Is British defence policy the most catastrophic in the western world?

88a said:

No doubt!!!

British were saved from defeat by US in World War, then they had been a failure in Iraq, and now in Helmand where the British Army was facing a Strategic Defeat, hadn't US troops popped in to help them.

British are ones who still propagate to stay till 2015 in Afghanistan accusing Pakistan of their inability, while their own force levels is just 10,000 plus, Damn stupid to think and trust British committement, they are simply a sad stock of coalition through a chest-thumping David Cameron.

It is sad and hurtful. :argue

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Uh, no...just not..Battle of Britain, 1940, we held the line, when no-one else in Europe did, and we maintained control of the seas around our island nation and the skies above, a full year before the US entered the war. Germany wasn't getting a toe on British mainland soil. We'd never have gotten back into Europe without US help, that's fair to say, but we'd saved ourselves from defeat, thank you kindly.

Failure in Iraq? Uh..no, we committed at a divisional level and rolled straight through defences that had held the Iranians at bay for ten years. Can't say our post occupational efforts were stellar overall but that's lack of political will and direction. Our involvement in Task Force Black was pretty exemplary however and we did some solid work there.

Force levels of *only* 10,000 in Aghanistan ? It's nearer 9K right now. Oh, okay, I guess we should pull our weight some more and bring our contribution up to the level of other European countries. Or rather..down to...we've consistently had about a third as many troops as the US in theatre. If you stack up GDP or population, I'd say we were pulling our weight.

As for accusing Pakistan, that's been more of a general trend from a number of nations, possibly, and I'm just speculating, reinforced by the discovery of the most wanted man on the planet in a private house close to the capital of Pakistan.

Just who are we being compared to here? It cracks me up here, there's about four or five countries in the world that can pitch to the level that the UK routinely manages, and do so on a global level. Grip, get one.

Sad coalition? We've got a democratic government that isn't dependent on the indulgence of the military to stay in power. Try it some time.

We need to do some things better for sure, spend money more wisely, have a serious look at our capabilities but that's true of most forces out there,

Ian

StobieWan said:

There's the Jacobite invasion of England in 1745 as well...

Plus of course, all the invasion *attempts* by France, Spain, Germany, Holland etc along the way

Ian

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Yeah, but the Jacobites failed. That well known Italian (born, raised, died & buried in Rome), Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria Stuart, fled Britain dressed as a woman & died an embittered drunkard, abandoned by his wife & just about everyone else. I took the post as referring to successful invasions.

I don't think it is catastrophic. There is nothing wrong for politicians/country to decide to spend less on defense. The 2 problems that arise are: 1- it appears to be half-ass or when politicians just cut and don't worry about capabilities. 2- then so called "responsible leaders" send military in harms way with less capability and just tell military to get the job done. Politicians like to cut defense but they are like major league owners that want to play in the big leagues but don't want to spend the MONEY on big time players. You can't go to the playoffs with minor league players, might get lucky one year, but eventually you will get creamed.

When you just look at RAF today compared in the early 90s, Harriers/Jaguars/Buccaneers and lot of Tornados are gone. Nimrod MP2 are gone,R1 has a small retrieve, Sentinel might stick around till 2015...Now, after Cold War, you needed to downsize a bit but the RAF that will be around in 2014/15 will be a shadow of the past. I mean it would have been OK if RAF would have gotten it's full complement of Typhoons or even the number RAF will get would still be passing grade but you have to spend the money on parts and training,etc if not you have just spent a lot of money on some fancy toys that will never leave the hangar.

British defence policy is not catastrophic at all. And if American gov't has any real sense, it'd start to cut down on its defence budget too and pull troops from Germany, Korea and a bunch of other nations in the world. Britain just needs to realize that with its current state of economy, it can't afford to play as large of a role in the international scene. It doesn't need to support America in every foreign adventure that America gets into. And if America sees that it has no support from any major military forces around the world, maybe it will be more careful about doing things like intervening in Libya.

Well, the push for Lybia came from France and the UK. The US only lend a helpfull hand.

Nevertheless I concur with the rest of your post.

Defence is not a game of top trumps, we need to stop looking back and constantly counting numbers of tanks, planes and ships. Threat priorities have changed and money must be diverted to fund less in your face Gucci bits of kit, which support the dark arts. Today's environment requires an increasing amount of money be diverted to intelligence gathering, analysis and dissemination, we also have new threats to deal with such as cyber attacks, all have to paid for out of a diminishing pot.

The current Levene study will look at how projects are managed and reduce the amount of senior officer dead wood. Also tri-service interaction will increase and be a prerequisite for promotion, which will hopefully reduce the amount of infighting between services. Fox et al are at least attempting to sort out years of malaise and delays, which just postponed the inevitable black hole bow wave that has now come crashing down.

The UK military definitely needs some 'time-out' to re-equip and plan for the future. The operational tempo has been too high for too long, which has brought some benefits (UOR's and personal equipment), but has muddied the water within critical procurement programmes - FRES being the best example with too many spec changes caused by 'lessons learnt'.

Post 2015 the UK can hopefully wind down from Afghanistan, consolidate its military back in the UK and focus on developing a flexible response able to deploy in its entirety to deal with a broad spectrum of threats to national security. I can only hope the embarrassing menu of screwed up projects has caused both Labour and Con-Lib to take a long look at what is actually achievable.