Have our leaders decided we dont really need our Armed Forces?

No I haven’t Wilf
Fair play nipper You constantly moan about the defence cuts I dare say that the country will be using more Chinese destroyers soon
I I I have to say that we we will err be doing a ber ber brilliant deal with our our err Chinese friends sometime soon ..
Said bojo
You got your control back nipper

 

Why aren't you in Spain

 

Bojo won’t let me go nipper !

 

I didnt think you listened to him

 

Sure, we can still keep a small army for killing people but what I'm proposing is a force doing useful but non-essential jobs who could be mobilised into specialised units as and when required. A bit like the RNLI who don't always like putting to sea in gales but do it as a sense of duty.

 

It’s quite interesting..I was always thinking what would have happened in case of conflict with one of those big players?..even if you have all those super modern tanks, jets and millions of soldiers what’s the point of it?..Im pretty sure there would be no winners anyway..lets say you are winnig a tactical war (as a NATO) do you really think they wouldn’t use nukes at the end?..I’m sure they would so all that effort would be useless..Think these days big or modern army doesn’t really scare away it’s just sort of politics game..it’s like a restoring a car that goes straight to the scrappy..but on the other hand to have a modern army is helpful in some cases like this pandemic showed..just a thought don’t bash me to hard


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Bang on Arek, and this home guard of DIYers should be just the ticket, a sort of dad’s army of ex builders. All the tanks in the world could be vaporised at the flick of a switch now days apart from that might be a little oldie fash now .
Square bashing? Tanks? Battleships of all descriptions? Planes? A thing of the past as displayed when the ruskies went for that little jaunt around everyones waters in their new play boat and just jammed our complete fleets electronics, us and the yanks too. Plus that was where it was at two or three years ago They might really be invisible now. Bet they’re al, working on a cloaking device

Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,tisall touchy feely screeny now tint

 

Big military or big NHS or big taxes and both? You decide.

 

What good is a nuke when the system gets hacked and it can't fire?

 

Some interesting points and in an ideal world we wouldn't have armies at all but if we didn't need them we wouldn't have borders or nations and John Lennon would be running the place. Bloody hippies lol!

Anyways... all bases need to be covered. We didn't need a presence in the South Atlantic and made the wrong noises and the Argies invaded . Who would have thought wed have been engaged in a European conflict - Bosnia. Gulf war... well I guess it might have been better if we'd left the yanks to that one but we did have some responsibility for Kuwait. There's the deterrent for our Russian Friends. Think about the annexation of the Crimea for instance.

Its not all about a great big war where the nuclear option is the end game and wars are won and lost by boots on the ground. Not by remote control. Its not a video game. Nor is it a film where you send in half a dozen "navy seals" and that's it... job done. There's also winning the peace and policing.

Equip your troops badly and there will be consequences. I appreciate this report is more about starting a discussion around the defence review. I suspect we will be spending a lot more on projecting power and the Navy may come out of that quite well with a lot of noise about the nuclear deterrent as we wont have the troops in Europe.

 

As a yachtsman and as someone who was once just pipped to become one of their training officers I have the greatest respect for the RNLI. However they are a specialist unit with a pretty narrow focus, as a result they can be equipped and train for what they are likely to do. They are also a charity who rely heavily on public donations. Who is going to fund your odd-jobbers.

I suspect everything will be cut again, dont think the navy will escape, perhaps their share of the reduction will be less. I reckon the amphibious capability by way of HMS Albion and Bulwark is likely to get the chop and if that goes there is an argument to get rid of some more mine-hunters as you dont need them to check the beaches out prior to ops.

 

Actually I was thinking of something more like the TA. They all have paid day jobs so only their training needs funding. If the real army was reduced in size, that would cover the costs.

 

For years the relationship between the reserve forces and regulars has been closer with reservists providing extra numbers to deploy etc there is minimal difference. The friends I knew who were in the TA did it for some action and adventure not to be stacking sand bags and giving jabs in their days off, I suspect this would hit their recruitment (which is difficult enough as it is) big time.

 

No! You misunderstood me. I'm not suggesting the TA does this, they're soldiers. What I want is something like the TA but not the TA itself, a reserve band of useful people to help out as and when.

 

https://www.navaltoday.com/2020/11/...on-developing-autonomous-minehunting-systems/

 

Having served on a mine hunter (albeit 30 years ago) is sort of of interest. been watching the development of these for sometime. be interested to see how they can perform all the tasks in mine clearance from a remote mothership. When we were in the Gulf after the first war we were prosecuting mine contacts on a very regular basis i.e. in total we blew up just under 80. If I remember correctly one shallow area of water we found one after another after another.

 

You mean like the Civil Defence Force as it used to be called?

 

Or the US Peace Corps.

 

In Germany at the latter days of conscription you had a choice, join a military unit or do some sort of civilian equivalent maybe community work or something.
I am not advocating another system of national service but there is movement there to form some sort of civil defence or an equivalent piece corps set up.

 

Read the stories of philip k dick it,s coming -"The Defenders "for example