Category: Thoughts on the Future
The reality of the challenges involved in recapturing the Falkland Islands
Hello all, and welcome to my first ever Think Defence article. My name is Sir Humphrey, and I’m the author of a small blog called the Thin Pinstriped Line. Some of you may know me from ARRSE, PPRUNE and Warships1, where I post (or posted) under a variety of different usernames. I originally set my [...]
A balanced force with a balanced budget ?
A guest post from Jed… TD has recently regailed us with posts on the Post Afghan vehicle lottery and on aspects of operational mobility (just to back up his veritable reference work on bridging!), including his awesome series of specialist mobility video postings. In the comment threads, plus those on earlier articles there is [...]
The Post Afghanistan Vehicle Lottery
As I have commented many times, the UOR system itself has, with a small number of exceptions, been a great success, providing all manner of vehicles and equipment across all three services for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. Equally, we all know that the UOR system creates problems for the long term, generally they are [...]
Learning Lessons from Libya, ISR and Maritime Land Attack
Reality is depressing and I am even struggling with the motivation to finish the bridging series, even though it’s 90% done. So ignoring the fact that we are poorer than a jobless church mouse yet continue with our fantasy spending plans I thought a fantasy kit post was in order. A recent Janes Defence Weekly [...]
Multi Role Brigades
The Strategic Defence and Security Review framed the future of the British Army in terms of the Multi Role Brigade. This had been signalled from as long ago as 2008 and subsequently featured as part of the Future Army Structure and Future Army Structure (Next Steps) initiatives. This original thinking envisaged 8 identical Brigades and [...]
Grand Strategy on a Budget – Part 5 (Conclusion)
The final part of the guest post series from Martin at Fantasy Fleets blog… In this post I was attempting to take a top down approach to defence and foreign policy. Looking into the distance future to decide what policy decisions we could make today to improve our position in the world of 2050. [...]
A Grand Strategy – Part 4 (Defence Policy)
A Guest post from Martin at the Fantasy Fleets blog; Putting Our Money Where our Mouth Is If power points could kill the MOD would be the greatest military force since Alexander the Great. Government is constantly outlining new and interesting ways to cooperate with emerging powers while actually doing very little. This is not [...]
Grand Strategy on a Budget – Part 3 (Foreign Policy)
A Guest post from Martin at the Fantasy Fleets Blog The world of 2050 will likely be dominated by 6 major players: United States of America European Union China India Brazil Indonesia When we are looking to strengthen our diplomatic standing we must be careful to avoid conflicts with other allies. For that reason we [...]
Grand Strategy on a Budget – Part 2 (Examining Trends)
A Guest post from Martin over at the Fantasy Fleets blog If we look at the past 50 years and extrapolate over the next 50 years we can see some clear trends emerging that will lead to opportunities and challenges for the future. First Trend Developing nations such as China, Brazil, Indonesia and India will [...]
Grand Strategy on a Budget – Part 1
A Guest post from Martin over at the Fantasy Fleets blog Many of us have spent the last two years trying to get a handle on what position the UK can or should play in the world. This is far more than the government seems to have done since 1998 instead favoring muddling through moving [...]
Fantasy Fleets – Chris B
A guest post from Chris.B It appears everyone has been pitching in to the war zone that is “fantasy fleets” and so I decided to have a crack myself. I and others have often been challenged with what I personally believe to be the very tenuous argument of “well at least I’ve made a suggestion, [...]
2012 for Defence
Besides the world ending, what does 2012 look like for the MoD, it’s employees and suppliers?
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