Rearming the UK: What equipment? and how much?

A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Don't think there's any UK expertise when it comes to designing surface ship reactors, besides the costs alone would kill the project before even the preliminary design stage.

Let alone personnel requirements.

This is just a case where the tail has been cut to such an extent that now the teeth are beginning to fall out.

The current Government is, of course, unable to fix this, it requires enough self-awareness to realise that they were fundamentally wrong in their approach to running the UK over the last 15 years (perhaps even the last 45 years).
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My post was meant as a joke... Much like the current state of the RN/RFA.

(Sorry, I'll show myself out.)
 
TomS said:
My post was meant as a joke... Much like the current state of the RN/RFA.

(Sorry, I'll show myself out.)
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Honestly I thought that it was a reference to my posts in the Future Aircraft Carrier thread.

Admittedly given the difference in the amount of resources available to the US and UK, not to mention the vastly different scale of the threats in the South China Sea, and whatever contingencies the UK intends to use CVF in, I tend to suggest different capabilities for the two countries.
 
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It's ok we still got our terrifying River-class battleships [sic] to show the flag with and make all our enemies tremble with fear/mirth (delete as applicable).

To be quite frank the recent Defence White Paper and the National Shipbuilding Strategy are not worth the paper they are written on.
If we can't crew a single replenishment now, what are the odds of us manning three FSSS ships as well as the four Tide tankers?
We can barely man nine Type 22 frigates so how are going to man eight Type 26 and five Type 31 and up to five Type 32?

The government has focused on the shiny ships and management-talk of productivity and industrial regeneration etc. etc. without even considering manpower issues at all.
Wiki says as of late 2022 the RFA only had 1,750 personnel and things only seem to have gotten worse since then. The RN has 32,300 personnel for 70 ships (47 of which are actual combat ships, not sure HMS Victory really counts....). (BAE Systems employs 7,000 people building ships/subs - that's equal to 21% of the Navy's strength).
 
The UK is paying a heavy price for the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which undermined public support for any interventions outside our own borders.
A shortage of people of the right age and skills for the armed forces is now making matters worse.
Since 1991 and the end of their Cold War roles all three services have had to struggle with the so-called peace dividend.
The War on Terror after 2001 skewed the work of the services into a controversial series of operations and equipment purchases.
The public have no appetite for defence at a time when health and education continue to fail despite eye-watering budgets.
War on the Continent is seen as something for Germany and France to pay for. Trump is not the only one to believe NATO countries get a free ride.
China and Iran are simply too far away to be seen as "our problem".
Motivating service recruitment and forming a coherent defence policy against this background will challenge the next government.
 
Hood said:
Argyll finished her LIFEX refit to enable it to be retained in service until around 2027-28 back in May 2022.
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It's possible, but it could also be very possible that one of the other Type 23s which are currently on deployment will be put into reserve instead of it
 
Forest Green said:
Did Iraq fail?
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Very hard to argue that it was a success on the grand scheme of things. What's been left in Saddam's wake is a fragile government divided along sectarian lines and propped up by the US presence while facing an economic catastrophe, multiple ongoing insurgencies, and various local militias mostly under the control of Iran. Quite a difference from the democratic and pro-Western ally we were promised.
 
TomS said:
Very hard to argue that it was a success on the grand scheme of things. What's been left in Saddam's wake is a fragile government divided along sectarian lines and propped up by the US presence while facing an economic catastrophe, multiple ongoing insurgencies, and various local militias mostly under the control of Iran. Quite a difference from the democratic and pro-Western ally we were promised.
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That's on the politicians, then, because I don't believe that Iraq would ever really grok democracy.

Arabs have been sufficiently tribal that the Persian statecraft manuals from 500BC say the same thing as the Ottoman statecraft manuals from 1910: play the different tribes off of each other.
 
TomS said:
Very hard to argue that it was a success on the grand scheme of things. What's been left in Saddam's wake is a fragile government divided along sectarian lines and propped up by the US presence while facing an economic catastrophe, multiple ongoing insurgencies, and various local militias mostly under the control of Iran. Quite a difference from the democratic and pro-Western ally we were promised.
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And what was present beforehand was a leader who tortured and killed millions, used nerve gas against tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and a sanctions regime that also killed hundreds of thousands indirectly while promoting support for extremist groups. Bad is a step up from horrific. They at least have a fighting chance now, it won't be easy, but it is possible.
 
Saddam was a temporary stopgap after the fall of the Shah.
But temporary has a habbit of becoming permanent by default.

And just like Pakistan under Zia al Haq, there was tacit support for all sorts of programs......In desperation to halt what looked like a potential Soviet advance.

But Saddam's regime was like a swan.....swimming in blood.
To a lot of people it seemed calm, ordered (for the middle east) and competent.
This was an illusion and in reality it was horrific. Under the surface awful things happened with both knowledge and approval.

And to this day people prefer the illusion to recognising the horrific reality.

But enough of morality and humanity!
His removal was in our interests and that includes the very public demonstration of power required.
 
jsport said:
warontherocks.com

The Tip of the American Spear? How the United Kingdom Could Pursue Military Specialization - War on the Rocks

For all but the biggest countries, this century is going to be one of hard choices. Britain’s armed forces face fundamental questions, but the most
warontherocks.com
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I don't know that it is a good idea to get rid of effectively all tracked vehicles for wheeled. They're cheaper to buy and operate, but they're just flat not as fast off-road as tracks unless they're so light we're talking a Polaris RZR.

If we can build wheeled vehicles that can move like tracks? Like the old FCS and MVC concepts of 8 wheel vehicles with 150hp motors in each hub? That might work. May still struggle in raspusitsa though.
 
Wars tend to be less successful for the winners than is commonly supposed.
While the USA emerged from World Wars 1 and 2 as the most powerful global economy it failed to create a viable world order after WW1 and after WW2 the hoped for United Nations soon descended into nearly half a century of Cold War.
Britain succeeded in its war aims of defeating the Kaiser and then the Fuehrer but in doing so it lost its economic and political positions in the world.
So it was in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the well worn cliche goes: we won the war but lost the peace.
Getting rid of Saddam and the Taliban was followed by failed attempts to deliver a peace.
 
jsport said:
warontherocks.com

The Tip of the American Spear? How the United Kingdom Could Pursue Military Specialization - War on the Rocks

For all but the biggest countries, this century is going to be one of hard choices. Britain’s armed forces face fundamental questions, but the most
warontherocks.com
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I'd probably do the opposite of what that suggests. Get rid of the most of the Special Forces (do we really need Rangers, SAS and SBS. Get rid of most of them and keep the SBS), focus on the traditional heavy mechanised forces, if we want to deploy quickly overseas then we have the Point-class.

A lot of ink seems to have been spilled over fears about hybrid grey warfare, to which I suggest that if you have problems with self-described "militias" trying to seize territory then you should crush them under the tracks of a heavy armoured brigade or division, like Ukraine mostly successfully did in 2014-2015 (at that point the Russians decided to intervene rather more overtly and sent in Battalion Tactical Groups of the regular Russian Army). We don't need to meet them like-for-like with our own light infantry.
 
Knocked out Abrams, whether by Lancet or FPV drone or landmine or some combination, seen on Ukr plain in the past week would seem to be indicators that mobile anti-tank infantry (LR Javelin -Vampire et al) might be necessary unless one's tanks are exceptionally protected.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
I'd probably do the opposite of what that suggests. Get rid of the most of the Special Forces (do we really need Rangers, SAS and SBS. Get rid of most of them and keep the SBS), focus on the traditional heavy mechanised forces, if we want to deploy quickly overseas then we have the Point-class.

A lot of ink seems to have been spilled over fears about hybrid grey warfare, to which I suggest that if you have problems with self-described "militias" trying to seize territory then you should crush them under the tracks of a heavy armoured brigade or division, like Ukraine mostly successfully did in 2014-2015 (at that point the Russians decided to intervene rather more overtly and sent in Battalion Tactical Groups of the regular Russian Army). We don't need to meet them like-for-like with our own light infantry.
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Except that it takes 6+ months to deploy said heavy armored brigade or division, and you might want to offer resistance in the meantime.

Bluntly, the UK currently barely has enough tanks to make a single armored division. (~55 tanks per battalion/regiment, ~175 tanks per Brigade/Division), so if there are two separately located simultaneous instances of armed stupidity, you can only respond to one with tanks.
 
A long way from my first years in, we were growing the armoured force to five regular squadrons, a HQ and loigistics train.

Four troops per squadron and four tanks per troop. 18 tank regiments then too, how many now and I know for a fact that tank strength was reduced to half what these reduced regiments should have as per orbat.

How long to dig vehicles out of that storage and prep for deployment?

During the last drawdown, folk were getting text messages and emails about being RIF'ED and they should report to base location for discharge. While in copmbat situations on deployment. Those same people were being called up as Reserves within a year, just when they were getting families sorted. Good luck with retention after that.

I do wonder if the storage depot might be altered from the UK, possibly to Poland over the next four to five years but we will have to see. Making storage staff redundant now might be a step further than they are willing to go.
 
Foo Fighter said:
A long way from my first years in, we were growing the armoured force to five regular squadrons, a HQ and loigistics train.

Four troops per squadron and four tanks per troop. 18 tank regiments then too, how many now and I know for a fact that tank strength was reduced to half what these reduced regiments should have as per orbat.
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So, 16 tanks per squadron? No half-troop or full troop as HQ on top of that? (The US equivalent unit has 3x platoons of 4x tanks, plus an HQ section of 2 tanks, total of 14 tanks per company)


Foo Fighter said:
During the last drawdown, folk were getting text messages and emails about being RIF'ED and they should report to base location for discharge. While in copmbat situations on deployment. Those same people were being called up as Reserves within a year, just when they were getting families sorted. Good luck with retention after that.
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The UK was running a RIF, while actively involved in an Article V combat intervention?!? (Insert much all the profanity)

I hope that whatever brain donor failed to issue a stop-loss and allowed the RIF to continue was removed from any/all decision making and placed in a nice padded room so that they're incapable of hurting themselves or others...


Foo Fighter said:
I do wonder if the storage depot might be altered from the UK, possibly to Poland over the next four to five years but we will have to see. Making storage staff redundant now might be a step further than they are willing to go.
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If you have more than one storage depot in the UK, I would not close all of the depots in the UK. I'd close all but one of the storage depots in the UK and move all those tanks to a new pre-positioning depot in eastern Germany or Poland. Where all the tanks are in fighting condition and just waiting for crews to come and load ammunition into them before driving to the front.

If you only have one storage depot in the UK, I'd move about 2/3rds of the stuff in storage to a new depot in eastern Germany or Poland, after bringing it all up to the latest standards.
 
Put simply, there are not enough for a second facility. I think the Swiss boy scouts have more tanks than us.

I believe the Mark 3 will be limited to 147 total gun tanks but, that can always change. I can cross my fingers, right?

In 1976 we had a squadron hq of two tanks but this vanished when we moved to four troops of tanks, making it nominally easier to achieve the numbers they wanted.

Problem being that we then began to get all sorts of restrictions. Track mileage, then running time and first parade meant checking fluid levels without warming the drivetrain first. They ended up fitting revolution counters with dire consequences for exceeding the revolution limit for the month, the week, blah blah.

As for the RIF, they did it twice. It was the second iteration that got caught by the bleep bleep cee noo's.

Families were given two months to vacate their quarters, no quarter, pun intended.

I have already mentioned elsewhere the crash out code, we NEVER achieved our target of getting all vehicles into primary dispersal areas in the two hour limit. We would routinely be TOWING vehicles out two day post event.
 
I am referrinjg to the Challenger 3, yes. No.

147 or 148 total conversions. NO new vehicles. The 250-ish number is the total of Challenger 2. No idera how many Ukraine have now
 
Temeraire said:
they’ve got about 15 maybe 20 at most
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They were originally supplied 14. As of today (11 Mar 2024), 7 out of 14 are reportedly in combat-ready condition. At the same time, only one was critically hit, which the russian Lancet hit. The tank burned out, but its crew remained alive. Two more tanks were damaged, but were also repaired.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
I'd probably do the opposite of what that suggests. Get rid of the most of the Special Forces (do we really need Rangers, SAS and SBS. Get rid of most of them and keep the SBS), focus on the traditional heavy mechanised forces, if we want to deploy quickly overseas then we have the Point-class.
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That's not great if you want rapid intervention, which is what the British Army should aim for. The role of Special Forces will only become more important as time progresses.
 
i think the current problem with the uk army is not how good the army is but supply and getting new troops in i mean you guys have some real good stuff just not enough of it for a major war.
 
Forest Green said:
And what was present beforehand was a leader who tortured and killed millions, used nerve gas against tens of thousands of unarmed civilians and a sanctions regime that also killed hundreds of thousands indirectly while promoting support for extremist groups. Bad is a step up from horrific. They at least have a fighting chance now, it won't be easy, but it is possible.
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In all due respect Forest Green, the West was very instrumental in not just making Saddam Hussein 'their boy' for a good decade, so as to face off and punish the Iranians that stopped playing their game. But also the West was more than happy to sell Saddam Hussein all the weapons they could for a very hefty $ profit $, not to mention all the high quality gear to make his "nerve gases, nuclear development, ......
Like most Western engineered stooges/dictators, ironically, the stooge/dictator themselves begin to believe the narrative and think they're indispensable. They either overstep the mark or go off script or the powers that be in the West get board with their little play thing and either support yet another coup or have them removed. Sounds very familiar doesn't it!

P.S. The fact that the Iraqi government has just recently asked the U.S. to leave Iraq. And naturally being 'the leader of the free world', the U.S. immediately acted on this request by the sovereign government of Iraq..... :rolleyes:

Regards
Pioneer
 
Pioneer said:
In all due respect Forest Green, the West was very instrumental in not just making Saddam Hussein 'their boy' for a good decade, so as to face off and punish the Iranians that stopped playing their game. But also the West was more than happy to sell Saddam Hussein all the weapons they could for a very hefty $ profit $, not to mention all the high quality gear to make his "nerve gases, nuclear development, ......
Like most Western engineered stooges/dictators, ironically, the stooge/dictator themselves begin to believe the narrative and think they're indispensable. They either overstep the mark or go off script or the powers that be in the West get board with their little play thing and either support yet another coup or have them removed. Sounds very familiar doesn't it!
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The West did not order Saddam to do all the things he did. They did not tell him to use nerve agent against civilians. They did not replace him with a dictator but an election process.
Pioneer said:
P.S. The fact that the Iraqi government has just recently asked the U.S. to leave Iraq. And naturally being 'the leader of the free world', the U.S. immediately acted on this request by the sovereign government of Iraq..... :rolleyes:

Regards
Pioneer
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What the Iraqi government says publicly and what they say privately are two different things. They know they will have a problem with Iranian-backed militia groups as soon as the US leaves.
 
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Forest Green said:
The West did not order Saddam to do all the things he did. They did not tell him to use nerve agent against civilians. They did not replace him with a dictator but an election process.

What the Iraqi government says publicly and what they say privately are two different things. They know they will have a problem with Iranian-backed militia groups as soon as the US leaves.
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Sorry Forest Green, but I think you miss most of the point I was insinuating.

Regards
Pioneer
 
Forest Green said:
Mostly because there wasn't one. You don't just leave a mistake because you helped in some way to make it, that's more the reason to clean it up!
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Ah, but there was a point I was trying to convey and for you to go directly to a personal insult is a little unbecoming.

Regards
Pioneer
 
Pioneer said:
Ah, but there was a point I was trying to convey and for you to go directly to a personal insult is a little unbecoming.

Regards
Pioneer
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Where's the personal insult? Was leaving Saddam in place honestly better than removing him in your opinion?
 
Forest Green said:
Where's the personal insult? Was leaving Saddam in place honestly better than removing him in your opinion?
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We all know the costs of removing Saddam, both in terms of money, lives lost, geopolitical instability and possibly even the current isolationist trend in domestic politics. If he’d remained, there would have been a succession crisis by now and lord only knows how it would have turned out. We all know exactly how it turned out after 2003 and the consequences were truly dire.
 
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TinWing said:
We all know the costs of removing Saddam, both in terms of money, lives lost, geopolitical instability and possibly even the current isolationist trend in domestic politics. If he’d remained, there would have been a succession crisis by now and lord only knows how it would have turned out. We all know exactly how it turned out after 2003 and the consequences were truly dire.
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You're failing to recognise that lots of people were dying because of him before 2003, both directly and indirectly. People dying due to being tortured and killed by him, people dying due to sanctions in place because of him... indefinitely. And the last word of that sentence is very important, it was continuing indefinitely, whereas at least now it has ended. If Saddam had died in power he had plenty of cum-dribbling f*ckstains who would have taken over after him, and even if they failed to the result would have been a Sunni vs Shia civil war, which is what caused most of the death after 2003, only there'd have been nobody to limit it in any way. So yes, the removal of Saddam Hussein didn't turn out great, but it would definitely have turned out even worse without his removal.
 
What relevance is any of this spat to the topic of this thread?
 
agreed gtx the UK is just to small for a major war against let,s say china but it still has great stuff and a fairly good military for small wars.
 
quinn whitsitt said:
agreed gtx the UK is just to small for a major war against let,s say china but it still has great stuff and a fairly good military for small wars.
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The problem is that small wars are no longer simple affairs. In the Red Sea debacle, you have novel threats which are currently unmatched in Western arsenals. That’s not to suggest that small anti-ship ballistic missiles and cheap prop driven “cruise missiles” are especially effective or worthy of emulation, just that a “near peer” level of capability might be needed any operation, no matter how small. Sierra Leone in 1998 was a low risk endeavor. In 2028 or 2038, a similar humanitarian intervention might require naval escorts against USV, UUV, drone and missile threats and forces ashore would need C-RAM and C-UAV protection.

It also goes without saying that small wars can build public confidence in armed forces. But it’s very much a double edged sword. I think we can all agree that the 2010 Defence Review wouldn’t have been nearly as severe if the “small wars” ongoing at the time hadn’t been so very “controversial,” to use a very diplomatic term for the public mood at the time.
 

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