Trump's team & the remarkable tale of the M10 tank

While Trump is stomping the world making desperate attempts to sate his Deal Lust at whatever cost to plausibility, partnerships, policy or prestige, business goes on in the vastness of the US government: and it seems possible not all of his appointees are complete dickheads.  I give you the youthful Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (wiki doesn't seem to know quite how old he is).

The M10 'Booker'.  Of no use to man nor beast

Upon taking office this chap has noticed that the M10 Booker program - a tank? an assault gun? an "armored infantry support vehicle"? - is, in any event, a costly dud.  And rather than soldier on regardless, as in many a similar circumstance over the decades, he has simply scrapped it, boldly and wisely stating that he ain't gonna fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy.  

What a man! 

The soundness of his decision-making is of course compounded many-fold by the war in Ukraine, which signals as clearly as anything could that the weapons and doctrinal paradigms of the 20th Century are badly in need of 100% overhaul, not to say wholesale discarding.  In the race to do this effectively, every dollar spent on badly-procured, intrinsically obsolete stuff like the M10 is a dollar wasted, that could have been spent much better on something so completely different, it makes the head spin. 

In another excellent move, the US Army is not going to replace its 150,000 lumbering Humvees like-for-like.  For infantry purposes they are going instead for this - at a fraction of the cost.  

The Mad Max vibe obviously represents the future: see also the Russians abandoning the use of APCs for assault use - they get instantly malleted by Ukrainian drones - in favour of motorbikes on weaving courses to traverse the open fields between tree-lines.

I do feel sorry for the descendants of the two Booker families being commemorated.  Hopefully, they can take faint cheer from the wisdom of Driscoll's action.

Anyhow: to encounter a politician who properly understands the Sunk Cost Fallacy is a rare event, much to be applauded.  (Maybe there are other such people in Team Trump ..?)  As a matter of urgency, can Driscoll take Ed Miliband aside, please?  Hinkley Point, Sizewell, government-financed hydrogen projects etc etc, this means you.

ND 

The Special Forces Fallacy

Michael Portillo wasn't the only politician to harbour misconceptions and delusions about the special forces.

Yes, there are certain missions for which only special forces are suitable.  Yes, they can sometimes achieve seeming miracles.  Yes, we'd be a lot the worse for not having highly capable units of this kind.  Yes, we Brits do it rather well.  And, yes, since 1989 the proportion has risen of whatever it is we expect to achieve with armed might, that will be assigned to such troops. 

But no, categorically no, you cannot have armed forces essentially comprised of nothing else, which is what the government appears to imagine, with plans for big reductions in army numbers and conversion of some of the remaining line infantry regiments to "Ranger" forces, with silly American "elite" connotations.  When everyone's special, then nobody is.

And there's a bigger, deep-running problem.  To man a single regiment of SAS, you need thousands of very good "ordinary" soldiers aspiring to join them, training hard to be able just to apply to join them, actually applying to join them - and then, mostly, failing.  To be able to have an elite with such high standards, you must first have a big enough pool of proven, pretty high-standard talent to draw upon.

I don't know what is the critical mass of soldiery to produce, by distillation, what we need by way of special forces.  But diminish the army far enough, and we won't have it.

Enough of random and destructive penny-pinching.   Read yer history**: sell or scrap yer bloody aircraft carriers (before the Chinese do it for you one sunny afternoon in Far Eastern waters): and rebuild & re-equip the forces to a balanced and realistic standard ... at critical mass.

ND

______________

** The Prince of Wales   ...   for pity's sake!

Scrapping Sentinel: Massive Government Mistake

My special subject being aired now.  For the past 12+ years, the RAF has operated the Sentinel R1, a very capable and sophisticated piece of surveillance kit that all you one-time aircraft spotters will know about, and the rest can read more here. 

The Sentinel has been of extraordinary value to HMG, in ways that will not find detailed expression in the public domain but you can readily imagine.  (Start by searching on Operation Shader to get the general idea.)  Osborne, that f*****g 'genius' whose entry in the history books will be 100% damning, decided to scrap them for cost-cutting reasons but Cameron was persuaded (well, begged by our allies) not to follow through, so they were given a 5-year life extension.

But now their last mission has been flown, and there's no 1-1 replacement in sight.

I despair. 

ND

UK armed forces. How big is big enough?

The UK army isn't very old. A standing army from the 1700s only.
And it was tiny by European standards. Outside of the Napoleonic and world wars the Empire had always had a minuscule military presence.
Even the large commitment unsuccessful fighting in the Americas was boosted by 30,000 mercenaries. Accounting for a third of the troops at the height of the war.

The Empire slumped back to its 30-40,000 army personnel size until Napoleon. That was a global war. As bloody, costly and world changing as the later ones. The British Army rose to 250,000.
That's why we have the income tax.

After the Napoleonic wars there was the usual economic mass unemployment and slump. The Army fell to 90,000 ten years after the end of the wars. In spite of having obtained more possessions and responsibilities worldwide. The Navy was huge at this time. And would continue to be. Gaining at the expense of the army, as has always been the English way.

The British army did not rise to Napoleonic heights again until the turn of the century and the Boer war. Not even with the Crimean War or Indian wars. Or the endless colonial wars. Some of very significant size such as the Sudan and Natal wars. 
The Boer war was an empire highlight. A modern war that asked just how many troops would be required to fight an insurgency and subdue an entire country.
 350,000 was the answer.

10 years later and outbreak of WW1 there were 250,000 in the British Army worldwide.
4.2 million in all forces by 1917. Only ever surpassed by the 1944, 4.5 million under arms.

The UK took a very, very long time to wind down the military post war. The Marshall money was squandered on keeping the armed forces at war footing levels. Someone had to do it.
And there was only us and the Americans left.
1,000,000 under arms 1951
500,000 1961
300,000 1991

Then the cold war ended and the UK moved into the  modern defence era.
The government liked to have around 90,000 troops ready for anything in the 1990s. Falling in the 2000s to 82,000.
And they needed them. Being permanently at war somewhere. And with two huge, ongoing commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Not a single person that I know in the armed forces hasn't served in Afghanistan. That includes pay clerks, intelligence and human resources officers. Most had to go at least twice.
And as about half of those people I knew were in the Royal Navy, that shows how desperately stretched the army was for those conflicts.

Theresa May is looking to cut even more from the defence budget. 
Some say, including the defence minister, that would be impossible and irresponsible.
 
But if ever there was a time to cut army numbers, it is now.

All three services have had a ton of new equipment. A period of no expense won't be as damaging today as it was in the 1980s when equipment generally was obsolete going into the cutting period.

The UK has no intention of getting involved in any conflict, anywhere, for any reason. It would take a global event to force us to join up. And although there are plenty of possibles, Tubby Kim and Vlad the Bad among them, they aren't that likely to spill over into a ground war.
 And both won't just be us, or us and Europe alone.

The military, again due to the Iraq wars, never really settled on a post Soviet role.
What is the purpose of the military? How big is big enough ? 
Should our soldiers have more of an anti-terror police role? 
That is what they have been asked to do for many years now. 

Why is 50,000 troops too few?

The UK has NEVER, ever been fully prepared for a conflict. From the starving long-bowmen at Agincourt. To the unarmoured Snatch Landrover police vehicles in Kandahar,  the UK  has always come from behind to catch up once war breaks out.

This isn't a virtue. Its a terrible thing to have persistently wasted the most able, most veteran, most highly trained of our military in the opening battles. So damaging to the long term build up of the citizen armies that followed and won the wars.
 The horrendous casualties at Mons helped ensure failure on the Somme. The loss of the air strike force in France in 1940 delayed the successful army-air tactical co-operation until Alamein.

But it is how the UK has always fought. 




Small, professional, highly skilled peace time army. Capable of police actions alone. Or bigger conflicts as part of an allied army. 

So why should we have 80,000 troops on the books? Who are we fighting today? No one. 
So why is our strength the same as if we were still policing Afghanistan and Iraq? 

Who are our enemies?
Iran? North Korea? Russia? ... France ? 
We aren't going to get into it a ground war with any of them.

Won't 40,000 or 50,000 with a decent paid reserve do the job just as well ? 
Wouldn't we be better having a very small, but very capable multi-role, elite force?
 With all the support aircraft, ships, artillery, tanks, helicopters, drones, surveillance and transport to allow a really mobile rapid reaction force to successfully pop up anywhere?

So, how many is enough?

[ May 2016 -  196,840  "UK Service Personnel" 
4% are 'other' and just shy of 18% are the reserves. 
Former UK military personnel are liable for immediate call up in case of hostilities . The regular reserve. On wiki this gives an additional 45,000 available at very short notice. The UK is committed to defence spending of 2% for NATO. One of the very few EU countries that has always taken this commitment seriously. But modern treasury thinking is to try to make the definition of  military expenditure as wide as possible to allow the use of the defence budget for other areas.]

Abject: Inside Corbyn's Pathetic Decision-Loop

Team Corbyn is not fit to take the battlefield.  I'm not sure Team May would prevail against a worthwhile foe, but clearly they've no need to.

A basic military tenet is this:  there is rarely any strategic surprise; but there can always be tactical surprise.  I could give a thousand examples. 

So - was the Snap Election a strategic surprise?  Absolutely not: any Team Corby chappies wargaming the political future after he was re-elected in September would have had it on their list, and - fatally - indeed they obviously did.  We'll come to that in a moment. 

Was it a tactical surprise?  Oh, yes.  And conforming nicely to British military doctrine:  a deception plan in advance, totally secrecy and radio silence beforehand (fascinating to speculate exactly who knew - the true Teresa Trustees); then strike like lightning.

With tremendous success, because the announcement clearly got right inside Team Corbyn's decision-loop.  So all they could do was react with tremendous predictability and trot out their rehearsed line:  "bring it on; we're not afraid", hotly followed by putting on a 3-line whip for the Parliamentary vote required to crystalise May's intent.  So now everything that follows is on May's chosen battlefield, and - even if she didn't consider it prudent to fire up CCHQ ahead of time [see 'secrecy' above] - at least Core-Team-May is a hundred times better prepared than, well, anyone else on the field.

This reveals the stupidity of the opposing forces, who have forgotten Drew's 4th law of politics:  the lines of logistics in politics are short.  Very short, assuming everyone (except Gordon Brown of course) has a mobile 'phone.  This means, inter alia: no-one in politics needs to be bounced into an instant reaction because (a) any politico worth their salt can play for time (being measured here only in hours, or a day at most);  and (b) in a matter of hours you can convene your best brains, thrash out a serious response, and hurl it back into the fray.  

In this instance, they should at very least have blown up the narrow bridge across which May was forced to march, namely the requirement for a two-thirds majority.  Even if she had a Plan B (and we may guess she did) you've already won yourself even more time: and if you can't come up with a workable slogan to counter the inevitable chorus of "frit frit frit" you've no place in Team Corby HQ. 

Instead, they remembered that the last time they discussed a snap election - several months ago, in the abstract, with nothing concrete in front of them - they concluded we'd better say OK.  And that was what they had in the locker.  "OK."  And not enough coolness under fire to sit down quietly and come up with their own plan in time for the 6 O'clock news.  Something really unexpected, from out of left field(!)  And we know May looks utterly out of her depth when that happens: so, an opportunity to score heavily.  Instead, yet another in the line of prostrate Parliamentary performances, kowtowing to the Empress.  "The real fight starts now" -?

Abject.  Pathetic.  Deserving of utter oblivion.

ND  

The world's 20 strongest militaries

Italian Carriers

RANKED: The world's 20 strongest militaries

Credit Suisse have ranked the world's military. In order of strength. 
Size and budget doesn't matter much here. Its the power to project that is important in the strength rating. The scores for military might are as follows.

 The factors under consideration for military strength and their total weights are: number of active personnel (5% of total score), tanks (10%), attack helicopters (15%), aircraft (20%), aircraft carriers (25%), and submarines (25%). 

So the CV, CVE and SS, SSN types are accounting for 50% of the score.Which might explain why Italy in eighth place, ranks above the UK in 9th. Despite the Italians spending about half the UK does on its total defence budget.

The Italians have the Cavour class light aircraft carrier. And a mighty fine mid-sized carrier it is.

  Typical air group is a mix of 20-24 V/STOL aircraft and helicopters. This aircraft carrier operates Boeing AV-8B Harrier II Plus V/STOL aircraft. In the future these will be replaced with the Lockheed Martin F-35B as soon as it becomes available. This aircraft carrier will also operate utility, anti-submarine and airborne surveillance helicopters including EH-101, NH-90 and SH-3D. The Cavour can also accommodate heavy transport helicopters.

 Credit Suisse make no secret of the fact they take no account of training. Experience. Quality of equipment. Availability of reserves. Combat history. Logistics support. Officer training. Morale or any other factors. Its a pure percentage base, X, assets result.

The UK is usually 5th or 6th in world strength rankings. 9th is a bit of a come down. Our 10 submarines help. But the lack of any aircraft carriers is seen as a huge disadvantage to our strength. 

Moving up from 9th in the world rankings and into our old sphere to 4th is Japan. They have 16 submarines and four "Destroyer Aircraft carriers"

Yeah...Destroyers..Ok....right...that's what they are...no really...just destroyers..

The Japanese were sort of forbidden, Versailles style, from having aircraft carriers. The victorious WW2 Americans not fancying another Pearl Harbour. The Peace Constitution limits Japan to defensive forces only.
So this flat top with 9 helicopters, the potential for 14, and the absolubte possibility of basing the next generation of vertical or very short take off fixed wing aircraft on them is a mini carrier.Its just called a destroyer.
These destroyer carriers are very very advanced. And cost about $1bn each. 
The new UK carriers will come in at somewhere between £3.5 & £5 billion each. But with considerably greater aircraft complement.

There was considerable argument at the time of the announcement of the desire to build new UK carriers, about whether smaller, ships carriers  should be built instead of the two huge CVs. The UK put contracts out for the construction of our two in 2007. And they should..well..possibly..could be ready for service by 2017.

The Izumos were planned in 2010. And the first launched in 2013.

We discussed the merits back here in 2008. And again in 2010 here.

But either way, right now, without even that 2% commitment defence being missed, according to this one measure, UK military strength is fading. Its a navy heavy weighting, to be sure. But we are a maritime power. We are an island. So..we should naturally do better than the landlocked, small coastline nations.
But it could be worse. We could be Germany - Down from 8 to 18

World 20
Ranked by strength factors - 
{X} = more traditional world ranking.

1. USA {1}
2. Russia {2}
3. China {3}
4. Japan {9}
5. India {4}
6. France {6}
7. South Korea {7}
8. Italy {16}
9. UK {5}
10. Turkey {10}
11. Pakistan {17}
12. Egypt {18}
13. Taiwan {15}
14. Israel {11}
    
15. Australia {13}
16. Thailand {20}
17. Poland {19}
18. Germany {8}
19. Indonesia {12}
20. Canada {14}

How many tanks should the UK have ?

Commentators in the Telegraph regularly complain that 'Commie Cameron' has left the UK dangerously exposed to a foreign invasion. Tank number cuts are usually cited .

How many tanks should the UK have ?
I really don't know.  I suppose it depends on what you intend to do with them.
To repel an invasion of our shores from a newly Independent Scotland? Probably 10 should do.

Our other major enemies at present - Isis. - They have a handful, so probably 20-50 should be enough. Say 100 to be on the safe side and to offset amour's notouriously poor serviceability.



According to this chart, from 2013, before the cuts to the military had taken effect, the UK had 407 tanks. Defined as an armoured vehicle, with turret and a main armament designed to fight other armour, 407 includes all the Challenger IIs and sounds like a pretty decent number. Probably too many really. Who are we going to fight, on our own, who has more than 400 tanks?
Russia tops the Tank strength table by country chart with 15,500 AFV's, but we wouldn't fight Russia on our own, if at all.

I don't like this chart. It looks wrong. Its supposed to use the CIA factbook data, but other sources I can find also give use same CIA data.
The chart says Ukraine has 4000+ tanks. But that must be from around 2000. Today the figure is more like 650, according to wiki. Ukraine's Tank Graveyard was featured in a Daily Mail story not long ago. Lines of disused scrap armour. Syria's 5000 might have been correct pre-civil war. They never threw any away so had loads of T-62 and earlier types.

 UK is ranked 39th on armour, but we are, using same CIA factbook source, 5th in the world for military spending. Something doesn't add up.

In 2013 the BBC, doing a 'why does the army have more horses than tanks' piece, found that there were 334 tanks {and 501 horses}.

Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, said recently that by 2015, UK will deploy just 227 tanks.
That could be a problem if Syria really does still have 4950 tanks, as stated on that data. 
Taking out our tanks on refits, repairs, maintenance, training, on Nato duty, and whatnot, doesn't leave very many, even with a maximum effort. 227 seems much too few.

So the army must have been overjoyed when at the NATO conference in Wales the Brass have asked for more tanks for Nato. And the UK has responded with a £3.5bn order for 589 SCOUT SV vehicles.
WOW! Champagne day for the army!.

But these are scout vehicles?  589 scouts? Two scouts for each MBT ? Or are these APC's, being designated as Tanks?

Someone with greater knowledge needed to explain it to us. Will we now have some 700 odd light and 100 heavy tanks? Or what?

Ukraine, Russian Truck Convoys and Russian Doctrine: It Helps To Know

Pontificating from my retired officer's 'strategy' armchair, having dusted down my fading memory of Soviet military doctrine (studied professionally and in earnest some decades ago), I have a feeling it offers a handy pointer as to what may be expected in the weeks to come.

Recap: at the highest level, the GSFG was geared for a lightning strike across the whole front from the Baltic to Austria, aiming to gain as much westerly mileage as possible before NATO could mount a serious blocking action (assumed to be dependent on massive US reinforcements arriving even further to the west).  It was always recognised by the Russians that at some point NATO's position might become so poor that recourse to nuclear weapons could ensue, buggering the whole thing - a good reason why they never gave it a crack.  This said, they also reckoned that another plausible scenario would be that NATO would hold back on this provided Warsaw pact forces halted in their tracks at some point and offered to parlay.

At the next level down, Soviet doctrine for a lightning attack entailed by-passing awkward things like towns and also points of strong resistance, a very real contingency given that Soviet kit was light and easily brewed up by the well-positioned Leopard tanks and Milan missiles that existed in large numbers (manned by some very well-trained, well-led and highly motivated West Germans).  Doctrinally, strongpoints were to be fixed, enveloped and passed by, to be mopped up at leisure by second-echelon forces and/or artillery.  This enabled the first-echelon columns to make maximum forward mileage, scavenging supplies as they advanced (quite easy in W.Germany for everything except ammunition).  In order to do the by-passing, all Soviet units were very well-equipped in the field-engineeering and bridge-building departments.

The consequence of this would be that at a given moment after firing the starting-gun, the 'front line' would be a very jagged affair - a long string of irregular salients (some of them potentially very deep) broken up by the by-passed NATO strong-points and isolated towns.  If at a point in time everything was stopped in its tracks pending 'peace talks', the Russians would stop fighting, and rapidly consolidate whatever of the newly-occupied 'shape' was most easily held - some really isolated forward gains might be abandoned - with the expectation that a dazed NATO could be be satisfied with nothing more than just cessation of hostilities, i.e. no relinquishing of any consolidated new gains.

Then wait for another 20 years and try the whole thing again. 

(This doctrine was sometimes likened to attacking something with a very heavy club studded with long sharp nails.  You smash it into the target with maximum force, and it becomes embedded - very difficult subsequently to get it withdrawn.)

Now to 2014.   Such maps as we see of what's going on in Eastern Ukraine show a very amorphous 'front line' studded with all sorts of salients and embedded bits and pieces.  Nothing would be easier than for the Russians quickly to pour across the border, go as far west as they could manage in (say) 24 or maybe 48 hours (Labor Day - 1st Sept! - or Thanksgiving would be obvious dates to choose), call a halt, and declare: what we have, we hold.

Oh, and how did the Soviets prepare for their lightning attacks?  By sending tank commanders, disguised as truck drivers, on recce missions across West Germany.  They knew the lie of the land almost as well as their enemy.

Truck drivers ?  Ring any bells ?  Let's hope little Volodya is ultimately as circumspect as his Soviet predecessors.

ND

A call to arms

The SA-80 main small arms of British forces. A bit of a chequered history. Poor start. Early teething problems. Political meddling. European/US arguments over ammunition calibre and standardisation. One main failure that required re-tooling and revision. Huge cost over-runs ... 

Well, that's not too bad. Many small arms take a long time to become refined enough to become world beaters. The US M14/16 series had quite a troubled infancy. Numerous refits and redesigns there too. But the original 1960's design is now on its M16A4 model and it has been produced in the millions.

The M1911 colt .45 pistol, the one seen in WW2 films, was a success almost from the start. Stopping power and simplicity were required. And that's what it delivered. from 1911 until the 1990's it was the side arm of US military and police forces. In 2012 12,000 more were ordered for US special forces. 

The Colt was also the standard small arms of US forces 50 years before the Colt.45 when the Colt Navy 1851 was produced. Easy to carry on a belt holster. Easy to use and great short range accuracy, it was soon the finest revolver in the world. Production ended some 25 years later after the Colt Navy had sold some 250,000 units. 40,000 to the British Empire.

A weapon doesn't have to be the best in its class to be a winner. The famous post WW2 1948 AK-47 assault rifle has had more than 80 million units produced. Its not very accurate. Has only average range. But its reliability means it operates in any terrain, at any temperature, with only the most basic of training required. The guerilla weapon of choice. {The Chinese type 56 is a direct copy- That has also sold in the millions.}

Not just Superpowers create the best small arms. Israel's UZI sub machinegun family {another 1948 weapon} has sold over 10 million units to the military and police and security forces of over 70 countries who liked its size, firepower, and concealment statistics.

West-Germany's 1966 Heckler And Koch MP5 range of Machine Pistols was/is sold to over 100 countries in huge numbers.

The UK's SA-80 family is almost 25 years old now and the L98A2 rifles are sold to Bolivia and Jamaica. 
{And Jamaica isn't buying any more.}

Lets face it. When it comes to arms we are like the Swedes. We make modern, exciting, highly capable, problematic, innovative, quite specific military equipment that costs maybe four times as much as our competitors so no one else but the host countries ever buys it.

Where there's muck there's military brass

A historical post .

skip it if you hate the whole 'lessons from history' thing..


Within about 5 days of the German's May offensive in 1940 the battle for France was effectively over. No one knew that at the time. The French army was the largest in the world. The French and British armour was numerically superior, and the best French tanks qualitatively superior to the panzers. 14,000 artillery pieces, parity in the air on numbers if not capability, the forces of Belgium, UK, Holland and France combined to about 3.5 million men under arms.

Churchill became leader on the day the German's invaded. Ever the battler, he promised much support to the French. Lord Gort was in command of the British forces. Once the German's had punched a hole through the French at Sedan he was tasked with assisting the French in making a joint counter attack to snap off the German advance and win the war.

But Lord Gort was worried. He had had little contact with the French high command, the Dutch had surrendered and the Belgium's, securing his flank, were shaky. Churchill had already promised reinforcements for the French and promised to mount the counterattack. He went into a customary, rage barely suppressing his belief that field Marshall Gort might be a coward. { Bit unlikely as 'Tiger' Gort was a holder of the MC, DSO and of the VC }. Gort was insistent and began making his plans to pull the army out of the line, retreat towards Dunkirk, and establish a collapsing perimeter to defend against the panzers while the army awaited rescue..

Considering the first world war, where Gort was decorated, had lasted 4 years without a really significant breakthrough how could anyone to even begin to think that the battle was lost after a fortnight? but it was. And Gort was right.
Churchill sent General Pownall {that's Pownall looking at the map} to stop Gort being so 'windy' and put some 'backbone' into him. Instead of planning his atack, Gort showed his plans for a retreat to the channel ports. When Pownall reported back that the situation was seriously grave and fully supported Gort, Winston backed down. Lord Gort, who had not been a good commander of the BEF so far, saved them at the end. Without his decision to tell Churchill to stuff it, and to effectively commit treason by refusing to carry out orders, the British army saved by the Royal Navy from Dunkirk, would have been lost to the prison camps.

At the same time Churchill was promising fighter planes to France. German local air superiority was allowing them to win the battle. Air Marshall Dowding, head of all the fighter planes refused.
He wrote a very famous letter to Churchill spelling it out, and demanding that not one more fighter plane be committed to France. Churchill went ballistic again. he had flown to France himself and had promised his wavering allies more squadrons.
If France fell then the French Navy could fall into German hands and that would be a disaster. The french aerodromes would be home to German bombers, suddenly well within range of England and bypassing the UK's North sea facing defences. Fascist Spain might pitch in on the axis side. Italy almost certainly would, adding the modern Italian navy to the Axis and shutting the Mediterranean, adding thousand's of miles to the trade routes to India and Australia and the oil from Borneo. All the resources of France would fall to Germany and its considerable colonies around the world too..And the Americans, taking a bath on all the arms it had sent to France, might not be so keen to send anymore weapons to Europe unless it was cash up front.

Churchill was right to lay out the strategic and political consequences to both his commanders. And they were both right to tell him he was wrong. And they both stood by their comments and basically stated if he wanted another opinion he would need to get another Field or Air Marshall. Both knew Churchill could just remove them. Both had ambitious rivals just waiting to take over their commands.
However Churchill backed down to each. The army was rescued and there were just enough planes and pilots to defeat the air armada of the Luftwaffe in 1940. After the crisis both Dowding and Gort were removed to backwaters and never held field command again. This was not wholly spite. They were old men in a young mans war. But it showed how risky it was to cross a PM.

So, when a PM asked the army to undertake an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, did any senior officer object? When the same PM asked them to undertake another, larger war, in Iraq, while the first war was still going on did any senior commander stand up and offer a warning?
Surely the nation shouldn't just start a new battle, especially another one in which the army again was to bear the brunt?
When aircraft carriers were dangled in front of the Admirals, 'free' of the budget, to be funded by overspend for mostly political reasons, did any of them ask what might happen when 'the giver 'government was gone, and 'the taker' government came along. Did they think that chopping the fleet would be necessary? Where are the stories of a Dowding or a Gort?

General sir Richard Dannatt did not say much on question time, hence the post. I had hoped he would have said a little more on the defence review. A bit of insight into what went on during the last ten years. How come we ended up canceling the Nimrods. And the Ark Royal. And why we didn't have enough helicopters and do we have enough now? Unlikely as half seem to have been axed.

I wonder if he or his most senior colleagues had been a little more forceful during the decade of war, whether the conflict would have been resolved sooner? Or did the memory of what happened to the most senior commanders in 1940 give them pause.
Gort was made Head of the Home Guard and Dowding envoy for aircraft production in the USA .

Politics and the Military

Somehow it comes as a bit of a shock to see Cameron addressing cadets at Sandhurst, even if the political content of his speech was fairly anodyne. Notwithstanding your Montgomerys and Walkers, your Roses, Jacksons and Guthries, the British have managed the separation of politics and the military better than most.

Other countries don't have the same scruples in these matters. In 1985 I attended a hand-over between the outgoing and incoming commanders of a West German infantry brigade. The entire formation was drawn up on a huge parade square, around three sides of a huge central dias. The incoming one-star rode up dramatically on a white horse, and was received with great ceremony by his predecessor.

This latter then gave a lengthy speech, broadcast on a very adequate sound system. In the course of this harangue he expressed, inter alia, his displeasure at the leftist and unpatriotic tendencies of the Green Party in the region; and he went on to attack the local Lutheran pastor - by name! - for being a pacifist. Aside from the Brits present, nobody turned a hair: it was par for the course in the Bundesrepublik.

How unlike our own dear Army. Incidentally, the new Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, is an excellent man I know well from my own limited military career. In public he is gruff, dry, and minimalist in his pronouncements. Out of the limelight, he is a soldier's soldier, inspiring immediate confidence at all levels - think John Wayne in The Green Berets (in his leaner days Wall even looked like Wayne). He also makes an accomplished and fruity after-dinner speech. In private, of course.

He can probably handle the politics, too. And we'll need that.

ND

What the pilots say.

Having spent the weekend with some Army & RAF types I sought out their views on the helicopter arguments. It seems that they are annoyed about the news coverage. They felt it made them sound like whiners. They would have preferred the generals to get the deals done behind closed doors.

When asked if we actually needed more helicopters in Afghanistan the answer was Yes, but not many more. I quoted the numbers of extra troops and extra helicopters and pointed out the disparity. The flyboys replied that they were carrying out twice as many sorties as before. They were using their aircraft and aircrew to greater effect than they had been. But what they actually wanted was spare parts. They said that the spares shortage was critical and led to many out of service helicopters. They couldn't believe that the spares shortage from 2001 was still ongoing. As the men said, this is the easiest and cheapest bit. Far cheaper than new helicopters.

{Not many headlines in spares though. I expect the shortages are to do with Just In Time sourcing and maintenance budgets being kept at peacetime levels but..}

A helicopter that is grounded now is twice as damaging to operations as it is performing twice as many tasks. The helicopter pilots were angry that the spares had not come through and claimed it has been a priority for both army and airforce for years, but has not been given the political priority it warrants. They stated that the 6 Merlins, bought from Denmark in 2007 and still yet to deploy to the theatre, purchased because...well because they were available, were not suitable and not really required. All of the pilots wanted spares, not new machines. Not even Future Lynx, which they do not rate.

Not too surprised there. These were Army and Airforce guys. The Navy want the Future Lynx. Also these pilots currently fly the Lynx, which is a poor performer in Afghanistan. A Westland engineer assured us that the Future Lynx was being fully tested for operations in Afghanistan.

What they all agreed on was that they want is Chinook. These big helicopters can do all the jobs of the smaller ones, can have armour bolted on as needed, can drop into combat three times as many men as a smaller one. The pilots said that the argument that smaller helicopters can land on a smaller landing zone is a bit of a myth because, although they can, the army want the soldiers to land together, not scattered on small LZs. So they often pick a big LZ . The big, twin rotor, Chinooks carry far more cargo than the Lynx. If it loses a wheel it doesn't topple over like a three wheel craft does. {This is quite common apparently.} It has an excellent flight record and the pilots say that what does it matter if you send a big helicopter on a small helicopter job. The Americans do it all the time. {I suspect the answer is cost.}
Update. The Sunday Mirror says Gordon Brown is going to send Chinook helicopters to the region. Hooray!
Only it is going to be one or two new ones. Hmmm. I got the impression these pilots were talking of about thirty Gordon. Still, its a start. {another one}

"I see no HIPS?"

Pondering Mr Drew's post below on the likelihood of a snap election, and the comments, I can't quite believe he will do it.

In the days of the Battleships, when the Royal Navy ruled the waves, officers equipped their wardrooms with plants, chairs , tables, bars, and whatever little luxuries they could afford. A ship was judged by other sailors on the splendour of its senior mens quarters.
But, just before battle all the wood paneling and wardroom sofas and stuffed chairs, mess tables mirrors , carpets, paintings, sports equipment and trophies was disposed of, over the stern. Plus food, the paint, cleaning equipment, flammable material of any kind, sometimes even the crockery and utensils for 1200 souls would all be thrown over the side.
This was war. When battle was coming and the phrase "Clear the Decks" wasn't just to have a good working space. It was to prevent unnecessary casualties from shrapnel, wood splinters and flying pots, plates and pans. If you lost the battle the whole ship was gone, so what price a few cocktail cabinets?

Ships that had spent their peacetime winning awards for the pristine paintwork { the paint often paid for by the captain himself as war office supplies were so meager}, were suddenly painted a universal dull gunmetal grey for war.

This is what's occurring. Probably not a snap election but a preparation for war.
So the likes of 'family friendly flexitime' goes over the side with the gramophone and "700 new armoured vehicles for the troops" comes up the ammunition hoists.
Deception tactics like the high speed rail links between London and Birmingham, that will never be completed inside of 20 years, suddenly get airtime to take heat out of the Tory plans for a high speed link.

But the Tories need to understand that Labour is serious. Mr Brown, like a good admiral, cares only for winning the battle.He is prepared to take the Tories on. And preparing to win at any price. Captain Cambell and Commander Mandelson have already been taken off the reserve list and given a command. That means even the most prized policy and deeply held socialist beliefs are not exempt from being discarded. See Mr Drew's list below for a sample of the already abandoned. So the Unions, Afghanistan, America, Lisbon, SATS, Scottish Labour parties concerns,PFI, tagging offenders or Student Loans, Public sector pensions, green energy, equality and diversity laws, immigration, lone parents and his own reputation for prudence can all go overboard with the expensive paneling if Mr Brown feels that they will not be needed, will be a diversion or may cause him damage come election time.

Cameron's Tories still seem to be hanging on to cherished policies like the fuel escalator or double the number of single rooms in hospitals. Maybe the Tories need to stop sitting around in the beautiful teak lawnchairs on the aft deck sipping gin and tonics and prepare to go to action stations dumping any clutter, dead weight, ballast, hazardous items or unnecessary policies or people over the side and get their "A" team on the bridge right now.

Because a big and bloody battle is coming, and Admiral Gordon is taking no prisoners.

Super Carrier

So the contract for the two new aircraft carriers is signed. Much to the relief of the workforces in the shipbuilding industry.
Leaving aside the fact that these contracts are very lucrative and secure work for UK companies for a good while and ensure shipbuilding remains a part of the countries industry, are they in fact, value for money.



The carriers will cost 4 billion pounds
At least £4 billion as defence procurements have a history of overspend.

The USA Nimitz class carriers cost around $4.5 billion each. They are nuclear powered and carry 85 aircraft that use steam catapults to launch them.
The UK ones will not be nuclear powered, and will carry UP TO 40 aircraft.
Not being nuclear is apparently a cost issue. But it means that there can be no steam powered catapults as these require massive amounts of power. Instead there is the Ski-jump takeoff.
That severely restricts the type of aircraft that they can carry. One report is that the carriers can only use the F-35B Lockheed Martin built in the USA. This is a kind of new generation Harrier part of the joint strike fighter program. But there is a superior F-35C model already under design that won't be able to be used unless modifications to the aircraft carriers are made, despite it having superior capabilities.

The Nimitz class CV's are now some 30 years old and are still a match for most counties entire air forces. These new generation UK carriers as I understand it would have difficulty going head to head against the USS Nimitz or its sisters and coming out ahead.

I just hope that once again the armed forces do not end up with an expensive piece of kit that is always going to be, at best, just about good enough due to some 'cost saving' decisions in the planning.
We have already had helicopters that don't fly, small arms that required a certain amount of 'assistance' to fire, the Eurofighter that is great for air-to-air, but probably only a little better than what it replaces in air-to- ground.. and so on.

This is a very expensive project it is important to get it right.