The British Army could seize Bruges



peil said:
That 1.9% is made up of a lot of creative accounting covering stuff like civil service pensions in the MoD - not actual spending on military equipment.
We're in a state where if something did happen we'd be very hard pushed to do anything of consequence, and that includes defending outselves. The air cover for the UK is minimal, our Navy has been gutted to the state that we're building two aircraft carriers, stripping the rest of the surface fleet on promises of the never never - all the while not having enough personnel to actually man both carriers.


Not directly but if they went after the Baltic states (after Georgia, Ukraine and Crimea have shown how they'll do it) we are in no position to actually abide by our Article 5 treaty obligations.
The US are rightly saying to the rest of NATO time to pay your way and stop relying on us picking up the slack to deter action and people think they are being unreasonable.
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Who is going to attack us that would have better/more kit than us?

I'll say again for about the fifth time, there aren't many countries that spend more than us and have been spending as much as us for decades. Some of those that do spend more than us were third world countries not so long ago. Are the Indian and Saudi Arabia armies really better than ours?

It's no different to the NHS, it is permanently in crisis regardless of who is in government and how the economy is doing.
 
It always baffles me why the defence of the realm should be subject to defence cuts.
If the Russians or whoever are a threat, and we need the capability to respond to that, but a government decides it's going to cut public spending including defence has that threat receded? Is Putin going to say, oh those poor Brits are cutting back I best reduce the threat.
 
Pop said:
And the rest of the world had/has state of the art kit despite their significantly lower spending?

If our army is worse than Belgium despite spending 10 ten times what they do I think general Barrons needs to look at how they are spending all the cash they get.
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No, but you appear to be making the assumption that their armed forces are the same size and have the same capabilities and materiel as ours. Belgium's total armed forces are around 30k active personnel, ours are 152k personnel.

We have SSBNs which they don't have, two new aircraft carriers coming in with a compliment of new aircraft, many more surface fleet ships, a larger air-force etc etc. Unsurprisingly having more equipment represents a much sharper increase in funding requirements.

That being said, the General is definitely overselling the issue.
 
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LondonBlackCat said:
No, but you appear to be making the assumption that their armed forces are the same size and have the same capabilities and materiel as ours. Belgium's total armed forces are around 30k active personnel, ours are 152k personnel.

We have SSBNs which they don't have, two new aircraft carriers coming in with a compliment of new aircraft, many more surface fleet ships, a larger air-force etc etc. Unsurprisingly having more equipment represents a much sharper increase in funding requirements.

That being said, the General is definitely overselling the issue.
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Carriers we can't man, no aircraft on them for at least 5 years (that will need to be sent to Turkey for overhauls), delays to the next batch of frigates that are needed to help defend said carriers, an air force that sent a whole 4 aircraft to Syria, a helicopter fleet bedevilled with problems with parts and airtime for crews, no martime air patrol capability.
The defence review of 2010 gutted what was already a run down armed forces and left the UK with a few big ticket programmes and almost no flexibility to meet our ongoing requirements.

Pop said:
Who is going to attack us that would have better/more kit than us?

I'll say again for about the fifth time, there aren't many countries that spend more than us and have been spending as much as us for decades. Some of those that do spend more than us were third world countries not so long ago. Are the Indian and Saudi Arabia armies really better than ours?

It's no different to the NHS, it is permanently in crisis regardless of who is in government and how the economy is doing.
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We have an ongoing, 50+ year old, commitment to NATO. We may not be directly attacked, but our nation is committed to coming to the defence of any member who is attacked. The Russians will make a play for the Baltic states at some point in the next decade and we are bound to assist in their defence.
 
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peil said:
Carriers we can't man, no aircraft on them for at least 5 years (that will need to be sent to Turkey for overhauls), delays to the next batch of frigates that are needed to help defend said carriers, an air force that sent a whole 4 aircraft to Syria, a helicopter fleet bedevilled with problems with parts and airtime for crews, no martime air patrol capability.
The defence review of 2010 gutted what was already a run down armed forces and left the UK with a few big ticket programmes and almost no flexibility to meet our ongoing requirements.

We have an ongoing, 50+ year old, commitment to NATO. We may not be directly attacked, but our nation is committed to coming to the defence of any member who is attacked. The Russians will make a play for the Baltic states at some point in the next decade and we are bound to assist in their defence.
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Can't disagree with any of that. I believe we also currently only have enough surface ships to maintain one carrier protection group and even that would be a stretch.

The lack of flexibility is exactly why we ended up pouring hundreds of millions into UORs. It's all well and good pointing out how much we spend, but so much of it is going on undoing the damage created by under-funding in the past.
 
LondonBlackCat said:
Can't disagree with any of that. I believe we also currently only have enough surface ships to maintain one carrier protection group and even that would be a stretch.

The lack of flexibility is exactly why we ended up pouring hundreds of millions into UORs. It's all well and good pointing out how much we spend, but so much of it is going on undoing the damage created by under-funding in the past.
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It'll take decades to sort out, if we ever do. Meanwhile BAe get to suckle on the taxpayers teat
 
peil said:
It'll take decades to sort out, if we ever do. Meanwhile BAe get to suckle on the taxpayers teat
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Some of it is undeniably down to poor budget management, buying overpriced and totally unsuitable materiel but plenty of it is due to stringing out kit and equipment that should have been mothballed years ago.
 
LondonBlackCat said:
No, but you appear to be making the assumption that their armed forces are the same size and have the same capabilities and materiel as ours. Belgium's total armed forces are around 30k active personnel, ours are 152k personnel.

We have SSBNs which they don't have, two new aircraft carriers coming in with a compliment of new aircraft, many more surface fleet ships, a larger air-force etc etc. Unsurprisingly having more equipment represents a much sharper increase in funding requirements.

That being said, the General is definitely overselling the issue.
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So how would be struggle to take Bruges then?

peil said:
Carriers we can't man, no aircraft on them for at least 5 years (that will need to be sent to Turkey for overhauls), delays to the next batch of frigates that are needed to help defend said carriers, an air force that sent a whole 4 aircraft to Syria, a helicopter fleet bedevilled with problems with parts and airtime for crews, no martime air patrol capability.
The defence review of 2010 gutted what was already a run down armed forces and left the UK with a few big ticket programmes and almost no flexibility to meet our ongoing requirements.


We have an ongoing, 50+ year old, commitment to NATO. We may not be directly attacked, but our nation is committed to coming to the defence of any member who is attacked. The Russians will make a play for the Baltic states at some point in the next decade and we are bound to assist in their defence.
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Did we intervene in Crimea recently?
 
LondonBlackCat said:
Never said we would, I said I think the General is overselling the issue, but it's still an issue nonetheless.
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Medium sized market town = Bruges.

The general said we couldn't, must be a shit General. Simple pincer move and bang we are in, dig trenches and we are in for the forseeable.

Flared Hicks said:
I made up the Bruges bit btw, the original article suggested a "medium -size market town which was easily accessible."
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It is a good example.
 
Flared Hicks said:
I made up the Bruges bit btw, the original article suggested a "medium -size market town which was easily accessible."
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Surely it would depend on the actual military objective and who you're trying to take it from. I suppose if you wanted to steal the enemies supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables it might be worth the resources - otherwise just flatten the place.
 
Pop said:
Are Syria in NATO?
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You know they aren't.
You're going off on a tangent, we are currently unable to fulfil our obligations as the armed forces have been gutted by politicians playing fast and loose with the numbers. We cut the army by a third and exist the TA to pick up the slack. In the event we did need to deploy troops were by lucky to do anything even approaching Iraq levels of boots in the ground never mind a stand up fight. Senior military people have been warning about this for years and it's only gotten worse.
 

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