I was surprised last night, to see Philip Hammond very clumsily rubbishing a major general (retiring) who seemed to be making a rather obvious and valid point. We do have a contradiction between how we respond to "armed" versus "unarmed" attacks and at the moment our pants are down. Russia fuses regular and irregular forces with local militia, it cyber attacks and it passively encourages ambiguous warfare. We have a couple of hoofing great carriers (maybe) but not much else with which to patrol the Baltic, an expensive but capable jet inbound sometime soon and troops used to fighting a tightly defined war.
If we need to see how the wheel is turning in Russia, look not much further than this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28583669
For our part, we've lost the skills and mindset of how to jump on a boat and reinforce Europe. I read a thread here the other day about deploying to Poland on exercise, and that it was a knee jerk reaction. But where and what are the trip wires (political as well as military?) if we can't even see what's causing the flare to go 'pop' or worse still, if the flare isn't even visible? We have to get back into that way of thinking - we can't place a main base there because we have no money but more importantly, it'll restrain our thinking too much and the threat is fast and loose. And we need to relearn how to respond fast and loose. Maybe the second QE class carrier IS the (mobile) main defence, funded by NATO.
Edit: Bedpack for Shirref! Hammond hissy fit, threatens to march the general to the guardroom. Crazy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28593326