According to the British Army’s website, “The Army is to be reduced by 23 Regular units since the Strategic Defence and Security Review as part of Army 2020. The changes are due to be implemented by 2015, with the overall mandate to reach the capacity of 82,000 for the Regular Army and 30,000 for the Reserves by 2018.”
Read all of the bad news here, www.army.mod.uk and here www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/Army2020_brochure.pdf
Tags: UK
They probably need more money to pay for their failed social welfare socialized medicine (NHS). This is our future in the US, especially if Obamacare stays in place.
Only a matter of time for two things then: Argentina will take the Malvina’s back by force and Islam will take over the UK and the ‘British Isle’s’ will then become a huge haven for ‘Muslims’ desiring to leave the dry/hot deserts for their new ‘northern’ lands. Social welfare destroyed the UK where no outside armed forces could ever do so. You lads are screwed. Sorry.
The NHS has not failed and is not failing. Like most state welfare schemes, it suffers from long waiting times and inefficiency, but what do you expect when it treat allcomers and treats them competently and with care. The British Army is being cut because of the global financial crisis and a particularly idealistic government and its austerity measures.
The NHS isn’t to blame, the forces has been on a steady decline since Korea. This is just another effort to downsize the Army to allow for a larger reserve contingent, and replacing most of the Loggies with contractors (which has already happened far too much!) for cost efficeiency.
Its actually done quite well, no division has suffered more than others and there is no change in cap badges aside from the amalgamation of 4 Cav/Armoured Regt’s into two (Finally gets rid of the last fraction 9/12th Lancers a massive throwback to the Waterloo era!).
Still, it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out this side of the pond!
Admittedly the NHS is a little cumbersome, but that’s a small consequence of ‘free’, universal healthcare. By no means is it “failing”.
As for the army reductions, this again is not a failure – the increase in strength wielded by NATO forces globally, including the US, means that a large army is not necessary, especially in modern conflicts (for example, the ISAF in A’stan). By having multiple nations contribute forces to medium-scale COIN conflicts, the need for a large national armed forces is somewhat mitigated. Now I’m not saying we should dump responsibility on other nations, but rather share it with them.
The Royal Navy still maintains a good size and global presence, and the Royal Marines with it, so I don’t think the Falklands will be a problem (if indeed it ever comes to it, with the Falklander’s referendum next year etc, but that’s another debat for another time).
And finally, generalising about a ‘Muslim invasion’ of the UK is pretty unfounded, given the recent of efforts of the police, border force and immigration authorities.
Americans like to use Europe as a foil as proof that their political or economic theory is valid. It goes both ways. Right now everybody is afraid of change when the one thing that is for sure is that not changing means staying just like it is now; bad.
The force projection capability of the Royal Navy has been devastated over the last 10 years. It’s highly doubtful that they could mount an effective response to a Falkland’s seizure.
Socialism always fails in the end. It is in process of failing from day one. NATO couldn’t even pull off the Libya operations without US support. What will UK (and the rest of Europe for that matter) do when the US chooses not to send help. Will the UK have enough military then. I for one am tired of subsidizing European welfare states with our military.
NATO and socialism have nothing to do with one another and last time I looked, the US was the largest MATO partner. When NATO does something we’re involved.
Keep your peas and carrots separated on this plate.
Let me clarify. The UK is reducing its armed forces because of budgetary forces. The primary drivers for this pressure are spending and debt. It is reasonable that in a period of cut backs the military will suffer, however the primary source of government spending is social welfare NHS, etc, etc. (Socialism) This is true in most western European/NATO countries. It is also true in the US. The point is that most NATO/western European countries have cut their military forces to the point that they are dependent on outside/coalition help to mount even fairly minor operations like Libya. The UK at present does not even have an operational aircraft carrier. Most major military cuts in these countries have followed the implementation of social welfare programs. My point is that if these countries choose social welfare over their ability to defend themselves, then the US should not provide military forces that they should provide from themselves. I understand our commitments under NATO, I am just saying that maybe it is time for us to reconsider.
The question of whether to remain a part of NATO owes more to stability in Europe than how much of a force commitment we’d have to provide. In fact, during the Cold War, the vast majority of forces STILL would have come from the US for any NATO-led operation.
The UK has been cutting their forces for Yeats and years. It’s their throat.
There is a small issue of proportionality when considering these cuts. At a rough calculation 0.003% of US citizens are in the Army, where as 0.006% of the population of the UK are in the army (both inc. reserves) and thats after cuts. Financially it doesn’t make sense to maintain an army that size, its fighting capacity is in no way reduced as most of the cuts have been made to Combat support and Combat service support roles, all of which are planned to be maintained by civvie contractors.
In reality the army hasn’t changed in size the divide is between regular and territorial army the UK will have the same amount of men and women for combat operations the difference is in running costs. What has changed is the doctrine and the focus in special forces and increase size and funding of them, also the cost of high tech equipment for all branches of the armed forces, most of which have effected the US and UK with the purchase of the F-35b and c variants which are yet to be delivered. An aircraft littered with tech issues which both US an UK tax payers may be regretting now . I m not a fan of outsourcing defence programmes and considering we have the technology, skill and resources to build our own harrier replacement. We could of done it better meeting our carrier needs and airforce replacement programme while having a more cost effective aircraft, but this is only a small piece of the budget that was wasted.