New Look Armed Forces Revealed
Some in-depth analysis when the Zen calming exercises start to work.
Update: Actually not going to bother. Any plan which involves pouring an extra £2 billion into the pockets of Somalian warlords and Pakistan government officials thinking that it will be a better guarantor of our security than maintaining a naval air capability doesn’t deserve having electrons wasted on it.
If you link enough of those up, you can use them to generate electricity from wave power. Or something.
“Can’t crack me .. I’m a rubber Duck” …
“Second leave’s best” ..
“Ram it .. I’m RDP” …. 😉
The key issue amongst all this hand wringing about the armed forces is that we have now dropped below 2% GDP spend on Defence. This magic number is key, as, above it we are able to keep “seed corn” skills alive albeit in specialist roles & areas. Below it we wi sim,ply lose those skills & become a military that is basically very profficient at fighing in Afghanistan. GOne will be Norway ^ arctic training. Gone will be jungle training which above all teaches a soldier that his personal efforts make a huge difference. Gone will be our ability of our commanders to think quickly in the fast moving armoured environment (we may not fighr many more aremoured wars, but the quick thinking, and looking for moments of exploitation are key military skills).
Worse, dropping below 2% means that our liberal Noorthern European bretheren on whom we rely for some support will think that their pittiful lack of spending is now somehow OK.
We may have broken it for good.
Not whilst you’re in the bath, though.
2% is also the expected NATO minimum spend (although most of ’em don’t meet that threshold). Not surprising that the Septics will grumble that the world will increasingly turn to them.
Keep taking the pills, Captain! 😀