State of the British armed forces

[Wizeman]

Just wondering if anyone else is worried about the state of our armed forces?

The world seems like its on a knife edge and from my analysis we are not ready for war.

Our Armed Forces are woefully underfunded and not able to protect us. This government has made it worse. It’s something that one day we will all reflect on and say shit, we fucked up.

We've been at war for a few years now. It's been fought with commerce, research and technology.

We have some very advanced capabilities (Dragonfire is stunning) and the days of soldiers on the ground are probably passed, with games players sat in dark rooms driving drones taking over.

I think we are more ready than we may seem, but we have been caught by surprise.

Yes and no.

Of course, it is terrible that the UK military has been run down to the point where we can't deploy ships, but at the same time the world is going through a transition just now because of drones.

We need to put a lot into this new form of battle for sure, and at the same time we are finding out our tech of just 10 years ago is not really up to the job for sustained battle.

That's not me making excuses for the deplorable cuts, but I can certainly see the case for examining the way to transition.

We might have great systems and soldiers etc but we dont have enough. Caught by surprise, really? Chief of staffs have been on about us going to war for years and the politicians have done nothing. Ukraine made it pretty obvious to most people the world was changing.

We have some very advanced capabilities (Dragonfire is stunning) and the days of soldiers on the ground are probably passed, with games players sat in dark rooms driving drones taking over.

There's some fancy kit around now but it is way too soon to think the days of troops of the ground has gone...and even in Ukraine the drone operators have often ended up at the front due to the countermeasures clobbering any comms links other than a few km of fibre optic cable.

Sadly however that idea that personnel are no longer needed had allowed politicians of all parties to justify the lack of spending..

Fundamentally credible defence costs, anyonr who says it can be done on the cheap is not being honest.

Stop reading the mail, they will tell you anything. Britain is broken, Britain can't defend itself, Iranian missiles can hit London.

If Iranian missiles could hit British soil they would be raining down right now.

Our government has decided to a cautious approach to any involvement in the middle east. The daily mail were quick to point the finger at Tony Blair with Iraq.

Britain can defend itself and we are more than able to pull out weight.

This isn't our fight, the Americans didn't share intelligence, they didn't ask for any support prior to their wreck less war.

Trump is a petulant child and ignored all the advice and went it alone.....and the daily mail is an alarmist tabloid not good enough for toilet paper

@dwordle
If Iranian missiles could hit British soil they would be raining down right now.

Agree with that -It's highly unlikely that the Iranians could rain missiles down on British soil, it's probable they made major efforts to produce whatever got fired toward Diego Garcia and they won't be able to repeat the performance on a frequent basis.

Britain can defend itself and we are more than able to pull out weight

OTOH I'd caution thinking that...politicians have spent years making comments such as "pull our weight" or"punch above our weight" whilst making cuts.

It's fine to ignore the DM as a source but across the board the defence specialists and analysts have been saying for some time now that the UK Forces are not in a great state at all, and factually when it come to air/missile defence the UK air defence system currently has no effective anti-ballistic missile capability.

Now that might no matter right now but lets not pretend the UKs defences are in a great state.

Im not saying its our fight. What im saying is can we defend our selves? I dont think we can, it took 2 weeks to get our highest readiness destroyer out to sea, all of our other destroyers are in maintenance. We only have 1 operational attack submarine and thats all the way in australia, so at the minute the royal navy at a stretch could only put 8 ships to see. 1 type 45 destroyers, 5 type 23 frigates, 1 submarine and possibly an aircraft carrier. Thats assuming it doesn't take months to get then out to sea.

The other day iran hit Diego garcia, Iranian missiles have a maximum range of 2000 miles, the missile that hit Diego garcia went 2600 miles. Its very possible iran could have developed a new missile and could hit the uk, and there is nothing we could do because we dont have any balistic missile air defence in the uk other than our type45s, the only one that is operational is on the way to Cyprus.

The british military is in a terrible state.

The army only has 70k troops, a large amount of that number will be logistics so divide 70k by 2 and you've got 35k combat lads on the ground, but then they need rotating on and off, so realistically the british army could only put 15k troops on a front at once, russia has over a million troops on the front, China has far far more.

Like I said we have no air defence against missiles, what would we do if the Russian navy came steaming up to the uk one day and decided to launch missiles at our bases?

Nothing

You dont understand how unprepared we are.

Type 45 is our only asset that could deal with ballistic missiles comfortably. 5 type 45 are in maintenance and the other 1 is going to Cyprus. I do believe the raf acquired a new surface to air missle system in secret although I doubt it would be able to deal with a large amount of balistics.

In past there have been many MNers saying they would move heaven & high water to prevent THEIR sons (or daughters) joining military, becoming soldiers. Fine if other mothers put their sons in danger, but not a position many MNers would allow to happen. Oh, and all soldiers are obviously mostly murderous thugs. That too (according to MN).

I'm not sure I'd say with any confidence from.the deatails that are in the public domain that aType 45 with the current interation of Sea Viper would handle ballistic missiles comfortably, the situation should improve with a (anti) ballistic missile ugrade that's supposedly on the way...as you rightly say the Navy struggles to get many to sea anyway..

It's chuffing hard for the services to purchase, let alone deploy, any system in secret so I'm not sure I'd buy into rumours of the RAF having something new...be interested to know what the rumours actually are.

I wasn’t until I heard a programme on radio 4 detailing the (non) capabilities of our current armed forces. We apparently at best could adequately defend a small market town. That’s it. We don’t have the capability to shoot down air borne missiles over this country. Like lots of other people I’ve been blasé about this, as I’m a pacifist by nature and just assumed we wouldn’t involve ourselves in war, but if we did we had an adequate army. The current situation is bringing it home to me that we might not have a choice about being embroiled in conflict and if we do get dragged in we can’t defend ourselves at all. We aren’t even in a position to meet the commitment we have made to NATO in terms of providing arms and staff to defend NATO countries if one is attacked.
In the past I would never have advocated defence spending over spending on other things but I didn’t realise how depleted we are in this area at all!

This kind of decline is inevitable. More and more government expenditure is going on health and social care and that means we're going to see everything else gradually cut to the bare minimum.

I’ve been saying for years that this country is woefully unprepared and incapable of looking after itself.

We’ve shanked our defences, we are so far from self sufficient on food that it’s not funny, we’ve failed to train up our own young people in the skills necessary to maintain even the infrastructure we already have (note the average age of carpenters, builders, stonemasons, plumbers), and when anyone points it out they are met with a barrage of abuse and mockery.

The only trying that is going to fix the country is a nasty shock that the complacent cannot ignore (and boy will they try to). One day this country will learn a sharp, humiliating lesson. I just hope my kids have escaped before it happens.

The previous one took the numbers down from from 178k in 2010 to 137k in 2025. It’s difficult to see how this can be blamed on the current government.

Still far better shape now than when Argentina invaded the Falklands. We had to use civilian cruise ships to move troops. So I don't understand the argument that our armed forces can't defend itself.

I know this because I was in the Navy and it was an utter disaster in terms of unnecessary casualties but it still over performed.

Thatcher had cut the armed forces right back so again find it annoying that it's the conservatives that take credit for military spending when it's consistently Labour that finds the money.

The Army alone was bigger in 1982 than the combined services now. I thought the QE2 was used because it had just been fully stocked and could be put to sea at no notice?

This
It wasn’t that we could not deploy ships, we chose not to. The we can’t was propaganda to keep Trump off our backs.

We have a lot more contracted support now than then for support functions like logistics and supply.

@dwordle

Still far better shape now than when Argentina invaded the Falklands.

I was on the edge of that one, and whilst it's great to be loyal to the services (and they did a brilliant job down south) I think there's still a need to be realistic about where we are now.

If you served in the RN you will know that the Navy had more warships available to deploy much more quickly than we have now, and the RAF and Army were much bigger and also moved PDQ.

We had to use civilian cruise ships to move troops

And? I mean you tell me but I thought using ships taken up from trade (STUFT) was an absolutely standard option to be used in time of conflct and would probably be needed these days in similar circumstances if push came to shove..

There's no doubt modern platforms have better capabilities than 40 plus years ago, e.g. Type 42s vs Type 45s, Harriers, vs F-35, but the old saying that quantity has a quality all of it's own still applies...and HM Forces stopped being able to much in serious quantity some time ago.

That doesn’t help us. The entire point of using troops for support functions was that they could be deployed if necessary. We can’t deploy civilians.

You’re joking right? Yes MoD civilians and MoD contractors can and do deploy into war zones for support functions. They are usually escorted by military troops as civilians (apart from police) can’t carry weapons and are not combatants. Google “whole force” approach.

This is not new. Where did you get the idea that civilians can’t be deployed?

Little article published in 2012 about an veteran turned MoD who deployed to Afghanistan.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/operational-deployments-offer-mod-civilians-a-fresh-perspective

By deployed I meant fight.

Ah, well now you know that deployment doesn’t mean fight.
You also should know that having civilians/contractors doing the support functions, frees up fighters so they can fight.
If the support functions were done by uniformed military they’d still not be available to fight.

They should be blamed. War is on the way and we should be ready. Prep for the worst hope for the best.