PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - USAF Lessons from Ukraine
View Single Post
Old 20th Aug 2023, 09:39
  #14 (permalink)  
Just This Once...
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: UK
Posts: 2,166
Received 48 Likes on 24 Posts
The RAF is only configured for the deployed 'war of choice' type of operation, nothing more. There is nothing configured to defend the UK itself, should we endure that kind of conflict.

For those older ex-service members on this forum you can forget the days of 'survive to fight', defending bases, hardened facilities, dispersed operations, engineering bays (let alone the days of hardened bays), fleets of MT, military logistics or base defence. All of it was disposed of for the sake of 'political hope', albeit with a nod that we would be able to re-grow, should the need arise, within 10 years. The point being that we could regenerate faster than a threat could present itself.

Of course, we passed that 10-year tipping-point nearly 2 decades ago. We did not regenerate and the cuts continued. Some things have remained the same of course. Warfare still looks to target the adversary's ability to fight. In the case of the RAF that means that adversaries will not be targeting our military logistics, engineering, stockpiles and alike, hardened, dispersed or otherwise - we destroyed them ourselves. The targets the RAF provides for tomorrow are civilian contractor facilities such as those for Raytheon, Boeing, LM, BAE Systems, MBDA, Northrop Grumman et al. We know exactly how our adversaries can 'fight' the UK. Whilst whilst fleets of bombers, cruise missiles and alike do feature on the threat board they are probably less likely than techniques already used against the UK and others.

Want to impact the UK's ability to fight - direct message the social media of civilian contractors, telling them not to go to work. Dope a few more door handles and add additional warmth to some tea again to bolster the message. Clearly I am only posting publicly-known threats but be mindful that the UK used to include protection, resilience and redundancy of critical UK infrastructure, when it was still in public hands. That too has changed, beyond all recognition.
Just This Once... is offline  
The following 7 users liked this post by Just This Once...: