Promises are easy to make, delivering them not so! Unless we have mothballed helicopters AND the crews to fly them the lead in times for procurement and training are many months,if not years even if we leased them.
I suspect its Boots on the ground, brass on target and bayonets up jacksies that are the real requirements. Toms are not in such ready supply either, especially the fighting kind; correct me if I'm wrong but aren't 80% of the armed forces made up of REMFS.
Return of National Service? (Might solve the YOB problem.) More NATO involvement? (Who can we trust to turn up and not want to either lead or sit back and just eat pasta?) Be more reluctant to get involved in tribal warfare in foreign countries?
I suspect that a fair number of interdiction/counterstrike arguments can be made but if we didn't poke our apologetic noses in in the first place we might not be the target. A
meaningful zero tolerance politically, legislatively and socially against drugs in our own backyard would be better than foreign adventures against a 12th century socio-political system who's people are struggling to survive the best way they can. Can you imagine how much the money spent on these wars could have accomplished in policing our own streets?
However, the clock cannot be turned back and we have to accept the consequences, unfortunately, the last dying gasps of an outgoing PM are rarely translated into reality by his successor. Once the Hoo Ha has died down try and count how much more actually arrives in theatre.
I'm not a Journo trying to spark a reaction just 35 years service listening to politicians promise cake tomorrow has just left me pi**ed off. I am reminded of Rudyard Kiplings lament regarding Tommy, nothing has changed in 150 years.
