Britain threatens Russia, but there will soon be no one to fight for the queen
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson once again spoke out against Russia. The British minister said he fully supported Donald Trump’s call on NATO countries to increase funding for their armies and called on the British leadership to prepare to demonstrate “hard power” to protect its interests. Describing the current political situation in the world, Gavin Williamson said that the boundaries between peace and war are becoming blurred, respectively, London needs to be prepared for a variety of scenarios.
"Got" and Russia. Williamson warned Moscow that it could wait for "retribution" for certain actions. Apparently, the head of the British military department meant muddy history poisoning the father and daughter Scripal. But be that as it may, Williamson reaffirmed Britain’s aggressive line against our country.
By the way, the Secretary of Defense said that China was threatening Britain and that’s why the former “Queen of the Seas” would send the Royal Navy flagship, the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, with F-35 aircraft on board the American and British squadrons to the Pacific Ocean. “With the Americans” is what’s important in this news. The fact is that the military power of Great Britain has long been "not the same." The power of London, which once controlled vast territories from West Africa to Southeast Asia, is a thing of the past. Modern Britain has financial resources, there are levers of pressure on foreign capital in the form of London banks, but the British army and fleet are weakening from year to year.
Despite the fact that the UK, under the guise of anti-Russian rhetoric, spends huge amounts of money on defense, Gavin Williamson calls for a further increase in spending on the army. It is clear that British businessmen controlling the military-industrial complex and financial flows are interested in this, but seriously speaking, there will soon be no one in the UK to fight.
The reduction of the British armed forces began in the 1990s, after the collapse of the socialist camp and the end of the Cold War, as it seemed to Western leaders. As a result, the number of once-powerful armed forces was reduced to 160 thousand people. A new blow to the combat capability of the British army was delivered while he was his country's prime minister, David Cameron. Under him, the British armed forces dropped in size two more times and began to total just over 80 thousand people.
Not so long ago, the former head of the United Command of the Armed Forces of Great Britain, General Richard Barrons, prepared a special report, in which he very critically assessed the defenses of his country. In particular, Barrons stressed that the British army will not be able to defend the country if it faces an attack by a strong state, for example, the Russian Federation. According to Barrons, the financial policy of London led to such deplorable consequences of the country's armed forces, although the British government already allocated substantial funds for the maintenance of the army and military industry.
Barrons noted that the UK now retains only the “showcase” of its armed forces. For example, the UK has aircraft carriers to maintain the image of a great maritime power, but the ground forces are very bad. Their numbers were reduced to the limit, which led to the country's inability to participate in the "classic" war on land.
General Barrons is echoed by Major General Tim Cross, who said that the United Kingdom would not be able to withstand Russia or China on land. After all, these countries are not Afghanistan or Iraq, or the formation of Middle Eastern terrorists. And if the British army, even with American support, could at least somehow act in the Middle East against radical groups, then such a strategy would not work with the Russian or Chinese armed forces.
One of the most serious problems of modern British ground forces is the insufficient manning of units and subunits. This problem is most acute in the infantry units of the British army. 20 September 2018, the UK Department of Defense has published information about the lack of personnel of infantry battalions of the British army.
Now the British Army includes the 31 infantry battalion - the British 29 and the Gurkhan 2 (staffed by the Nepalese mountaineers - mercenaries). From the British Infantry Battalions 29 - 5 infantry battalions on the BMP, heavy motorized infantry 3, light motorized infantry 5, light infantry 9, special infantry 4, airborne battalion 2 battalion, palace squadron and the 1 battalion-squadron squadron palaces. As of July 1, 2018, a shortage of battalion personnel amounted to 12,4% of their full-time strength. And this is despite the fact that the number of special infantry battalions, which were designed to perform training tasks, is only for 180 people in the battalion (that is, a little more than a classic company).
If we talk about the missing number of infantry units, the total number of British infantry is now estimated at 14670 people, and the shortage is 1820 people. And in the 12 battalions from the 20 battalions, more than 100 units are vacant per battalion. In the 5 battalions the incomplete is 23%. The Scotch Guard 1 Battalion has vacant 260 staff units, which in fact makes it inefficient even by the modern and highly loyal standards of the British command.
Interestingly, staffed positions for private and non-commissioned officers remain incomplete. There is no particular shortage of officers. But on the other hand, those wishing to go into the British army by ordinary soldiers are getting smaller. It was this circumstance that made the British military department turn to the tried and tested way of recruiting personnel - hiring foreign mercenaries. It was decided to create an additional Gurkha battalion.
For the Nepalese mountaineers, service in the royal army of Great Britain is traditionally considered prestigious, besides this is perhaps the only chance for them to radically change their financial situation. After all, finding a simple guy from a mountainous Nepalese village to work in Nepal with a salary comparable to the salary of a soldier of the Gurkha battalion of the British army is almost impossible.
But you will not complete the whole army with gurkhas, and the British themselves, and especially the Scots, Welsh and Irish, are less and less willing to hire to serve in the armed forces. Even the guards units recruited in Wales and Scotland faced a shortage of soldiers. Service in them has always been considered very prestigious, but now young people are not even seeking the Queen’s Guard, what can be said about the rest of the British ground forces. The total nedokomplekt ground forces is more than 5 thousand people. The generals sadly admit that since 2012, that is, for seven years, the military department has never been able to fully equip the ground forces.
Meanwhile, even among those British who serve in the ranks of the armed forces, not all are combat-ready soldiers for medical reasons. The British military department also published the sad data. Thus, 7200 British military personnel are unfit to participate in operations outside the country for health reasons. This is a huge figure for the British army, given that the regular strength of the land forces of the kingdom is set to 82420 people, but in reality, 76880 people serve in the ground forces. It turns out that every tenth British soldier is not suitable for foreign business trips. Another 9910 military can perform only a limited number of tasks outside the country.
Thus, in fact, 20% British troops can not be involved in foreign operations. High-ranking British military men consider such indicators catastrophic for the armed forces. After all, the UK today, where it is at war, is very far from its borders - in the Middle East, in Africa. It was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya that the British military personnel gained combat experience, but it turns out that every fifth British soldier cannot be sent there at all.
Colonel Richard Kemp, who once commanded the contingent of the royal army in Afghanistan, said that he was simply amazed by this data. After all, the unavailability of 20% soldiers to foreign operations directly threatens the combat capability of the British army. And the lack of soldiers and non-commissioned officers is closely related to the health of military personnel.
The remaining healthy soldiers have to serve "for themselves and for that guy." As a result, not wanting to experience extra burdens, many soldiers and non-commissioned officers leave the army immediately after the expiration of the first contract. Returning "to the citizen", they tell their relatives and acquaintances about the state of affairs in the British army, rumors spread quickly and there are fewer and fewer among the civilian youth willing to give the best years of their lives to serving in the name of the queen.
The next serious problem of the British army is the mismatch of actions of units and divisions due to the crisis of the command and control system. The already mentioned General Barrons declared that the United Kingdom is now unable to simultaneously engage all the armed forces in a combat situation. There are simply no resources for this - neither engineering, nor material, nor organizational. The British military department will not even be able to quickly mobilize reservists, who, like the soldiers of regular units, are becoming less and less. Given that the number of the British army is decreasing, and it is staffed exclusively with contract soldiers, there is practically no mobilization reserve in the country.
While Great Britain acted with minimal forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, to which only individual units were sent, which in fact were "hodgepodge" of various parts, it could still carry out military operations. And then, as the experience of the hostilities in Iraq or Libya shows, the British ground forces acted poorly and disappointed their “senior partners” in NATO - the Americans. What to say then about the opposition to the Russian or Chinese, the war with which the forces of individual consolidated units is simply impossible!
However, the British military seems to be losing touch with reality. As experienced generals sound the alarm, civilian leaders such as Williamson show their inadequacy. What is the battalion of 800 soldiers and officers sent to the Baltic states and 10 tanks, which the British military department is positioning as a force that can protect against imaginary "Russian aggression." Even among the British military themselves, the presence of a battalion on the territory of Estonia is called nothing more than Operation Decoying Duck. After all, even the most frost-bitten officers of the royal army do not have the idea that such a unit can confront the Russian armed forces.
The technical equipment of the British armed forces leaves much to be desired. According to some reports, the 21 of the 67 Tornado bombers and the 43 of the 135 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters are in poor condition. The ground forces also have many defective armored vehicles. During joint exercises with the Americans, held at Fort Bragg in the US 2017 garrison, it turned out that all the weapons with which British soldiers arrived to take part in 160 exercises (wasn’t it a “numerous” unit?) Turned out to be unusable.
Against the background of this state of affairs in the Royal Armed Forces of Great Britain, the question involuntarily arises, for which Gavin Williamson, like his immediate superior Teresa May, is constantly trying to saber non-existent weapons? Is this just a game for the domestic consumer - the British man in the street, or is this an extra way to achieve increased funding for the military? But since the British military is already allocating good money, and the state of the army is deteriorating, it remains only to think about the scale of corruption and "cut" in the British War Department.
"Got" and Russia. Williamson warned Moscow that it could wait for "retribution" for certain actions. Apparently, the head of the British military department meant muddy history poisoning the father and daughter Scripal. But be that as it may, Williamson reaffirmed Britain’s aggressive line against our country.
By the way, the Secretary of Defense said that China was threatening Britain and that’s why the former “Queen of the Seas” would send the Royal Navy flagship, the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, with F-35 aircraft on board the American and British squadrons to the Pacific Ocean. “With the Americans” is what’s important in this news. The fact is that the military power of Great Britain has long been "not the same." The power of London, which once controlled vast territories from West Africa to Southeast Asia, is a thing of the past. Modern Britain has financial resources, there are levers of pressure on foreign capital in the form of London banks, but the British army and fleet are weakening from year to year.
Despite the fact that the UK, under the guise of anti-Russian rhetoric, spends huge amounts of money on defense, Gavin Williamson calls for a further increase in spending on the army. It is clear that British businessmen controlling the military-industrial complex and financial flows are interested in this, but seriously speaking, there will soon be no one in the UK to fight.
The reduction of the British armed forces began in the 1990s, after the collapse of the socialist camp and the end of the Cold War, as it seemed to Western leaders. As a result, the number of once-powerful armed forces was reduced to 160 thousand people. A new blow to the combat capability of the British army was delivered while he was his country's prime minister, David Cameron. Under him, the British armed forces dropped in size two more times and began to total just over 80 thousand people.
Not so long ago, the former head of the United Command of the Armed Forces of Great Britain, General Richard Barrons, prepared a special report, in which he very critically assessed the defenses of his country. In particular, Barrons stressed that the British army will not be able to defend the country if it faces an attack by a strong state, for example, the Russian Federation. According to Barrons, the financial policy of London led to such deplorable consequences of the country's armed forces, although the British government already allocated substantial funds for the maintenance of the army and military industry.Barrons noted that the UK now retains only the “showcase” of its armed forces. For example, the UK has aircraft carriers to maintain the image of a great maritime power, but the ground forces are very bad. Their numbers were reduced to the limit, which led to the country's inability to participate in the "classic" war on land.
General Barrons is echoed by Major General Tim Cross, who said that the United Kingdom would not be able to withstand Russia or China on land. After all, these countries are not Afghanistan or Iraq, or the formation of Middle Eastern terrorists. And if the British army, even with American support, could at least somehow act in the Middle East against radical groups, then such a strategy would not work with the Russian or Chinese armed forces.
One of the most serious problems of modern British ground forces is the insufficient manning of units and subunits. This problem is most acute in the infantry units of the British army. 20 September 2018, the UK Department of Defense has published information about the lack of personnel of infantry battalions of the British army.
Now the British Army includes the 31 infantry battalion - the British 29 and the Gurkhan 2 (staffed by the Nepalese mountaineers - mercenaries). From the British Infantry Battalions 29 - 5 infantry battalions on the BMP, heavy motorized infantry 3, light motorized infantry 5, light infantry 9, special infantry 4, airborne battalion 2 battalion, palace squadron and the 1 battalion-squadron squadron palaces. As of July 1, 2018, a shortage of battalion personnel amounted to 12,4% of their full-time strength. And this is despite the fact that the number of special infantry battalions, which were designed to perform training tasks, is only for 180 people in the battalion (that is, a little more than a classic company).
If we talk about the missing number of infantry units, the total number of British infantry is now estimated at 14670 people, and the shortage is 1820 people. And in the 12 battalions from the 20 battalions, more than 100 units are vacant per battalion. In the 5 battalions the incomplete is 23%. The Scotch Guard 1 Battalion has vacant 260 staff units, which in fact makes it inefficient even by the modern and highly loyal standards of the British command.
Interestingly, staffed positions for private and non-commissioned officers remain incomplete. There is no particular shortage of officers. But on the other hand, those wishing to go into the British army by ordinary soldiers are getting smaller. It was this circumstance that made the British military department turn to the tried and tested way of recruiting personnel - hiring foreign mercenaries. It was decided to create an additional Gurkha battalion.
For the Nepalese mountaineers, service in the royal army of Great Britain is traditionally considered prestigious, besides this is perhaps the only chance for them to radically change their financial situation. After all, finding a simple guy from a mountainous Nepalese village to work in Nepal with a salary comparable to the salary of a soldier of the Gurkha battalion of the British army is almost impossible.
But you will not complete the whole army with gurkhas, and the British themselves, and especially the Scots, Welsh and Irish, are less and less willing to hire to serve in the armed forces. Even the guards units recruited in Wales and Scotland faced a shortage of soldiers. Service in them has always been considered very prestigious, but now young people are not even seeking the Queen’s Guard, what can be said about the rest of the British ground forces. The total nedokomplekt ground forces is more than 5 thousand people. The generals sadly admit that since 2012, that is, for seven years, the military department has never been able to fully equip the ground forces.
Meanwhile, even among those British who serve in the ranks of the armed forces, not all are combat-ready soldiers for medical reasons. The British military department also published the sad data. Thus, 7200 British military personnel are unfit to participate in operations outside the country for health reasons. This is a huge figure for the British army, given that the regular strength of the land forces of the kingdom is set to 82420 people, but in reality, 76880 people serve in the ground forces. It turns out that every tenth British soldier is not suitable for foreign business trips. Another 9910 military can perform only a limited number of tasks outside the country.
Thus, in fact, 20% British troops can not be involved in foreign operations. High-ranking British military men consider such indicators catastrophic for the armed forces. After all, the UK today, where it is at war, is very far from its borders - in the Middle East, in Africa. It was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya that the British military personnel gained combat experience, but it turns out that every fifth British soldier cannot be sent there at all.
Colonel Richard Kemp, who once commanded the contingent of the royal army in Afghanistan, said that he was simply amazed by this data. After all, the unavailability of 20% soldiers to foreign operations directly threatens the combat capability of the British army. And the lack of soldiers and non-commissioned officers is closely related to the health of military personnel.
The remaining healthy soldiers have to serve "for themselves and for that guy." As a result, not wanting to experience extra burdens, many soldiers and non-commissioned officers leave the army immediately after the expiration of the first contract. Returning "to the citizen", they tell their relatives and acquaintances about the state of affairs in the British army, rumors spread quickly and there are fewer and fewer among the civilian youth willing to give the best years of their lives to serving in the name of the queen.
The next serious problem of the British army is the mismatch of actions of units and divisions due to the crisis of the command and control system. The already mentioned General Barrons declared that the United Kingdom is now unable to simultaneously engage all the armed forces in a combat situation. There are simply no resources for this - neither engineering, nor material, nor organizational. The British military department will not even be able to quickly mobilize reservists, who, like the soldiers of regular units, are becoming less and less. Given that the number of the British army is decreasing, and it is staffed exclusively with contract soldiers, there is practically no mobilization reserve in the country.
While Great Britain acted with minimal forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, to which only individual units were sent, which in fact were "hodgepodge" of various parts, it could still carry out military operations. And then, as the experience of the hostilities in Iraq or Libya shows, the British ground forces acted poorly and disappointed their “senior partners” in NATO - the Americans. What to say then about the opposition to the Russian or Chinese, the war with which the forces of individual consolidated units is simply impossible!
However, the British military seems to be losing touch with reality. As experienced generals sound the alarm, civilian leaders such as Williamson show their inadequacy. What is the battalion of 800 soldiers and officers sent to the Baltic states and 10 tanks, which the British military department is positioning as a force that can protect against imaginary "Russian aggression." Even among the British military themselves, the presence of a battalion on the territory of Estonia is called nothing more than Operation Decoying Duck. After all, even the most frost-bitten officers of the royal army do not have the idea that such a unit can confront the Russian armed forces.
The technical equipment of the British armed forces leaves much to be desired. According to some reports, the 21 of the 67 Tornado bombers and the 43 of the 135 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters are in poor condition. The ground forces also have many defective armored vehicles. During joint exercises with the Americans, held at Fort Bragg in the US 2017 garrison, it turned out that all the weapons with which British soldiers arrived to take part in 160 exercises (wasn’t it a “numerous” unit?) Turned out to be unusable.
Against the background of this state of affairs in the Royal Armed Forces of Great Britain, the question involuntarily arises, for which Gavin Williamson, like his immediate superior Teresa May, is constantly trying to saber non-existent weapons? Is this just a game for the domestic consumer - the British man in the street, or is this an extra way to achieve increased funding for the military? But since the British military is already allocating good money, and the state of the army is deteriorating, it remains only to think about the scale of corruption and "cut" in the British War Department.
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