We're potentially at a crucial juncture. Enthused by his foreign adventures and how he is received overseas, Starmer talks openly about putting boots on the ground and planes in the air in Ukraine. But he's also commissioning a review of our preparedness for a Russian attack at home. ('But ...'? Maybe that should be 'So' ...)
Well let's save time & money and just tell him: we're horribly, horribly exposed. No AA defence to speak of, for starters. Much-denuded magazine depth. Hugely vulnerable infrastructure. Fewer battlefield drones than the Ukrainians expend in a day - and no experience or doctrine as to how to use the ones we have, past "experiments" having been a pitiful failure (Watchkeeper, this means you.) No indigenous manufacturing capability to produce 90% of what we need. Population demographics that could not underpin any type of call-up of the type needed to provide mass infantry. (Don't be under any kind of illusion that drone warfare doesn't need many grunts at all.)
And - here's the biggie - no longer the critical mass in the standing army & navy (and probably not airforce, either) to mount either a major, sustained operation, nor a rapid build-up. To the extent we are valued and even admired as a military power that can (genuinely) punch about its weight, it's because of (a) a number of specialisms that have - thus far - survived; (b) some plum overseas assets (Cyprus being top of the list); and (c) the ability to operate - thus far! - with the USA at our backs. But - sustaining them gets progressively more difficult as critical mass seeps away. Oh - and aside possibly from our increasingly worried Australian cousins, nobody is the slightest bit impressed by Gordon Bloody Brown's bloody aircraft carriers - a drain on the defence budget and an all-round vainglorious embarrassment.
We've talked about critical mass before, in several contexts but most specifically including the military. Here's a really interesting contribution on the subject. Read it and weep.
Now, Starmer, how's your grandiose foreign policy / strategy looking?
ND
5 comments:
We still have clever and imaginative special forces and small enterprises if Russia's woes in the Black Sea are anything to go by, but ...
Drone and missile protection. As I understand it, our future lies in covering arable fields with Chinese solar panels, and our hills and immediatish offshore with windmills made (at present) in Spain.
These will be incredibly vulnerable to drones. Even Russia can't protect Moscow or the US Kiev. Some agglomeration in the North Sea? No chance.
Drone and missile protection. We have twice the population our farms can support, and are adding to it daily, by government decision not by natural increase (we don't have to worry about that as we've convinced our women that being a pilot/lawyer/CEO is where it's at). So our survival strategy in extremis is as it was in 1941, ship in grub from a country that half the population want to cut off relations with. But as the Septics are finding in the Red Sea (and Russians in Black Sea), surface military vessels are much more vulnerable than they were. Civilian vessels - well, why are they taking the Cape route?
Goodbye half the population through starvation a la Ireland/Leningrad?
"No indigenous manufacturing capability to produce 90% of what we need."
I'm afraid we have to prioritise - we can't strip skilled workers from the vitally important Kurdish barber and nail bar sectors. And "we've" just signed a deal to destroy job prospects in IT for young people, in the name of Holy GDP.
We really are living through the Gods Of The Copybook Headings.
I could go on ... one possibility that will drastically reduce drone functionality is destroying all GPS satellites, which would probably mean destroying all satellites (Kessler syndrome). Back to inertial guidance and gyroscopes, more things we don't make. On;y the big boys would have them - China, Japan.
If we had a worthwhile army the invaders it should be expelling wouldn't be Russians. As for the Navy and its little boy Aircraft Carriers - I could weep.
It's just as well that the Russians probably don't have designs on our previously fair land - could we please deal with the bad eggs who obviously do?
And who would volunteer to be part of a "critical mass"?
You're a white boy: fuck off! We don't want the likes of you in the RAF!
Just skimmed the wavellroom piece - indeed depressing stuff, but sadly a piece that reflects what's happened to the UK as a whole (industry, job security, manufacturing, housing, 'uman rights, 'elf an' safety). Why should the armed forces be any different?
Soon bombing the brave Houthis will be all we are capable of - indeed we may be at that point.
From one SomersetSu1 in the Guardian comments
"The good news is that the Little Englanders are headed for extinction. Since 2016 there have been vast demographic changes, principally defined by there being fewer of the lot who long for the British Empire, and a great deal more of younger progressive voters who’ve been educated in a modern educational system, not to mention the great increase in new naturalised citizens from abroad. We’re talking changes to the tune of millions here. Their day is done. The wail of Brexit and Reform is the last cry of an archaic people going through an extinction event. Soon that cry will become more and more faint until it dies out entirely. The best thing to do for these lot is to smile and wave. Demographically, they’re not going to be our problem in the future. A good thing because they wouldn’t be able to stand the UK’s progressive, green and diverse future."
"You're a white boy: fuck off! We don't want the likes of you in the RAF!"
O it's fascist this, an' white privilege that, an' "toxic males go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Robinson," when the band begins to play
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