I wonder if those senior types who spent the best part of the past 15 years mortgaging Defence in order to fight low level policing actions will now admit they were wrong. And that when combined with Russian actions in Syria, there is more than enough evidence pointing to a credible threat still existing at the state on state level and for which Defence must be appropriately resourced and configured?
And I wonder if all those theorists who built a career on the back of Defence's lack of understanding of international relations will be busy revisiting their theories in order to get revised versions of their books out. Nice work if you can get it; build a career on writing theories, get it wrong - no problems, just rewrite the last chapter and reissue and wait for the sales to roll in.
You will have to forgive the sceptical tone, but I'm rapidly coming to realise that the academics and staff types that Defence relies on as the 'specialists' to guide and advise appear to have little more expertise than your average soothsayer. It's probably as much of do with the politicisation of policy making - decisions based evidence making - as it is our corporate ignorance.
So just where do we go from here if the UK armed forces are to become little more than a gendarmerie? Because frankly I now cringe whenever I sit through a briefing or read a note talking of UK generating influence and all we've done is deploy a company of troops here, a couple of aircraft on exercise there or sailed one of our increasingly few in number destroyers through a particular grid square on a map. I wonder what our allies around the world really think of our claims
