Off Topic The even thinner red line

[Draig]

Bloody hell, it won't be too long before we don't even have enough troops to defend Buckingham Palace, let alone Britain!

BBC News - Defence review: Army 'to be reduced by 10,000 troops'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56477900

 

[123Daveyboy]

Bloody hell, it won't be too long before we don't even have enough troops to defend Buckingham Palace, let alone Britain!

BBC News - Defence review: Army 'to be reduced by 10,000 troops'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56477900

Round up all the mindless bastards who go to demonstrations hell bet on violence. Give them something worth fighting for.

 

[E.T. Fairfax]

Round up all the mindless bastards who go to demonstrations hell bet on violence. Give them something worth fighting for.

I remember when I was little in the 80's, seeing news reports, showing people getting brutally beaten over the head by the riot police. Why cant we get back to those days? Any students proven to be involved should face fines, time and afterwards get shipped back to their parents house.

 

[Sidthemackem]

Mad. Boots on the ground? Hardly...

 

[Draig]

Ha'way @Makemstine Roger what do you make of this?

 

[Makemstine Roger]

they will be sending 18 years olds out after having a good feed on mumsys tit, beating them troublemakers up with inflatable trudgeons, No men want to join the Army anymore, having pervs ogling at you in the showers, having shyster lawyers chasing you for doing your duty, soft recruits who the Army would have laughed at a few years ago forcing the armed forces to take them only to see them running off the parade ground crying Because an RSM was being nasty, the standard of recruitment have plummeted due to piss poor joining criteria.The Judges are as soft as ****e with the criminals,illigals ,murderers, rape gangs and fraudsters, when there is no deterrent anymore it comes down to the wild west. a london mayor who hates the city and only helps people of his ethnesticity, whilst stabbing of black on black reaches epidemic proportions, a Chief of police in Cressida Dick who is useless, and has the police nearly as far left as she is with her leftie values, the time has come take a long look at the path we are currently going down and say enough, we still have a vote to say no, BLM and this save the planet **** should be banned, along with all the woke whitehall mandarins, who want it to continue.Just get it stopped before its too late.

 

[flandersmackem]

Really sad new that this is happening to one of the worlds finest armies. At some point we were highly regarded and the gold standard that other aspired to be. But the harsh financial reality and the fact that we are now a nation whose world standing is severely on the decline has made this move utterly predicable, especially with the Tories in charge. The cost of Covid will be another reason trotted out as to why our nation will be less secure via a reduced army going forward. Shame on them.

 

[rb92]

We’ve always had a small army (barring of course the two world wars) but this planned downsizing is going to make us a laughing stock if we aren’t there already.

 

[MACKEMLAD1973]

Royal Signals (25years)
CERTA CITO

When I joined in 1966 I'm sure there was about 250K soldiers. Gave us plenty of time to do all the military things and then sport and leisure activities.
i'm sure when i left 25 years later we still had about 150K.
The old cap badges and regimental memories are going or have been amalgamated to create new cap badges.
i have always believed in "BOOT ON THE GROUND"
It seems now that our army will be nothing more than just a quick reaction force.
I lived in SIngapore, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Northern Ireland and Carribean during my service and i have so many memories going on in my head. But the main thing i remember was it doesn't matter what our project was our team spirit always came through as the army is built on (T.E.A.M.) Together Everybody Achieves More.
You get that from day one and it stays with you throughout your life. I am not so sure the modern soldier will understand that as much.
I joined the army for travel to different countries. Which I did. But I think the modern soldier can look no further than the middle east.

The low manpower will probably mean that soldiers will spend 3 months preparing for a tour then do his 6 months tour have a month off then prepare for another tour somewhere.
During my time we had good support for families etc and I hope this doesn't suffer in the future.

Would I join the army now. NO WAY PEDRO

 

[Charley Farley]

Royal Signals (25years)
CERTA CITO

When I joined in 1966 I'm sure there was about 250K soldiers. Gave us plenty of time to do all the military things and then sport and leisure activities.
i'm sure when i left 25 years later we still had about 150K.
The old cap badges and regimental memories are going or have been amalgamated to create new cap badges.
i have always believed in "BOOT ON THE GROUND"
It seems now that our army will be nothing more than just a quick reaction force.
I lived in SIngapore, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Northern Ireland and Carribean during my service and i have so many memories going on in my head. But the main thing i remember was it doesn't matter what our project was our team spirit always came through as the army is built on (T.E.A.M.) Together Everybody Achieves More.
You get that from day one and it stays with you throughout your life. I am not so sure the modern soldier will understand that as much.
I joined the army for travel to different countries. Which I did. But I think the modern soldier can look no further than the middle east.

The low manpower will probably mean that soldiers will spend 3 months preparing for a tour then do his 6 months tour have a month off then prepare for another tour somewhere.
During my time we had good support for families etc and I hope this doesn't suffer in the future.

Would I join the army now. NO WAY PEDRO

I joined up in 1967, also in the Royal Signals.

When they say the Army will be cut to about 70,000 they don’t mention that many will be Cooks, Admin, Stores, Transport and a whole load of other support personnel.
Front line fighting troops will be reduced to a minimal number and will not be 70 odd thousand as they try to make us believe.

 

[Draig]

...
The low manpower will probably mean that soldiers will spend 3 months preparing for a tour then do his 6 months tour have a month off then prepare for another tour somewhere.
...

I wonder just what this will mean for manpower retention. You'll get people trained up then lose them quickly as they get fed up with the pace of near constant ops.

The army are going to lose a pool of talent that will impact upon those going on to become the long service senior nco's. Who will then field train the subalterns?

No doubt the politicians will say numbers can be made up by reservists, but what would have happened if we needed a major deployment last year when all the reserve medics were needed in their main jobs and the loggies were being used to maintain nhs supplies and others used in additional operations like testing?

Hell, the army are understrength by about 12,000 because of poor recruitment and high leaving rates so how do they think this will help?

I don't know it is supposed to be illegal, but with the regular army being so dependent upon reserves, then I doubt that employers will want to employ someone who is a reservist, because of the high likelihood of them being called up to support routine operations.

I wonder what signals this is sending out to Russia and the Baltic States who are reliant upon NATO forces?

 

[Draig]

Just reading up in Jane's about the RAF's hit
Retiring 29 of the Tranche 1 Typhoons, leaving a force of 131.

Cutting the F-35’s procurement from 138 aircraft to ‘more than 48’

Replacing the seven E3-D Sentry AWACs with only three of the E7 Wedgetails instead of the expected five.

All of the 14 remaining C130s will go by 2023 (were due to stay until mid 2030s) leaving us with only 22 A400 Atlas

 

[Makemstine Roger]

Royal Signals (25years)
CERTA CITO

When I joined in 1966 I'm sure there was about 250K soldiers. Gave us plenty of time to do all the military things and then sport and leisure activities.
i'm sure when i left 25 years later we still had about 150K.
The old cap badges and regimental memories are going or have been amalgamated to create new cap badges.
i have always believed in "BOOT ON THE GROUND"
It seems now that our army will be nothing more than just a quick reaction force.
I lived in SIngapore, Egypt, Italy, Germany, Northern Ireland and Carribean during my service and i have so many memories going on in my head. But the main thing i remember was it doesn't matter what our project was our team spirit always came through as the army is built on (T.E.A.M.) Together Everybody Achieves More.
You get that from day one and it stays with you throughout your life. I am not so sure the modern soldier will understand that as much.
I joined the army for travel to different countries. Which I did. But I think the modern soldier can look no further than the middle east.

The low manpower will probably mean that soldiers will spend 3 months preparing for a tour then do his 6 months tour have a month off then prepare for another tour somewhere.
During my time we had good support for families etc and I hope this doesn't suffer in the future.

Would I join the army now. NO WAY PEDRO

well said mate

 

[D-K]

Really sad new that this is happening to one of the worlds finest armies. At some point we were highly regarded and the gold standard that other aspired to be. But the harsh financial reality and the fact that we are now a nation whose world standing is severely on the decline has made this move utterly predicable, especially with the Tories in charge. The cost of Covid will be another reason trotted out as to why our nation will be less secure via a reduced army going forward. Shame on them.

In fairness, in my experience it's the Tories who have supported the military more than Labour which is why you'll see a very high percentage of current and former military personnel voting Conservative.

As for the reduction in manpower, that's been going on for decades so it's down to all parties, not just the one to suit any one individuals agenda but if someone did want to be biased then you can blame Labour for bringing the British Army below the fabled 100k. Making the Army more of a Militia size than an actual Army size.

Or how it was explained to me by my superiors during my Corporal promotion course when numbers were being reduced in the early 2000's was 'the British Army will never be allowed to go below 100k people because then they are no longer officially an Army and more of a Militia'. But hey, Labour went and done it anyway...

 

[Draig]

The last time I saw a defence review that focused solely on one function to the exclusion of another like this one was the 1981 Defence White Paper.

Curiously that one was focused on NATO tasking as opposed to out of area ops, where the current one is the reverse.

I remember the 1981 review had wholly unintended consequences in the area that was to be cut back.

Wholly unintended consequences in a NATO arena just scares the **** out of me!

 

[polyphemus]

It seems that in this changing World, change is essential.

When I was in the RAF, in the 60's, there were about 250,000.
More in The Army.
About the same in The Navy.

Apparently in the new version of The Army, it's mostly to be done by drones, all controlled from a very safe distance by people who are good at computer games.
FOOTBALLERS?

In the World War 2 Paccific, Battle of Midway, the biggest Sea Battle since Jutland, where Five (?) Aircraft Carriers were sunk, the two Fleets never came in sight of each other.

Naval tactics are transfering to Land.

I'm GUESSING that some small number of actual Soldiers, as I understand them, will be retained. These will be usefull in emergencies, flood, pandemics that sort of thing.
The Rifle Brigade and a few civil engineers.