How would today's British armed forces be measured against the British armed forces of, say, the sixties, that were designed to hold the front line in Germany? It isn't just the equipment, numbers count too, but most importantly it is what the force is designed to achieve. In the case of foreign intervention or Global Policing as the politicians prefer to call it, there's simply no substitute for overwhelming numbers. Irregular forces are impossible to counter by direct military action; it takes overwhelming numbers to hold the ground and control movement (as in Malaya) while the politicians work out the long term solution. Put the same number of men who swarmed ashore on D-Day into Afghanistan, even with the same equipment, and we might see a result.
