Originally Posted by
Tankertrashnav
Yep, its all "Health - Education - Health - Education" = mention defence and you are committing political suicide.
... Meanwhile if we suddenly decided we were going to seriously invest in defence, would there be a sufficiently large skilled workforce to make the kit?
One might also ask if there would be a sufficiently large, skilled workforce to operate the kit? Consider that a rhetorical question, we all know the answer. Well, seemingly all apart from politicians and service Manning authorities, planners and financiers.
Unless of course the creeping normalisation of 12-14 hour days as the expected norm in a peacetime HQ for anyone above mid-level flt lt / equivalent means brute force manning will see it work right up to the point they need to surge to Op tempo only to realise the tank is empty.
Oh and as for Russians in Ukraine, of course there are. Try looking up signs of any social media savvy Russian squaddie and you'll find selfies taken in Ukraine all over the Internet of them operating as 'local resistance'. RUSI did a very good paper recently on how the Russians operate in the Info Ops arena; Ukraine is a textbook example. Apologies for the thread drift.