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
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 ...
ReplyDeleteDrone 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.
ReplyDeleteIt'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"?
ReplyDeleteYou'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?
ReplyDeleteSoon 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!"
ReplyDeleteO 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
Interesting, depressing and not surprising. The Wavell article is very good but seems to me points to a very long decline in military spending in lockstep with a very long decline in economic capability. With a deal of cynical connivance from the top brass.
ReplyDeleteWW1 was the chemists war and WW2 the industrialists war. Now we face the outsourcers and financiers war. Got nothing at home but ongoing manufacture and supply contracts with all manner of suppliers who supply everyone else as well. Not comfortable but we can't afford the top class semiconductor and machining centres at home merely to make a few missiles.
We might ponder 'what is a military for?'. A very big organisation with its own internal politics etc. But unlikely to face a takeover bid or an existential shakeup. So it never really changes.
Perhaps we might consider the real threat to be finance. The outsourcers, the private equity operators, those who seem to make everything cost four times what any reasonable peron might calculate. Still, so long as they keep money and power out the hands of governments we don't need huge armies.
A minor niggle from the Wavell article. A moan about hands tied due to ECHR. True, but the grunts were mislead by a 'look the other way guv, we'll have this sorted' culture. Those who whispered to government are the guilty, going after the grunts a useful diversion.
jim - "we can't afford the top class semiconductor and machining centres at home merely to make a few missiles"
DeleteI wonder which Oxbridge consultants persuaded various governments from Mrs T onwards that manufacturing was yesterday's game?
Or was it her Old Estonians?
The army getting its arse handed to it might be the catalyst for the low level civil war that the state seems to be determined to inflict on us. It would maybe confirm what we all know that the UK is ruined.
ReplyDelete"the catalyst for the low level civil war" - 45 years ago on arrival in Bradford the curry houses had signs up "No Politics To Be Discussed" - this was not long after an India-Pakistan-Bangladesh war - and when Muslim rioting broke out some 15 years later the casualties included Manningham Labour Club and the Hindu-owned chemists shop - both burned to the ground by mobs. 32 elderly members of the LC were rescued by police and fire crews just before it collapsed.
DeleteAlready, and given zero news coverage ("community relations") there have been confrontations outside the Pakistan High Commission in London and pro-Pakistan demos in Manchester. You only find out on social media.
Cheer up. The Starmerroid's oldest boy is of age to volunteer for the army. He wouldn't be told to fuck off, would he? And he will, of course, have been brought up in an atmosphere of proudly patriotic sentiment.
ReplyDeleteThe lad will have his eyes on joining the IDF. Starmer's children have been raised as Jews. Funny how the media never seems to mention that.
DeleteAnother semi-sputnik moment
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reuters.com/world/pakistans-chinese-made-jet-brought-down-two-indian-fighter-aircraft-us-officials-2025-05-08/
Either the jet or the missile is better than the Rafale with MDBA/BAe/Leonardo missile
Re manufacturing. Back in the '70s the pages of HBR were filled with offshoring and the (then) wonders of Malaysia. When microprocessors came along (make it right and it worked perfectly with no adjustments needed - else chuck it) production managers little eyes lit up at freebees to KL. Even the thickest Minister got the idea - but no-one contemplated the consequences or dare speak them.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile military jobs had a bad reputation since Pepys day and fancy project management methods were invented. Balls on the line unless the paperwork was perfect. Which of course it was - right up to the moment of truth when the job went tits up. You knew to get out when Major General Bufton-Tufton was moved to more important things and Colonel Pratt was the replacement. See phases of a project, best to miss 'Punishment of the innocent'.
One very profitable project manager would walk the production floor, pinch a bit of this and that, lay them on his desk, add a bit of oofle dust and hey presto a new profitable product. Not so easy with the floor 5000 miles away, but if you are there - then walk round the corner and start up with a mate and flog on eBay.
I see Nippon Electric Glass in Wigan is still on the block
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/04/japan-uk-glass-factory-jobs-nippon-electric-glass-neg-rachel-reeves
A glass factory in Wigan that produces fibreglass for electric cars and wind turbines faces closure and the loss of 250 jobs unless its Japanese owner can find a new partner or a buyer. In the latest blow to Britain’s industrial base, Nippon Electric Glass (NEG) announced a “strategic review” of its composites business Electric Glass Fiber UK (EGF), which it expects to last approximately two months, putting about 250 jobs at risk. NEG said its UK composites arm had been “facing a challenging competitive environment with high prices for raw materials, energy, and logistics costs” that had led to “sluggish sales”.
Energy costs are killing UK plc
Pretty much everything in the UK is screwed. I can't think of one area in which we're going in the right direction. Every major facet of public policy has been wrong for 20-30 years and continues to be pointed 180 degrees in the wrong direction, and will be for another 4 years.
ReplyDeleteAs the saying goes, there's a lot ruin in a nation, but I think we have finally used up our quota. And at this point reversing things just cannot be done - we are so far down the rapids now that no amount of frantic rowing backwards will have any effect at all. We are headed for the precipice and are going over.
One area -- as illustrated here -- where we seem to pretty much be world-class, however, is vagueposting.
DeleteThis might be a good moment to sell our unwanteaircraft carriers to India, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteBetter for them to be sunk by missiles under another flag, I agree.
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