Smaller armed forces?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

In the UK at present, we have the smallest army we have had since the Boer War of Queen Victoria's time.

Is this a good thing or bad thing?
Will a smaller army, navy and air force stop our politicians from meddling in unnecessary wars in far off places? Will it lead to a focus on home defence instead of adventuring imperialism?

Or will a smaller Military Establishment mean that we are ill prepared to repel a foreign invasion ?
I mean, who is ~capable~ of invading Britain right now, even if they wanted to? Should be be paranoid about 'what if', or go for a realistic assessment of the actual threat level?

Comments

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

The thing is that we are puling out of there, and I feel that this is a good thing .We should be looking after ourselves, and not so much tying to go 'nation building' for other people.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Britain's never had a big army, so why this is bothersome I dunno. Usually Anglophone nations don't have big armies.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Not that big compared to some , but this is a big reduction in post WW2 size.

It could perhaps lead to more co operation with NATO allies in Europe. Having an aircraft carrier in common use with the French, Italians and Spanish, for instance; or a naval battle group composed of ships from several nations.

I wonder how this might work out.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The British Army of WWII was a shrimp among whales itself. There's a reason British commanders were overly slow, they never really had the opportunity to be much else. British forces totalled about 3.5 million, maximum. The US Army's maximum was 16 million and the USSR had some 29 million people to use in fighting all told (and took some 10 million military casualties to win). Relative to Mark Clark, Patton, or Eisenhower, and particularly to Zhukov, Konev, and Rokossovsky the likes of Wavell, Slim, and Monty never had the chance to waste lives needlessly. It's one reason British generals had to be better tacticians than the rest.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

They don't need standing armies, they have banks!

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

That's how they took over Iceland right?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And have depended on their Navy, while Navies tend to be even more expsneive than Armies.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

I think countries should have small but strong armies in peacetime, focused only on defense. And wars should not be jumped into without serious consideration.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

"I hear the drums of war are calling me..."
"Oh wait..."

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

lol

The whole thread above me is one of the cutest flame wars in history. It's like WWII being fought by cats in hats.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

I was absolutely stunned that my rather unexceptional comment somehow spawned this.

also, DQ on your comment

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Politicians will meddle when they want to, regardless of the size or capabilities of the armed forces. Canada is a great example of this. In the 1990s, the Liberal government cut the size of the armed forces and delayed or cancelled the replacement of aging, crappy equipment, but still sent the troops into Bosnia, East Timor, Afghanistan and other places. It placed a terrible strain on the overworked troops. I used to live down the road from an army base and heard about a lot of the resulting divorces, suicides and stress related problems.

Does it come down to a choice between home defense or imperialism? What about supporting humanitarian operations, as Canada did by sending army engineers to provide emergency assistance and water purification units to Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, or navy ships into the Gulf of Mexico to help after Hurricane Katrina? What about peacekeeping, ceasefire monitoring, clearing landmines or rebuilding in war torn areas, or even helping to defend against the scourge of piracy? It's one thing to meddle in others' affairs, but the argument can be made that countries with capable, professional, well equipped armed forces should pitch in and help out with various problems in the world.

Who is capable of invading the UK right now? Illegal immigrants, Al-Qaeda, the IRA. What about the United States? They can't secure their southern border, so clearly, they need a larger army.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Illegal immigrants, Al-Qaeda, the IRA. What about the United States? They can't secure their southern border, so clearly, they need a larger army.
Sounds to me like a job for the civilian police force, not the troops.

But yeah - the army has expertise in building bridges and organising logistics. They could be handy in the aftermath of an earthquake or other natural disasters. but do they need to be ig, or just effective?

yeah , I think they need to be well armed, though.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of discussion that responding to natural and humanitarian disasters will be one of the primary roles of 21st century militaries. There is a struggle in my country over whether our military should be a subsidiary of the US military, or whether it should be for protecting our borders and assisting with disasters/crises in our region. This plays out well in how you look at Australian military use over the last decade: East Timor, Solomon Islands, Fiji (and some others I'm forgetting) - small peace keeping actions in broken countries in our region sent in at the request of either the local government or the UN (and patrolling the northern oceans for illegal fishermen/people smugglers) vs. Iraq and Afghanistan - token gestures that are more about political support than effective use of the military.

[thies.livejournal.com]

Depends on if you prefer your foreign trade routes to be secure or not.

Also if you'd be cool to just nuke the somali coast or similar places if you'd reduce your armed forces to the point of not being able to perform hands on interventions.

Personally I'm cool with that. Fuck poor countries :D

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

You can tailor a navy to doing that. The Uk , which gets so much of its stuff from overseas, certainly needs a navy to do that.

And a carrier built to euro and not American sizes would be capable of power projection to the scale required. Add a small fleet of frigates and destroyers to act as escorts and you have a force that could be deployed in separate chunks or as an entire fleet for a bigger operation.

maybe the Euro navies should pool their resources with local navies to patrol the Somali coast?

[okmewriting.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have minded if the politicians didn't see fit to meddle in other countries. They got rid of a load of capacity and equipment that would have been very useful in Libya. The problem is they are doing this in a bitty process, they haven't done a proper strategic defence review. Also a lot of commentators don't think they have allowed for anything like the number of reservists to take up the slack, they also don't have the same laws as the US which forces employers to keep the job open for the reservist.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

First, I'm glad that you've stopped writing enormous incomprehensive walls of text. <3

On the topic: no, I don't think the numbers are what matters the most about an army. A more effective and easy to deploy army is much more useful than enormous juggernauts of armies that require excessive funding but are of no other practical use other than fueling the industries around it, and possibly making a nation feel significant.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Say bye-bye to the military industrial complex (jobs) and the "industries around it" (i.e. more jobs). ;-)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

First, I'm glad that you've stopped writing enormous incomprehensive walls of text. <3


IAWTC :P

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Generally speaking in peace time a country SHOULD have a small military, however that does not necessarily mean a cheap army.

They key is to maintain the capability for rapid mobilization because while England may not face a threat of invasion today it didn't in 1932 either, yet a mere 7 years later was at war with a newly rearmed Germany.

So no, you probably should not be relying on a "shared" aircraft carrier, because you can't guarantee that a decade from now France will not have been taken over by a fascist dictatorship. You should be cutting the SIZE of your military but not eliminating capabilities wholesale.

Most important is to keep buying small levels of cutting edge equipment, just enough to keep the assembly lines open while keeping the size of the standing military as small as practical.

For example, here in the States we are currently planning on buying 100+ F-35's a year for the next 20 or so years but they shut down the production line of the F-22.

A more sensible plan would have been to buy 32 F-35's a year(2 squadrons basically), 4 F-22's a year, and then spent half the remaining money on a cheaper supplement, probably through extending the life of the F-15's and 16's leaving about 5 billion a year in savings. Then, if we ever found ourselves in a rapid mobilization scenario we could quickly ramp up production of both of the modern fighters however now with the F-22 line shut down completely it would take us a good 5 years to restart production of it in any capacity.

Similarly, we have a standing fleet of 11 Aircraft carriers, we should cut that to 6 but build a new one every 8 years to ensure that we retain the capability to build more if we need to and be left with a continual fleet of 6 Aircraft carriers, each with a 48 year service life.

This should be the guiding idea. Keep your R&D into cutting edge weapons programs going and produce the results in small quantities to ensure the ability to produce them when needed and cut the size of your standing military as small as practical.


All that said, in the case of Britain, I think you may very well be cutting too far and in the wrong ways and if history goes the wrong way you may find yourselves entirely too reliant on the military help of others because you are not just cutting size but you are actively cutting capabilities and leaving yourselves with no fall back options.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

It is also important to consider the maintenance and development of the skills and experience of soldiers, NCOs and officers. The leaders in the next war, at least initially, will be people who served in the peacetime army. You need a minimum size of army to properly exercise your future battalion, division and army commanders and all of the staff and support people. You need to occasionally deploy armies to the field to exercise and maintain the capabilities of logistics, communications, maintenance, etc. Maintaining a sufficient number of properly equipped troops to enable rapid deployment to overseas operations, whether it is disaster relief, peacekeeping or other combat operations should be an end in itself.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Ah Ras, you and your sense talking.