Originally Posted by
Warren Peace
Despite a lot of sensible, if misdirected, opinion on here, you all seem to have a peculiarly selfish focus.
The new world order cares not what you were trained to defend against.
You can all make all the noise you want about Russia, China and Syria.
The enemy faced by the people of the UK was on London Bridge recently. There is a limited amount of money to go around, and neither the Typhoon force, the Red Arrows or either of the two new carriers will prevent more of that.
Life has to go on, so Police, Air Ambulance & SAR aviation needs public money. Drones to attack either team in Syria, not so much.
The facts are: HMG has failed to secure safety at home, so the game of roaming the world trying to nip something in the bud, without knowing what it is, can't really be the way forward.
Sometimes, when you look so closely at the bigger picture, you don't see what's right in front of you.
The point you're making is now showing signs of age. Ever since the 1990s/end of the Cold War, we've had various hard headed evaluations telling us that the threat has changed, that defence has to be re-shaped, re-thought to meet the wars of tomorrow etc. Then we had operations (for better or worse, wrong or right) in Kosovo, Sierre Leone, Gulf 2, Libya and recently to eradicate Isis' operating base/strong hold in Syria and Northern Iraq, which has been successful by all accounts.
None of these operations went ahead without the principal involvement of Typhoons, Tornados, infantry in the case of Sierre, etc. The chap who met his end at the hands of the met last week, wasn't an indication of a national security/defence threat. He was an example of the loop holes in sentencing policy. It is still within the remit of the Police to deal with such matters. The Armed Forces exist to confront a larger extensive, more varied and comprehensive threat. It is certainly the case that there are now additional strands to the spectrum but it isn't the case that defence concerns have wholly transitioned, or are transitioning to a narrow world of cyber threats and suicide bombers. These are additional concerns, but much for now, are contained by the anti-terrorist squad and GCHQ. How would you redress the balance as you see it? Would even a single squadron of F-35s be redundant? Would we fair far better simply pouring all resources into countering cyber threats, intercepting Russian attempts to interfere with elections, monitoring extremists and vastly increasing the budget for CID and the prison system. Would this be comprehensive enough and leave nothing else to chance?
FB