one-for-one type 23 replacement … praps asking for 26 is the only way we’ll get our 13!
just wish the 3 services would try working together more closely on procurement, like using the same missile for different platforms, or similar guns for ships and artillery etc, let alone the various IT gubbins. i’m increasingly coming to the view we need to either have one Royal Defence forces, or at least get rid of the RAF and re-assign to Army and Navy alone, we’re going to end up with 1 tank, 1 battalion, 1 ship and 1 jet, and 500 generals, admirals and air chiefs throwing rocks at each other …
px
Intestesting. We are in a world where soldiers (and sailors and airpeople) cannot die – or only a few, before we lose politcal consent. alos they cost the earth in pensions. So unmanned is inevitable, is it not. We can lose lots of machines, and don’t need to provide for their futures.
martin
@ Challenger – strange that their is no justification for 26 hulls given. Are we to believe that half of the UK’s strategic commitments are currently not being met? Seems like plucking numbers out of thin air. Also why only 8 SSN’s but must have 32 FF/DD. I would say more SSNs are needed if anything.
martin
From General Sir Michael Rose
“The British Army has already lost one war in Iraq”
Did we? Things in Basra seem to be running relatively smoothly these days. Given the Generals stance here is that the Army needs 100,000 men but during the Iraq campaign it had 100,000 men and according to the general lost the war I am not sure what his justification is. Maybe we need 200,000 or 1 million however these type of numbers did not seem to do much more for the US in Iraq either. Are numbers really the answer?
px
Definately lost in Basra.. if its smooth these days, then US did a better job than us in aftermath.
We have lost in Helamnd too.
All Politicians are The same
Winning and losing a war is such an outdated principle when tagged onto events like Iraq and Afghanistan. UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.
What has happened since is that forces have been used to support Government objectives of basically changing the manner in which an entire population exists. They have been tasked as the military wing of a societal rebuilding programme.
To say we lost in Helmand and Basra because of continued underground resistance is like saying the Wermacht has lost in France during 1943.
The military can be used to defeat the enemy military but as an occupying force it can only ever hold ground.
The real failure in Iraq and Afghanistan was the planning for post conflict resolution by various Governments and organisations, non existent in Iraq and flawed in Afghanistan.
FFS the Afghan nation has lost battles and wars but won campaigns for hundreds of years.
x
“UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.”
I thought their purpose was to do as they are told by the government of the day? Isn’t that what you said the other day?
Challenger
@Martin
Yeah that was my point, it seems that numbers are as you say plucked from nowhere, I reckon the number of 26 was reached simply to provide the 32 hulls promised in 1998, hardly a logical and well thought out analysis!
I agree that 8 SSN should be the minimum number, but that’s to provide 1 for the Atlantic, 1 for East of Suez and for a third to escort the on duty SSBN in and out of home waters. You can probably do that with 7, or even 6 boats, but it won’t take into account unexpected faults and the ability to surge numbers in wartime.
martin
@ PX
I am still un clear on how we lost in Basra. What definition do we use. I know that we refused to enter a bloodbath with the Americans against he shia militia but that seems like the right thing to do. AFter all it’s their country. Are unwillingness to follow US instructions to go charging in to the centre of Basra in 2003 all guns blazing also seemed the right thing to do. surely the only definition of winning and loosing in a place like Iraq is minimising civilian casualties and ensuring some form of functioning state to replace our forces as quickly as possible. Maybe that state is not quite to uncle sams liking but that’s hardly our concern.
The US seemed to follow the exact same strategy as us once George Bush had gone and it seems to have worked ok. Work with the moderates announce the withdrawl well ahead of time and try to subdue the worst of the radicals before you go.
All Politicians are The same
X,
“UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.”
I thought their purpose was to do as they are told by the government of the day? Isn’t that what you said the other day?
Yes I did but that does not mean that I have to agree with everything we are told to do.
@It is called Think Defence”, is that not what you said the other day?
IXION
APATS AND MARTIN
Its not how we entered Basra it’s how we left… The Basra Bug out..
As for Helmund that’s just an embarrasment.
In both; amoungst a lot of other stuff going on, we simply tried to do too much with too little and got found out.
That is the problem with WASAWPYK thinking when we aint.
Obsvr
“lost in Iraq”, “lost in Afghanistan” I see the hair shirt brigade are in full hue and cry. How very British.
As has been pointed out Iraq is self-governing and Saddam Hussein, a distinctly wild-card is no more. Geo-political outcome basically positive, not sure if much better was ever a possibility. I see no British military defeat. I doubt if different tactics (even without the UK military legal environment) would have made any difference, nor would more boots on the ground.
You can never militarily defeat insurgents in a conventional sense, you may suppress and contain them to a greater or lesser extent to allow political breathing space and establish a political environment that is broadly acceptable to the majority.
In Afghanistan the jury hasn’t even gone into the jury room yet. Ask me again in 2020.
All Politicians are The same
Obsvr,
Well put!
Ixion,
Of course we could have stayed in BASRA and massacred the population, would that make it feel more like a victory for you?
px
Observer,
so why bother?
px
I have worked in these places, i’m not being dumb.
Lets do it right next time.
px
Lost not in the sence of tactical defeat, but not having aachived anything useful long term to change the situation, despite expending a lot of ammuntion against === with AKs.
All Politicians are The same
px,
WE try to avoid that sort of terminology here. Since when has the job of the armed forces been to achieve long term change? that is the job of the organisations brought in behind the lull created by a successful campaign.
Prolonged resistance after a military defeat is generally a sign that we probably should not have been there in the first place or that HMG has seriously miscalculated.
In Iraq the UK had done zero post war panning on D day and in Afghanistan we sent too few troops, look at the countries history, the Soviets could not control it with casualty ratios we would have lost a Government over and ROE that did not exist.
The problem lies with the Government and their misunderstanding of what is actually possible and useless tossers in the sort of departments that want to give aid to countries with space programmers.
Observer
px, wrong person. Obsvr is someone else.
And there was good done there, you’re just being a pessimist. That area was lost to local rule by help of Pak troops, now, it’s going to be hard for the Taliban to get back into power with Pakistan being watched like a hawk.
px
And the Chief’s desire to have a war too – especailyl Af.
Jeremy M H
@APATS
Agree 100% with that. The governments often lack an understanding of just what the military is capable of doing. Asking them to stabilize Afghanistan was a pipe dream in my view. Asking them to eliminate it as a safe haven for AQ and the like is doable. But going in you had to recognize that was going to be the case.
px
But MoD wanted to go to Af – they asked for that – get us out of iraq and send us to Af, they said.
And also reeks of the “use it or lose it” debacle in Parliamentary questioning RE “But MoD wanted to go to Af – they asked for that – get us out of iraq and send us to Af, they said.”
- btw, I believe the comment was made, but against the background of impending cuts and getting out of a situation where resource allocated was in no relation to the task on the ground (just to plunge into the same situation again, this time through the miscalculation by the military rather than the politicos…I would add hehe, but it is not really a laughing matter)
wf
@Obsvr: Iraq is indeed a self governing democracy. But it’s thanks to George Bush and the US armed forces, not the British Army, who spent years snootily declaring they were doing things so much better than those uncouth Yanks, until it became painfully obvious that they were utterly wrong, at which point the likes of Dannatt, in unholy alliance with the Guardian-reading classes, declared the only way of “solving” the problem was to leave, while running off to the “good war” in Afghanistan.
Funnily enough, the British political class showed no more determination in AF either. Quelle surprise!
We would have been better off helping the Yanks to win in Iraq before even thinking of moving to AF. If the US has trouble fighting two wars at once, that applies double to us
Mike W
I remember reading an article by General Sir Michael Rose, oh, many years ago now seven years ago, in which he asserted (and I’m paraphrasing very loosely here) that if the cuts to the British Armed Forces continued as they were doing, then the time would come when the British Army would actually lose a war. He was proven to be absolutely correct in Basra. Now, General Rose is nobody’s fool. He is an ex-head of the SAS and one of the most cerebral generals we have had over the last few decades. His analysis of what has happened is first-class.
Now Martin is right but only to the extent that he says that “things in Basra seem to be running relatively smoothly these days”. The last article I read on that city was to the effect that the cafes and bazaars were open, life was returning to normal and that the British were wrong to have withdrawn their consulate from an area that was likely to see considerable business growth in the future.
However, IXION got it spot on when he said,
“we simply tried to do too much with too little and got found out.”
And so did wf in his tremendous paragraph:
“Iraq is indeed a self governing democracy. But it’s thanks to George Bush and the US armed forces, not the British Army, who spent years snootily declaring they were doing things so much better than those uncouth Yanks, until it became painfully obvious that they were utterly wrong, at which point the likes of Dannatt, in unholy alliance with the Guardian-reading classes, declared the only way of “solving” the problem was to leave, while running off to the “good war” in Afghanistan.”
Numbers and equipment matter. They matter tremendously.
Mike W
I forgot to mention that, as far as Herrick is concerned, I agree with Observer when he says,
“As for Herrick, might want to ask Phil for a ground eye view of the situation.”
arkhangelsk
>S**t and I thought I liked playing fantasy fleet’s. Not sure were the nation would find the extra £15 billion from exactly. Maybe cut child benefit again.
Call me a traditionalist, but I always thought that parents are primarily responsible for the costs of raising kids.
Defence is the fundamental service provided by the State, and it is the most irreplaceable service providable by the State. Other services can be privatized though it’ll be expensive – the rich can even have private security guards to replace police but the Army requires the combined efforts of a State.
In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society.
@martin
>Are we to believe that half of the UK’s strategic commitments are currently not being met?
Will the UK citizen care? More than their child benefit?
>strange that their is no justification for 26 hulls given.
The guy got about 2.5 pages and he wasted at least .5 on greetings. It is difficult to justify any number above about 3 using that little space.
0′s justification = The world is at peace, we don’t need warships. Let’s spend it on the people.
1′s justification=It is a symbol and can be used when necessary.
2′s justification=They can cover each other.
3′s justification=With 3, we can guarantee almost continuous availability of 1.
Above 3, it becomes a complex game of definining needs, analyzing the endurance limitations of ships … etc enough to make a worthy Doctoral’s thesis…
Chris.B.
“In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society”
– Tell that to ‘nonproductive’ parts of society that get laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world, thus cannot find a new job.
Simon
Pouring money in helps curb a revolt.
Chris B,
“…laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world…”
Funny how the ones to blame are the fat cats that saw it coming and got out (with their shares). I blame PLC commerce
Jed
APATS said: “Winning and losing a war is such an outdated principle when tagged onto events like Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Mmmmm yes, sort of. Clear direction, a clearly articulated vision of the desired outcomes from our political masters is still required, and we never had that for Iraq / Basra because modern politicians have been taught not to clearly articulate anything, because then they will be on the hook for any failures.
We won “engagements” and we lost plenty. Army leadership showed itself up with the “Snatch” debacle etc However politics is as important as tactics in such campaigns – if we could have found Muqtadah Al Sadah at certain points in time, we could have taken him out of the picture, but that would have had negative political consequences.
I remember being tasked with other team members back in the UK to do a ‘target audience analysis’ for a Psyops campaign against Al Sadah’s “Mahdi Army”. After two weeks work, we did our major briefing and pissed off a lot of brass when we explained that NO Psyops effort was ever going to get the disaffected, unemployed youth of Basra to NOT take shots at us for payment (they were being paid a lot of US $ hard cash by Al Sadah’s org). The options were for us to pay them more not to, or to fall back on “kinetic” responses.
Point being war is complex, complicated and messy. Bad / non-existent “orders” in the form of clear political direction, and well articulated desired end state don’t help in making it less complex !
However, neither do overly simplistic rhetoric on blogs
Jed
Hey, just a thought, tying the threads together, perhaps the additional 13 T26 desired by the Admiral would be the 76mm gunned, “fitted for, but not with everything” pirate chasing OPV version…….. ????
Challenger
@Jed
Sounds good! Convince me that T26 ‘light’ would cost £100 million a pop and then find £1.3 billion to make it happen and I’m with you all the way!
Chris.B.
“Funny how the ones to blame are the fat cats that saw it coming and got out (with their shares)”
– While telling the bods on the bottom rungs that ‘It’s ok, everything is fine etc’, right before dropping a lot of them in the shit.
Gloomy Northern Boy
Any thoughts on the “imminent future wars” paper – one or two of which look uncomfortably possible to me? On the face of it, some of the people involved should have an idea as to what they are talking about – do those who are wiser than I think they do?
Obsvr
I’d totally agree that lack of planning about post-fighting government of Iraq was the major failure. But UK as a bit player could not affect this. When the records are eventually opened it will be interesting to see if UK seriously raised this issue in Washington. Without a government in the Basra region that had the support of the local population and could run the show with a bit of transitional UK support events were always going to messy.
“The US got it right”. Not in a way applicable to the South of the country. Disproportionate use of force was and is illegal for the British Army. The US eventual success was to ‘turn’ the Sunni tribes, remembering that the Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. Shia is a majority, with Iranian support and effective religious leadership, and suppressed by the Sunni minority under the previous regime. How exactly was the British Army going to supplant the dominant Shia influence? Even if NI troop levels and 30 years had been available, and it had been possible to engineer a split in the Shia community, would this have achieved ‘victory’ whatever that means.
Swimming Trunks
I could get you 12 “destroyers” and 24-26 “frigates” on the current budget… But not many people would like it ;p
arkhangelsk
>– Tell that to ‘nonproductive’ parts of society that get laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world, thus cannot find a new job.
If the industry they specialized in is “no longer relevant to the modern world”, isn’t that a roundabout way of admitting they are non-productive (or at least less-productive)?
I know I sound cold, but the fact is, the retired elderly (to which a huge part of this “forced charity” goes) are as a rule no longer productive. And if we assume company leadership has brains at all, we have to assume as a whole, those getting laid off are just a little bit less capable (or less fitted to the needs of business) than those who stayed on.
I don’t wish to go so far as to say they don’t deserve any charity at all. But when services that benefit / protect the whole population are getting crimped in favor of policies that benefit only a section, and arguably the weakest, it is time for a rethink.
I think welfare should be a best-effort-within-fixed-percentage of GNP / government budget deal, similar to how defence is handled in Japan.
Defence is also mostly a non-productive field (like insurance), and thus it shouldn’t gobble the whole economy no matter how dire the threat looks. So while I’m not happy with the line being <1% GNP, the fixed percentage concept is agreeable to me.
However, the same should be for welfare. Otherwise, both have the potential to completely destroy a country's economy.
Observer
ark, I represent the Union of Teamsters, Stevedores and Blacksmiths in objecting to the notion that our work is no longer relevent to the modern world!!
That being said, all of the jobs mentioned all exist still in a form massively different from the old days. Workers do need to modernise or they would look ridiculous driving horse carriages down the highway.
It’s probably the modernization aspect that gets overlooked in jobs. It is comforting to sit in the same job for 40 years, but if you don’t keep ahead of advancements, don’t be surprised to become redundant.
Mike, I don’t recall a military defeat in Basra? Along with the fact that even if you had a 2 million strong army, you still wouldn’t have been able to pacify Afganistan (Soviets anyone?). Problem is that the goals set are best done by things OTHER THAN military. Diplomacy and economy were probably the best weapons for the job. If you wanted to pacify the area militarily, you (kb died back later)
wf
@Obsvr: “Disproportionate use of force was and is illegal for the British Army”. We’d better make the British Army into a Swedish peacekeeper army PDQ then. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
“The US eventual success was to ‘turn’ the Sunni tribes”. And what, pray, made the tribes think it was worth swapping horses? Were they dazzled by American women’s outreach and mosque rebuilding schemes? Not likely: they perceived the Yanks were both nicer and could be relied upon to fight. We started by allowing various Shia militias to both keep their weapons and run patrols, and later tolerated half the Basra police being run on behalf of such militias. The locals therefore made their choice.
“I’d totally agree that lack of planning about post-fighting government of Iraq was the major failure. But UK as a bit player could not affect this”. We most certainly could have affected this, although this is one thing we can actually hang on the politicians for not getting the joint planning kicked off earlier, in the same way UOR’s and the like were ordered scandalously late. But it doesn’t excuse the next 5 years.
ArmChairCivvy
Obsvr, this ” and [if] it had been possible to engineer a split in the Shia community, would this have achieved ‘victory’ whatever that means”
is what materially happened
- the top Shia in Baghdad got whiff of plans to depose him
- it was him who went to the Americans and said that Basra will have to be dealt with; and it was Shia troops from elsewhere in Iraq that had an essential role in the Charge of the Knights
ArmChairCivvy
Hi wf, that “Not likely: they perceived the Yanks were both nicer and could be relied upon to fight” is true in isolation, but the beginnings of the Sunni awakening were in Saudi Arabia’s threat to arm the tribes, to create a buffer zone
- US generals thought we better do it ourselves, rather than lose control to the outside (ref: Iran’s influence in Basra). It was started in such a clandestine way that at one point there was a “parliamentary” question about how could the army have lost 200.000 assault rifles
Gloomy Northern Boy
I understand the importance of the Basra Debate – especially for those there – but perhaps it needs a new thread? There seem to me to be other items of interest in the original post here…
ArmChairCivvy
If we take the
- quick and sharp BG-type intervention
- a bde-strong enduring (stabilisation?) task
- or an all-out division-like force,
isn’t it that the Basra stabilisation stage as well as A-stan were (assuming here the -4.000 will happen)…were within that middle category (a bde/ bde+), so lessons learned would be called for? Especially when so much of the procurement has been directed by those specific circumstances for so long, and a rebalancing will also take so long (with current finances) that it will have to be well thought out
martin
@ arkangelski
“Call me a traditionalist, but I always thought that parents are primarily responsible for the costs of raising kids.
Defence is the fundamental service provided by the State, and it is the most irreplaceable service providable by the State. Other services can be privatized though it’ll be expensive – the rich can even have private security guards to replace police but the Army requires the combined efforts of a State.
In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society.”
In a democracy the state exisits to do what the majority of the people want it to do.
I agree that we need to spend more on defence. However moving back up to 3% of GDP will require many more productive parts of government spending such as infrastructure to be cut (cause lets face it no matter what colour the government is they are not going to cut pensions or the NHS).
The USA is a good example of a nation relying too much on market forces to provide essentials services and infrastructure while spending too heavily on defence with no real notion of what the threat environment is. consequently the countries educations system and infrastructure is becoming increasingly third world well it military continues to push the bounds of star trek. It’s the economics 101 debate of guns vs butter however without the butter in the long run they will not be able to afford the guns.
px
@martin
Very thoughful comments. I think there are some parralels in the defence industry too. Its interesting how Augusta have been speaking coyly about changing the mindset at Westland, and I think BAe in UK has always worked in a sort of ‘semi-nationlaised’ commercial model. HMG takes all the risks and pays most of the bills, from development to production. Of course the model has meant that tradtionally we have been poor at building an export-led defence industry, beyond nations with which we have speical diplomatic-military ties – Saudi and Oman in particular.
Spain, France and Germany have alll developed sucessful export market (rather than host government) driven naval shipbuilding industries, and Italy and Finland sucessful specilist martime contruction businesses.
By contrst BAe has chased a bigger government buck in the US, as ours has declined, and even sold its stake in the most successful export led venture in the UK aviation industry, Airbus. Ok there are exceptions – Hawk and Lynx have been very successful in there respective markets.
So is not part of the problem value for money? We don’t get it from British defence products, but they demand our cash as Martin puts it as a form of “forced charity” for the most vulnerable sectors of our industry. If we can get our industry stand on its own two feet, and not just by moving to Sweden and the US, but through home grown products, will not the budget go further?
A few nice comments from this one.
“In Admiral Lord West’s view, defence funding must be increased to the equivalent of 3% of GDP. An increased defence budget is “vital to the survival and wealth of our nation and people”.”
S**t and I thought I liked playing fantasy fleet’s. Not sure were the nation would find the extra £15 billion from exactly. Maybe cut child benefit again.
“Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, a former head of the RAF, writes that “whole capabilities are absent today, such as Maritime Patrol and Long Range Electronic Reconnaissance, whilst the loss of the Harrier GR9 fleet has left the nation with no sea-borne offensive air support in addition to a serious reduction in numbers of close air support aircraft so vital in operations such as Libya or Afghanistan.”
Yeah but the RAF managed to keep it’s precious tornado fleet so what are you moaning about.
“without the United States we are severely restricted in what we can actually achieve.”
Pretty much the same since around 1979 then.
As Private Fraser said “were Doomed,DOOMED”.
‘Our nation needs more and the Type 26 (frigate) programme is crucial, but we should plan for a class of 26 hulls if we really intend to meet the UK’s strategic need’
We would all like to see more escort hulls, but that’s just wild fantasy! It seems that the idea here is to take the fleet back to the 1998 SDR levels without any thought of what’s actually needed and why.
A lot of other stuff is pretty standard. A minimum of 8 SSN, the lunacy of selling Largs Bay, inadequate helicopter and transport numbers, the dangers of losing AEW for 5 years and so on…
Interesting, but fairly run of the mill really.
since originally we were building 12 type 45s for a one-for-one type 42 replacement, and we ended up with 6, and it’s been stated i’m sure by the mod-squad that we will likely order 13 type 26s for one-for-one type 23 replacement … praps asking for 26 is the only way we’ll get our 13!
just wish the 3 services would try working together more closely on procurement, like using the same missile for different platforms, or similar guns for ships and artillery etc, let alone the various IT gubbins. i’m increasingly coming to the view we need to either have one Royal Defence forces, or at least get rid of the RAF and re-assign to Army and Navy alone, we’re going to end up with 1 tank, 1 battalion, 1 ship and 1 jet, and 500 generals, admirals and air chiefs throwing rocks at each other …
Intestesting. We are in a world where soldiers (and sailors and airpeople) cannot die – or only a few, before we lose politcal consent. alos they cost the earth in pensions. So unmanned is inevitable, is it not. We can lose lots of machines, and don’t need to provide for their futures.
@ Challenger – strange that their is no justification for 26 hulls given. Are we to believe that half of the UK’s strategic commitments are currently not being met? Seems like plucking numbers out of thin air. Also why only 8 SSN’s but must have 32 FF/DD. I would say more SSNs are needed if anything.
From General Sir Michael Rose
“The British Army has already lost one war in Iraq”
Did we? Things in Basra seem to be running relatively smoothly these days. Given the Generals stance here is that the Army needs 100,000 men but during the Iraq campaign it had 100,000 men and according to the general lost the war I am not sure what his justification is. Maybe we need 200,000 or 1 million however these type of numbers did not seem to do much more for the US in Iraq either. Are numbers really the answer?
Definately lost in Basra.. if its smooth these days, then US did a better job than us in aftermath.
We have lost in Helamnd too.
Winning and losing a war is such an outdated principle when tagged onto events like Iraq and Afghanistan. UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.
What has happened since is that forces have been used to support Government objectives of basically changing the manner in which an entire population exists. They have been tasked as the military wing of a societal rebuilding programme.
To say we lost in Helmand and Basra because of continued underground resistance is like saying the Wermacht has lost in France during 1943.
The military can be used to defeat the enemy military but as an occupying force it can only ever hold ground.
The real failure in Iraq and Afghanistan was the planning for post conflict resolution by various Governments and organisations, non existent in Iraq and flawed in Afghanistan.
FFS the Afghan nation has lost battles and wars but won campaigns for hundreds of years.
“UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.”
I thought their purpose was to do as they are told by the government of the day? Isn’t that what you said the other day?
@Martin
Yeah that was my point, it seems that numbers are as you say plucked from nowhere, I reckon the number of 26 was reached simply to provide the 32 hulls promised in 1998, hardly a logical and well thought out analysis!
I agree that 8 SSN should be the minimum number, but that’s to provide 1 for the Atlantic, 1 for East of Suez and for a third to escort the on duty SSBN in and out of home waters. You can probably do that with 7, or even 6 boats, but it won’t take into account unexpected faults and the ability to surge numbers in wartime.
@ PX
I am still un clear on how we lost in Basra. What definition do we use. I know that we refused to enter a bloodbath with the Americans against he shia militia but that seems like the right thing to do. AFter all it’s their country. Are unwillingness to follow US instructions to go charging in to the centre of Basra in 2003 all guns blazing also seemed the right thing to do. surely the only definition of winning and loosing in a place like Iraq is minimising civilian casualties and ensuring some form of functioning state to replace our forces as quickly as possible. Maybe that state is not quite to uncle sams liking but that’s hardly our concern.
The US seemed to follow the exact same strategy as us once George Bush had gone and it seems to have worked ok. Work with the moderates announce the withdrawl well ahead of time and try to subdue the worst of the radicals before you go.
X,
“UK forces convincingly won every engagement in a conventional sense in both Iraq and Afghanistan that is what armed forces are for.”
I thought their purpose was to do as they are told by the government of the day? Isn’t that what you said the other day?
Yes I did but that does not mean that I have to agree with everything we are told to do.
@It is called Think Defence”, is that not what you said the other day?
APATS AND MARTIN
Its not how we entered Basra it’s how we left… The Basra Bug out..
As for Helmund that’s just an embarrasment.
In both; amoungst a lot of other stuff going on, we simply tried to do too much with too little and got found out.
That is the problem with WASAWPYK thinking when we aint.
“lost in Iraq”, “lost in Afghanistan” I see the hair shirt brigade are in full hue and cry. How very British.
As has been pointed out Iraq is self-governing and Saddam Hussein, a distinctly wild-card is no more. Geo-political outcome basically positive, not sure if much better was ever a possibility. I see no British military defeat. I doubt if different tactics (even without the UK military legal environment) would have made any difference, nor would more boots on the ground.
You can never militarily defeat insurgents in a conventional sense, you may suppress and contain them to a greater or lesser extent to allow political breathing space and establish a political environment that is broadly acceptable to the majority.
In Afghanistan the jury hasn’t even gone into the jury room yet. Ask me again in 2020.
Obsvr,
Well put!
Ixion,
Of course we could have stayed in BASRA and massacred the population, would that make it feel more like a victory for you?
Observer,
so why bother?
I have worked in these places, i’m not being dumb.
Lets do it right next time.
Lost not in the sence of tactical defeat, but not having aachived anything useful long term to change the situation, despite expending a lot of ammuntion against === with AKs.
px,
WE try to avoid that sort of terminology here. Since when has the job of the armed forces been to achieve long term change? that is the job of the organisations brought in behind the lull created by a successful campaign.
Prolonged resistance after a military defeat is generally a sign that we probably should not have been there in the first place or that HMG has seriously miscalculated.
In Iraq the UK had done zero post war panning on D day and in Afghanistan we sent too few troops, look at the countries history, the Soviets could not control it with casualty ratios we would have lost a Government over and ROE that did not exist.
The problem lies with the Government and their misunderstanding of what is actually possible and useless tossers in the sort of departments that want to give aid to countries with space programmers.
px, wrong person. Obsvr is someone else.
And there was good done there, you’re just being a pessimist. That area was lost to local rule by help of Pak troops, now, it’s going to be hard for the Taliban to get back into power with Pakistan being watched like a hawk.
And the Chief’s desire to have a war too – especailyl Af.
@APATS
Agree 100% with that. The governments often lack an understanding of just what the military is capable of doing. Asking them to stabilize Afghanistan was a pipe dream in my view. Asking them to eliminate it as a safe haven for AQ and the like is doable. But going in you had to recognize that was going to be the case.
But MoD wanted to go to Af – they asked for that – get us out of iraq and send us to Af, they said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Herrick
px you’re not being coherent.
As for Herrick, might want to ask Phil for a ground eye view of the situation.
There is a smack of this creeping in http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ex-uk-ambassador-to-afghanistan-criticises-timing-95764
- of course the non-military who tried to do a parallel process brought in a sham pakistani street merchant or something on those lines
And also reeks of the “use it or lose it” debacle in Parliamentary questioning RE “But MoD wanted to go to Af – they asked for that – get us out of iraq and send us to Af, they said.”
- btw, I believe the comment was made, but against the background of impending cuts and getting out of a situation where resource allocated was in no relation to the task on the ground (just to plunge into the same situation again, this time through the miscalculation by the military rather than the politicos…I would add hehe, but it is not really a laughing matter)
@Obsvr: Iraq is indeed a self governing democracy. But it’s thanks to George Bush and the US armed forces, not the British Army, who spent years snootily declaring they were doing things so much better than those uncouth Yanks, until it became painfully obvious that they were utterly wrong, at which point the likes of Dannatt, in unholy alliance with the Guardian-reading classes, declared the only way of “solving” the problem was to leave, while running off to the “good war” in Afghanistan.
Funnily enough, the British political class showed no more determination in AF either. Quelle surprise!
We would have been better off helping the Yanks to win in Iraq before even thinking of moving to AF. If the US has trouble fighting two wars at once, that applies double to us
I remember reading an article by General Sir Michael Rose, oh, many years ago now seven years ago, in which he asserted (and I’m paraphrasing very loosely here) that if the cuts to the British Armed Forces continued as they were doing, then the time would come when the British Army would actually lose a war. He was proven to be absolutely correct in Basra. Now, General Rose is nobody’s fool. He is an ex-head of the SAS and one of the most cerebral generals we have had over the last few decades. His analysis of what has happened is first-class.
Now Martin is right but only to the extent that he says that “things in Basra seem to be running relatively smoothly these days”. The last article I read on that city was to the effect that the cafes and bazaars were open, life was returning to normal and that the British were wrong to have withdrawn their consulate from an area that was likely to see considerable business growth in the future.
However, IXION got it spot on when he said,
“we simply tried to do too much with too little and got found out.”
And so did wf in his tremendous paragraph:
“Iraq is indeed a self governing democracy. But it’s thanks to George Bush and the US armed forces, not the British Army, who spent years snootily declaring they were doing things so much better than those uncouth Yanks, until it became painfully obvious that they were utterly wrong, at which point the likes of Dannatt, in unholy alliance with the Guardian-reading classes, declared the only way of “solving” the problem was to leave, while running off to the “good war” in Afghanistan.”
Numbers and equipment matter. They matter tremendously.
I forgot to mention that, as far as Herrick is concerned, I agree with Observer when he says,
“As for Herrick, might want to ask Phil for a ground eye view of the situation.”
>S**t and I thought I liked playing fantasy fleet’s. Not sure were the nation would find the extra £15 billion from exactly. Maybe cut child benefit again.
Call me a traditionalist, but I always thought that parents are primarily responsible for the costs of raising kids.
Defence is the fundamental service provided by the State, and it is the most irreplaceable service providable by the State. Other services can be privatized though it’ll be expensive – the rich can even have private security guards to replace police but the Army requires the combined efforts of a State.
In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society.
@martin
>Are we to believe that half of the UK’s strategic commitments are currently not being met?
Will the UK citizen care? More than their child benefit?
>strange that their is no justification for 26 hulls given.
The guy got about 2.5 pages and he wasted at least .5 on greetings. It is difficult to justify any number above about 3 using that little space.
0′s justification = The world is at peace, we don’t need warships. Let’s spend it on the people.
1′s justification=It is a symbol and can be used when necessary.
2′s justification=They can cover each other.
3′s justification=With 3, we can guarantee almost continuous availability of 1.
Above 3, it becomes a complex game of definining needs, analyzing the endurance limitations of ships … etc enough to make a worthy Doctoral’s thesis…
“In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society”
– Tell that to ‘nonproductive’ parts of society that get laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world, thus cannot find a new job.
Pouring money in helps curb a revolt.
Chris B,
“…laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world…”
Funny how the ones to blame are the fat cats that saw it coming and got out (with their shares). I blame PLC commerce
APATS said: “Winning and losing a war is such an outdated principle when tagged onto events like Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Mmmmm yes, sort of. Clear direction, a clearly articulated vision of the desired outcomes from our political masters is still required, and we never had that for Iraq / Basra because modern politicians have been taught not to clearly articulate anything, because then they will be on the hook for any failures.
We won “engagements” and we lost plenty. Army leadership showed itself up with the “Snatch” debacle etc However politics is as important as tactics in such campaigns – if we could have found Muqtadah Al Sadah at certain points in time, we could have taken him out of the picture, but that would have had negative political consequences.
I remember being tasked with other team members back in the UK to do a ‘target audience analysis’ for a Psyops campaign against Al Sadah’s “Mahdi Army”. After two weeks work, we did our major briefing and pissed off a lot of brass when we explained that NO Psyops effort was ever going to get the disaffected, unemployed youth of Basra to NOT take shots at us for payment (they were being paid a lot of US $ hard cash by Al Sadah’s org). The options were for us to pay them more not to, or to fall back on “kinetic” responses.
Point being war is complex, complicated and messy. Bad / non-existent “orders” in the form of clear political direction, and well articulated desired end state don’t help in making it less complex !
However, neither do overly simplistic rhetoric on blogs
Hey, just a thought, tying the threads together, perhaps the additional 13 T26 desired by the Admiral would be the 76mm gunned, “fitted for, but not with everything” pirate chasing OPV version…….. ????
@Jed
Sounds good! Convince me that T26 ‘light’ would cost £100 million a pop and then find £1.3 billion to make it happen and I’m with you all the way!
“Funny how the ones to blame are the fat cats that saw it coming and got out (with their shares)”
– While telling the bods on the bottom rungs that ‘It’s ok, everything is fine etc’, right before dropping a lot of them in the shit.
Any thoughts on the “imminent future wars” paper – one or two of which look uncomfortably possible to me? On the face of it, some of the people involved should have an idea as to what they are talking about – do those who are wiser than I think they do?
I’d totally agree that lack of planning about post-fighting government of Iraq was the major failure. But UK as a bit player could not affect this. When the records are eventually opened it will be interesting to see if UK seriously raised this issue in Washington. Without a government in the Basra region that had the support of the local population and could run the show with a bit of transitional UK support events were always going to messy.
“The US got it right”. Not in a way applicable to the South of the country. Disproportionate use of force was and is illegal for the British Army. The US eventual success was to ‘turn’ the Sunni tribes, remembering that the Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. Shia is a majority, with Iranian support and effective religious leadership, and suppressed by the Sunni minority under the previous regime. How exactly was the British Army going to supplant the dominant Shia influence? Even if NI troop levels and 30 years had been available, and it had been possible to engineer a split in the Shia community, would this have achieved ‘victory’ whatever that means.
I could get you 12 “destroyers” and 24-26 “frigates” on the current budget… But not many people would like it ;p
>– Tell that to ‘nonproductive’ parts of society that get laid off from their jobs completely against their own free will and desire to work, who then find they have 30-40 years of experience in an industry that is no longer relevant to the modern world, thus cannot find a new job.
If the industry they specialized in is “no longer relevant to the modern world”, isn’t that a roundabout way of admitting they are non-productive (or at least less-productive)?
I know I sound cold, but the fact is, the retired elderly (to which a huge part of this “forced charity” goes) are as a rule no longer productive. And if we assume company leadership has brains at all, we have to assume as a whole, those getting laid off are just a little bit less capable (or less fitted to the needs of business) than those who stayed on.
I don’t wish to go so far as to say they don’t deserve any charity at all. But when services that benefit / protect the whole population are getting crimped in favor of policies that benefit only a section, and arguably the weakest, it is time for a rethink.
I think welfare should be a best-effort-within-fixed-percentage of GNP / government budget deal, similar to how defence is handled in Japan.
Defence is also mostly a non-productive field (like insurance), and thus it shouldn’t gobble the whole economy no matter how dire the threat looks. So while I’m not happy with the line being <1% GNP, the fixed percentage concept is agreeable to me.
However, the same should be for welfare. Otherwise, both have the potential to completely destroy a country's economy.
ark, I represent the Union of Teamsters, Stevedores and Blacksmiths in objecting to the notion that our work is no longer relevent to the modern world!!
That being said, all of the jobs mentioned all exist still in a form massively different from the old days. Workers do need to modernise or they would look ridiculous driving horse carriages down the highway.
It’s probably the modernization aspect that gets overlooked in jobs. It is comforting to sit in the same job for 40 years, but if you don’t keep ahead of advancements, don’t be surprised to become redundant.
Mike, I don’t recall a military defeat in Basra? Along with the fact that even if you had a 2 million strong army, you still wouldn’t have been able to pacify Afganistan (Soviets anyone?). Problem is that the goals set are best done by things OTHER THAN military. Diplomacy and economy were probably the best weapons for the job. If you wanted to pacify the area militarily, you (kb died back later)
@Obsvr: “Disproportionate use of force was and is illegal for the British Army”. We’d better make the British Army into a Swedish peacekeeper army PDQ then. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
“The US eventual success was to ‘turn’ the Sunni tribes”. And what, pray, made the tribes think it was worth swapping horses? Were they dazzled by American women’s outreach and mosque rebuilding schemes? Not likely: they perceived the Yanks were both nicer and could be relied upon to fight. We started by allowing various Shia militias to both keep their weapons and run patrols, and later tolerated half the Basra police being run on behalf of such militias. The locals therefore made their choice.
“I’d totally agree that lack of planning about post-fighting government of Iraq was the major failure. But UK as a bit player could not affect this”. We most certainly could have affected this, although this is one thing we can actually hang on the politicians for not getting the joint planning kicked off earlier, in the same way UOR’s and the like were ordered scandalously late. But it doesn’t excuse the next 5 years.
Obsvr, this ” and [if] it had been possible to engineer a split in the Shia community, would this have achieved ‘victory’ whatever that means”
is what materially happened
- the top Shia in Baghdad got whiff of plans to depose him
- it was him who went to the Americans and said that Basra will have to be dealt with; and it was Shia troops from elsewhere in Iraq that had an essential role in the Charge of the Knights
Hi wf, that “Not likely: they perceived the Yanks were both nicer and could be relied upon to fight” is true in isolation, but the beginnings of the Sunni awakening were in Saudi Arabia’s threat to arm the tribes, to create a buffer zone
- US generals thought we better do it ourselves, rather than lose control to the outside (ref: Iran’s influence in Basra). It was started in such a clandestine way that at one point there was a “parliamentary” question about how could the army have lost 200.000 assault rifles
I understand the importance of the Basra Debate – especially for those there – but perhaps it needs a new thread? There seem to me to be other items of interest in the original post here…
If we take the
- quick and sharp BG-type intervention
- a bde-strong enduring (stabilisation?) task
- or an all-out division-like force,
isn’t it that the Basra stabilisation stage as well as A-stan were (assuming here the -4.000 will happen)…were within that middle category (a bde/ bde+), so lessons learned would be called for? Especially when so much of the procurement has been directed by those specific circumstances for so long, and a rebalancing will also take so long (with current finances) that it will have to be well thought out
@ arkangelski
“Call me a traditionalist, but I always thought that parents are primarily responsible for the costs of raising kids.
Defence is the fundamental service provided by the State, and it is the most irreplaceable service providable by the State. Other services can be privatized though it’ll be expensive – the rich can even have private security guards to replace police but the Army requires the combined efforts of a State.
In contrast, social insurance is really a formed of forced charity, an act of pouring money onto the most nonproductive parts of society.”
In a democracy the state exisits to do what the majority of the people want it to do.
I agree that we need to spend more on defence. However moving back up to 3% of GDP will require many more productive parts of government spending such as infrastructure to be cut (cause lets face it no matter what colour the government is they are not going to cut pensions or the NHS).
The USA is a good example of a nation relying too much on market forces to provide essentials services and infrastructure while spending too heavily on defence with no real notion of what the threat environment is. consequently the countries educations system and infrastructure is becoming increasingly third world well it military continues to push the bounds of star trek. It’s the economics 101 debate of guns vs butter however without the butter in the long run they will not be able to afford the guns.
@martin
Very thoughful comments. I think there are some parralels in the defence industry too. Its interesting how Augusta have been speaking coyly about changing the mindset at Westland, and I think BAe in UK has always worked in a sort of ‘semi-nationlaised’ commercial model. HMG takes all the risks and pays most of the bills, from development to production. Of course the model has meant that tradtionally we have been poor at building an export-led defence industry, beyond nations with which we have speical diplomatic-military ties – Saudi and Oman in particular.
Spain, France and Germany have alll developed sucessful export market (rather than host government) driven naval shipbuilding industries, and Italy and Finland sucessful specilist martime contruction businesses.
By contrst BAe has chased a bigger government buck in the US, as ours has declined, and even sold its stake in the most successful export led venture in the UK aviation industry, Airbus. Ok there are exceptions – Hawk and Lynx have been very successful in there respective markets.
So is not part of the problem value for money? We don’t get it from British defence products, but they demand our cash as Martin puts it as a form of “forced charity” for the most vulnerable sectors of our industry. If we can get our industry stand on its own two feet, and not just by moving to Sweden and the US, but through home grown products, will not the budget go further?