"UK is worlds 4th largest military"

[mini]

According to Cameron in a broadsheet article I read today.

I'd love to know what criteria he's using...

He needs to stop digging :sad:

[Rhino power]

I think he means in terms of expenditure, although quite were all that money is going given the ever dwindling amount of hardware and manpower numbers we have is open to debate...
SIPRI quotes the UK 2013 defence budget at $60.8Bn (2.5% of GDP)

-RP

P.S. Cameron is still a massive spunktrumpet...

[SASless]

Must be some very small Armies out there!:{

[The Sultan]

In terms of spine the UK ranks lower than the French, but much higher than Republican Neocons chickenhawks who led the world into a war in Iraq based on lies. The Tea Baggers are worse, they proudly S themselves to avoid fighting for the country they reside in. Is that not right Nugent?

The Sultan

[typerated]

Lower than the French? You lot have very short memories.

We have a saying that you were late for 2 world wars and determined to be early for the next.

I hope congress is also spineless!

[West Coast]

That was weak sultan.

[Hangarshuffle]

Just to get back on the thread which newspaper was this in, as I live abroad would like to read it ("UK is worlds 4th largest etc)? if its online.
What statement is he trying to communicate there? We are still a powerful force? Who is he trying to kid? The voters - they see through it, and him.
This hasn't been a good few days for the PM, in fact I increasingly minded to think this entire issue over Syria has exposed his as simply as inadequate for the role.
Something has happened, I feel a change somehow, will now come one way or another.
People in the UK know themselves that the UK Armed Forces are significantly smaller. People who have served have witnessed the very sharp decline, certainly in the Naval Service.
I simply cant imagine that he thinks it 4th largest is size of manpower or projected ability, which is how this statement surely is meant to be interpreted.

Was it true that before the second world war an air display was held in the UK, and the RAF demonstrated their latest aircraft and capability? I seem to remember seeing a Pathe newsreel of it (the display), on a history documentary.
The public in cinemas were rightly horrified watching the biplane RAF dropping small bags of flour and smoke bombs, because they themselves had seen the real footage of the rapidly emerging modern Luftwaffe in Spain, and were making their own comparisons. Did this not provoke expansion of Fighter Command?
Perhaps the PM should be invited to offer demonstrations of present UK capability as a defensive force (but only as a display, not in Syria, to reassure the public and to back his words up)?
I think the UK public would be far happier and reassured with their politicians limited role and indeed their own military if the UK forces were now simply focused purely as an entirely defensive force only.
What ended credibility of size for me was probably that last day I did on a Type 23 as a sea-rider perhaps 3 or 4 years ago. Getting on the PAS boat, me and only one other sailed up into Plymouth from the sound, past Drakes Island and along through Devonport right up to the top end at Camel Head ( a distance of maybe 2 miles, its a long waterfront).
There was not a single Royal Naval ship or submarine tied up alongside or in view even in refit, I kid you not. I had never seen that before. I knew what was out at sea, and what was deployed and roughly where, and to see nothing left at all was a final reality check for myself.
Actually there were some other salutary moments as well, when the penny dropped (again).
Or perhaps the UK public just no longer really care if we are 4th largest or even 40th?

R.A.F. DISPLAY AT HENDON - British Pathé (http://www.britishpathe.com/video/r-a-f-display-at-hendon/query/Hendon)

I think I found it - when the public twigged the politicians were fibbing about capability. Imagine being sat in the cinema in 1937 thinking this lot was going to protect you from a Blitz.

[SASless]

Just how potent a force are you really?

Be honest now.

Strategic Bombing capability?

AAR Capability?

Tactical Bombing Ability?

Surface Combatants....Anti-submarine Warfare?

Airborne ASW capability?

Airborne Infantry capability?

Airlift capability?

We are talking capability not quality alone.

How much real "Throw Weight" do you actually have now days?

If the Falklands and Gibraltar were at risk of being taken by those who want them....would you be able to defend both?

Far fetched perhaps as i don't see either of those neighbors really wanting them back enough to kick off hostilities....but one never knows does one?

[Pontius Navigator]

SASLess, really only point 10 needs an answer as quality is inseparable from quantity. I am sure you remember the Israeli proverb.

Of the latter, the answer is probably yes in both cases. In the case of both it is to have and to hold and not to have to recapture and hold - a world of difference.

The difference is of course where we saved money and relinquished all, bar Gibraltar and Akrotiri, our old overseas based.

Overseas bases are a continuing drain on resources as even the US knows. Yet re-establishing a presence, if possible at all, is much more expensive.

[Jimlad1]

I'm not bothered about counting by numbers - I care more about whether we have sufficient military to do the job we want them to do. Its easy to play top trumps and look at how many tanks some nations have, and quietly ignore the fact that they dont actually have the ability to send them anywhere - great for home defence, useless for anything else.
similarly, I look at various middle eastern nations with fast jet fleets which look impressive on paper, but they have more aircraft than pilots (often 2-3 times more) and don't do much more than a nice flying club. Is this military capability?

We do ourselves down far too much - look at what we do, look at what we've been doing for 15 years or so and I reckon that while its always challenging, we are in a vastly more capable place than we perhaps give ourselves credit for.

[West Coast]

"To do the job we want them to do"

Does the MOD have this in writing somewhere? The DoD has in the past has put pen to paper with regard to this.

[Chris Scott]

"Speak softly and carry a big stick" (Theodore Roosevelt). Twin precepts lost on Auntie Sam's husband/wife.

[WH904]

I suspect that Thursday's Commons vote tells us a great deal. The appetite for overseas crusades seems to have gone and I can't help thinking it will not come back very easily.

We have only a token air defence capability now (maybe fifty operational Typhoons on a good day, if we really needed them?) and an offensive capability that isn't significantly greater. It begs the question as to what the RAF's role really is now, or more importantly, what it will be in the future.

Counter terrorism seems to be the way forward but it's difficult to see what else could be on the horizon, at least in terms of British will to engage with any of it.

Hmm... RC-135s, Sentries and Shadows... it's a long way from the days of the Cold War :)

[SWBKCB]

If it isn't us, who is 4th?

[C-141Starlifter]

I believe North Korea has the 4th largest military in the world.

Lifter

[smujsmith]

Rhino Power #2 has it totally correct. By any standard the only way Britain is fourth largest is in expenditure;

Military budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget)

I can't actually find where Britain stands in any of the other parameters ;

List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_troops)

28th I believe in respect to "active military". However like most I believe the expression, "it ain't what you got, its the way that you use it" counts for a lot.

Smudge:ok:

[CoffmanStarter]

Based on this data ... in terms of our Global Air Power ... we are 10th in terms of our Global Military Fleet and don't even feature in the Top Ten of Combat Aircraft numbers :{

World Air Force 2013 (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?221116-World-Air-Force-2013)

That said ... I'd still back us to give good account in any time of need :ok:

It would be interesting to see comparable data for our Army and Naval capability.

[Melchett01]

Based on this data ... in terms of our Global Air Power ... we are 10th in terms of our Global Military Fleet and don't even feature in the Top Ten of Combat Aircraft numbers ...

That said ... I'd still back us to give good account in any time of need

As long as we don't lose any. We all joke about 8 on the pan, 6 to start, 4 to taxi for a pair to get airborne. But look at the size of any of our fleets and you'll find only a fraction are available at anyone time. When I was doing A-Levels, one of my history teachers was an old cold war warrior. When he found out what I wanted to do we had several conversations about the military, and I still remember one of them clearly. He said that if the cold war had gone hot, the UK military was largely expected to last for a week, maybe 2 tops before becoming either combat ineffective or totally depleted.

If that was the case back then when out military, across all the Services, was probably a magnitude larger than it is now, I'm not sure that if we had to do anything more than carry out the sort of policing action we have gorwn accustomed to or a very very small scale limited action, that we could manage it at all. There are days that it pains me to think that we have become little more than a heavily armed gendarmerie :sad:

[Pontius Navigator]

Just consider GW1 losses up to and including D-day.

[smujsmith]

I just wonder if someone had pointed out that we are only 4th in how much we spend, whether our "Glorious leader" could have then explained about the value of "bang for the buck" etc. someone fed him that line, knowing full well it said one thing, but meant another. I'm pretty sad that we have sunk to the levels where politicians have to spin rather than be honest about our military capability. Perhaps the vote on Thursday was more of a reflection of our true capabilities, and perhaps Cameron is grateful for it.

Smudge

[Tinman74]

We have all that and more! SASless

[Once A Brat]

WH904 wrote "We have only a token air defence capability now (maybe fifty operational Typhoons on a good day, if we really needed them?) and an offensive capability that isn't significantly greater."

Unfortunately unless the RAF has changed direction in the year since I left then those 50 Typhoons are probably counted as offensive capability as well as Air Defence since Tornado will go the same way as Harrier 6 months after it is withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Shocking isn't it.

[Churchills Ghost]

UK is worlds 4th largest military.

Totally inaccurate in terms of numbers of personnel.

[GeeRam]

WH904 wrote "We have only a token air defence capability now (maybe fifty operational Typhoons on a good day, if we really needed them?) and an offensive capability that isn't significantly greater."

Unfortunately unless the RAF has changed direction in the year since I left then those 50 Typhoons are probably counted as offensive capability as well as Air Defence since Tornado will go the same way as Harrier 6 months after it is withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Shocking isn't it.

Go back to the hight of the cold war era, and the summer of 1974 when the RAF had 26 x fast jet squadrons....... (4 x Harrier, 8 x Phantom, 7 x Lightning, 4 x Buccaneer, 2 x Hunter & 1 x Jaguar) in addition to the 7 x Vulcan, 8 x Canberra, 4 x Nimrod & 3 x Victor squadrons.

:{

[Once A Brat]

Agreed GeeRam,

When I joined, admittedly towards the end of the cold war, we had Lightning, Phantom, Buccaneer, Harrier, Jaguar, Canberra and Tornado sqns plus a multitude of other types (the basic trainer was the Chipmunk still) - Hunter was still flying as a trainer for Buccaneers, the RAF was about 100000 strong and was led by a 4*

The RAF I left had Typhoon and Tornado (no true jet CAS or BAI platform, just a strategic bomber and an air defender having a very good go) plus a few other types, with many of their roles having gone by the wayside - an island nation without its own orgainic MPA? It had just gone down to about 32000 personnel (which strictly is a Corps not a Force), but was still led by a 4* - admittedly a point for another thread, but surely at sometime during the multitude of reviews over the last 25-30 years we should have reviewed the cold war command structure?

Did I enjoy my time? Yes. Would I join again? in the 80s, Yes - now, doubtful.

[SASless]

It is almost getting to the point a Movie could be made about the RAF....."The Mouse That Roared".:{

[Heathrow Harry]

GeeRam - in the summer of '74 the Warsaw pact was 630 kms from Dover and armed to the teeth

Russia is now 2100km from Dover and not exactly a major military force

[Ronald Reagan]

Heathrow Harry, I agree totally that Russian forces are far further from us than back in the Cold War. But to say Russia is hardly a military force!
I would suggest they are superpower number 2 or 3, its hard to say if China or Russia is stronger. Russia alone could likely take on Europe and win.
If you add Russian and Chinese forces together you end up with a force larger than the US military. From this point on the Chinese and Russian forces are likely to increase in size and most importantly both are likely to rapidly bring into service great ammounts of new equipment. While the strongest military power in the west is very likely to enter a period of significant decline, as are all the smaller players such as ourselves, the French and Germans also.

[SASless]

Do recall we have reverted to a military posture of being able to fight a single war and not two at a time.

Reckon the JCS and SecDef reminded Odumbo of that before he went out with his bucket of red paint and brush and started painting himself into that Corner as he did?

[Broadsword***]

It is all very well our having the 4th largest military in the world (in terms of GPD spend), but if we are not even going to bother using them to punish one of the most horrendous breaches of international law in recent history, then what is the point of having them? We might as well retreat within our own borders, keep a token defence force, ditch our nuclear deterrent and pocket the dividend.

[TomJoad]

It is almost getting to the point a Movie could be made about the RAF....."The Mouse That Roared".:{

To misquote Churchill,, "Some mouse,,,,, some roar" :ok:

[GeeRam]

GeeRam - in the summer of '74 the Warsaw pact was 630 kms from Dover and armed to the teeth

Russia is now 2100km from Dover and not exactly a major military force

The point I was clearly unsuccessful at getting across was that it would have been nicer to have those 1974 force levels during the past decade of fighting a war(s) on multiple fronts, which, seeing as you brought the subject up, happens to be almost 6000km from Dover......

[NutLoose]

The world has moved on since the 1000 bomber raids of WW2 where aircraft were being churned out at a fantastic rate.
. If it ever happened again where there was a sustained none Nuclear War attack on the UK, we would be stuffed after the first couple of days, gone are the factories capability to ramp up aircraft production in a short period of time, gone are the facilities to design and build aircraft without significant time delays of years to see them to fruition, if indeed you could with the multi world sourcing of parts we have these days.
It just couldn't be done, so quantity over quality would come into play, as excellent as the Typhoon is, 50 odd fighters if you could generate that amount would be stuffed if they came up against 3 times the force, and as they say in the advert, once their gone, their gone.

[TomJoad]

Surely the point to be celebrated is that we no longer need such a force size. Otherwise what was the point of the era of the 1000 bomber raid. Neither lament the loss of the industrial capacity to ramp up production, we neither have need for that. We are what we are - the very fact that we continue to be compared and contrasted in the same breath as America, China, Russia with all their significant resources is telling enough.

[NutLoose]

The other result of losing build capacity and buying the likes of the F-35 means that the factories that would have built homegrown fighters as in the past shut up shop and went, laying off and dispersing the knowledge base and skills we had, that one fact means we could probably never go down the route of a home grown product again and will continually be at the call of other countries to produce our military assets, fine until something goes wrong with those relationships we have.

[Pontius Navigator]

TJ, whilst I take your point there is an irreducible minimum for any type and you could argue that we are pretty close to that.

The Type 45 destroyers are a case in point. Hugely capable and the equivalent of several earlier types of frigate but they can only be in one place at one time. Also lose one and its operational effect is the same as losing ALL the number of types that it replaced.

While the Malta Adex of yesteryear involved 10 or 12 Lightnings and 6 Typhoons might be the equivalent of 24 Lightnings the same attrition rule would apply.

Send just 6 to Cyprus with a single E3 certainly does not provide 24 hour AD.

[smujsmith]

Nutty ( if I may be so forward),

I agree with you 100% and would add that over the last 20 to 30 years we, as a nation, have chased the "cheapest" at the expense of the "nearest". The consequence is that many of our major industries have been defeated by the cause of lowering prices. The shoe industry in Leicestershire, pretty well gone now, home grown aircraft design and build likewise. Our government might promote our "wonderful vehicle manufacturing industry", then you have a think and most are here because of public subsidy in one form or another or as an easy way to sell cars in Europe. In the meantime we put our eggs in the basket of Stock Market trading and Foreign Holiday companies. I despair at the way that governments have given way and allowed our manufacturing industry to decline. The next thing we hear I suppose will be that their £70+ billion train set is to be built by an Australian company, owned by the Chinese and using an imported Latvian workforce. I'm thankful in a way, that at 60, I probably don't have to watch it all play out. Fourth largest Military ? Like the man who said it, a claim rather larger than capability.

Smudge

[Melchett01]

TJ, whilst I take your point there is an irreducible minimum for any type and you could argue that we are pretty close to that.

I'm with PN on this one. You can have the shiniest, most expensive toys in the world, but unless you have also managed to either generate a worm hole or some how get the laws of quantum mechanics to apply at the macro level, then your shiniest of aircraft can't be in 2 places at once.

I do sometimes wonder whether we shouldn't just tone down our quest for all singing all dancing shiny 22nd century toys for something a bit more early 21st century and actually buy more than 4 of them. Isn't that the principle that the Navy's new Type 26 is supposed to be based around?

I understand why we do it - to maintain compatability with the US above all else - but maybe the rest of the world can't afford and doesn't need to keep up with the US' level of technological superiority. Rather than spending all that money on the F-35 and getting how many platforms exactly (not many), hypothetically what would you have got and how many could you afford if you bought Flankers and put western avionics and weapons systems in (probably a lot more)?

Yes I know it would never happen, but I'm just musing hypothetically as a distraction from the Syria and the RAF Club threads.

[t43562]

If a country the size of Sweden can put together it's own jet fighters then presumably it's a bit too gloomy to think Britain couldn't. It might have to be single-role and limited in various ways.

[cokecan]

Melchett,

the argument is a good one - the purchace price for a single F-35B would buy around 120 Block IV TacTom TLAM's, or 3 SU-30MKI Flanker H's.

i hope, though only for the sake of UK carrier aviation, that F-35B works, and is affordable in sufficient numbers to be worth owning - but the truth is we'd have been far better off either going for F/A-18F and C&T in 2005, or deciding we were out of carrier aviation all-togetherand plumping for a much larger RN surface/sub-surface fleet and filling it with TLAM's for risk free uppity-wog-bashing - and using the money saved to look at increasing the 'LO-ness' of Tommahawk and Storm Shadow for future conflicts...

[Melchett01]

cokecan,

IIRC, far from this being simple US showing off, somewhere in their doctrine it states that they will maintain a level of superiority X times that of their allies and 4X times that of potential opponents. In effect, our attempts to keep up with the latest technologies is doing nothing more than breading an arms race amongst allies as well as opponents.

That's fine, but if the rest of the world decided not to try and keep up, then the US wouldn't feel the need to keep advancing at such a rate and to such an extent, and indeed might end up finding itself the odd one out and decide to ease off for a while. And seeing how few platforms we have these days - across all the Services - I for one would be more than happy to ease off the accelerator a little if it meant we were a little more sustainable by virtue of having greater numbers.

[TomJoad]

TJ, whilst I take your point there is an irreducible minimum for any type and you could argue that we are pretty close to that.

Send just 6 to Cyprus with a single E3 certainly does not provide 24 hour AD.

Pontius, I accept that. I guess the real danger we face is that as we reduce there is a point at which, irrespective of how capable the equipment is, we could become neither one thing nor the other. It's heartbreaking watching this process - it defined my time in. But ( I know I should not do that ) is there honestly any other way we could head? Serious question - I'm not qualified to answer that. One thing Britain is good at though is coming to terms with who we are - we get it, eventually.

Edited - just read your alternative Melchette and yes it does make you think if that is the model for the Navy then could it apply to the air environment as well. What of our defence industry though - would the likes of BAE support it. I guess that there are a lot of vested interests in developing the latest generation kit to replace the last latest generation kit.

[Pontius Navigator]

I despair at the way that governments have given way and allowed our manufacturing industry to decline.

The only industry that the Government has direct control over is Defence. It had indirect control over many others through subsidies - who provides the money for subsidies - an others through business rates, minimum wage, taxes etc etc.

We don't like paying taxes so for a free market economy subsidies were reduced or abolished. Just remember though who doesn't permit State subsidies.

One taxes, just who sets VAT rates? A good may be zero rated but another have a higher rate. Once VAT exceeds 15% the Government is powerless to reduce it below 15%.

Who directly allows manufacturing to decline? We do, ably assisted by the EU.

We are then betwixt the proverbial. Build a British fighter aircraft and
we keep the cash in UK by means of all the taxes - company tax, business rates, VAT spend by the workers - and perhaps 80% or more remains in UK. If we can't export it though we lose economies of scale.

If we buy foreign we lose expertise, the money goes, and we also lose some operational clout.

Maybe the old system, build and sell a first rate and affordable airframe, allow the customer to install the cocktail cabinet and carpets or the missile system was better.

[Heathrow Harry]

Good analysis Pontius - but the problem of building military stuff for export is that you finish up subsidising the sales if you aren't carefull. Probably the last aircraft we exported in any numbers and didn't have to subsidise the buyer in some way was the Hunter.

By the late 50's the French, Russians and Yanks were all offering serious kit on deals that made the eyes water. We were never able to compete.

probably the worst cases of gold plating by British Industry were in naval vessels TBH - we used to sell a lot but as we increased the spec the costs went through the roof and, since hardly any potential buyer needed the capability, they went elsewhere

[NutLoose]

As said by myself and PN you can build a wolrdbeater but when that is so expensive and so complex that you can only build them in minute numbers, the advantage is lost.
Using the Ship as an example, it may well have the capability of 10 or more previous models, but 10 boats sitting on the pond will not be taken out with one missile or torpedo, 10 boats sitting on a pond will be able to react quicker to anything happening in their part of the pond and 10 boats sitting on a pond can be at different places on that pond doing different things.
Look at the falklands War, if you were dependant on one or two of a class as opposed to the multitude they had you wouldn't want to put that asset in harms way, simply because you have nothing to replace it with unless you build another, so it in effect becomes another Carrier kept back well out of harms way and not in there covering the landings in San Carlos bay etc.
Hitler never learnt that lesson, in the Panther and Tiger he had two of the worlds best built, best gunned and over complex tanks the world had ever seen, and even if they had a kill ratio of 10-1 (Tiger), low production runs due to over engineered complexity and hence unreliability on a battlefield was its achillies heel, that reduced the rate to 3.9-1, but then swamp the battlefield with cheap and quick to build Shermans and T34's and the die was cast.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

Quality beats quantity but quantity has a quality all of its own.

[teeteringhead]

somewhere in their doctrine it states that they will maintain a level of superiority X times that of their allies and 4X times that of potential opponents Isn't that what the RN did 100 years ago?

ISTR the doctrine then was to be bigger (even by one ship) than the next two biggest navies combined......

[Heathrow Harry]

actually 125 years ago - then we went for Quality and built the Dreadnaught - sort of started the race from zero again.........

[ShotOne]

Very good parallel, hh. In effect the Dreadnought programme placed us in an arms race against ourselves! It may not have started WWI but it was a major reason we became involved as opposed to viewing from a respectful distance.

[Heathrow Harry]

TBH I think we'd have had to fight Germany at some time even without the dreadnaughts - the kaiser & Tirpitz were determined to build up a navy at least as big as the RN even in pre-dreadnaught times

We were able to outbuild them anyway - but of course the German Army had first call on funds whereas in was the opposite way round in the UK

[ShotOne]

That's all true, hh but the point is we started with a huge lead which even the most fanatical Teutonic commitment would have taken decades to match.; in 1907 we had 62 battleships versus Germany's 12! By inventing the dreadnought we made them all obsolete overnight and so levelled the scores.

To come back to the present day, what do folks think of the comments recently by CAS saying our military is less capable than the Argies, amongst others, promping a robust response from Pihilip Hammond?

[ludgar]

4th in how much we spend?
Surely we're first in how much of our military spend is wasted on failed projects?
Does anyone else have a higher proportion of failed major projects? Of a higher proportion of money lost as a result?

[t43562]

The first time you do things, you tend to do them wrong. If you're the first in the world then there are no examples to follow. Even if you're not the 1st you might be the first to face your particular set of circumstances.

1) Don't get rid of your experienced people
2) Don't let them block the efforts of new people to learn by doing.
3) Expect to fail, try to do it cheaply by testing things and investigating things long before it becomes critical for you to have a fully working, full scale version of them. The times when you have no critical requirement are golden opportunities to train.
4) Don't see failure as a reason to give up - it's the price of learning.

I was thinking that in a way, the economy, the manufacturing sector, project managers are rather like the 4th armed service. They need to be in trained, go on exercises, be prepared continuously to output all the things that might be needed.

e.g. take the Bloodhound SSC project. That seems like great training for everyone involved in the development of a new product and by military standards it is probably quite cheap. There need to be lots of projects to develop things if you are to build up the skills of people in doing it.

[Two's in]

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned that despite all that "capability" a number of those countries at the top of the list have spent the last 10 years getting their arses handed to them by tribesmen with IEDs, RPGs and Kalashnikovs.

I hate to use the phrase "asymmetric warfare" but despite all the Staff College teaching on that subject we have demonstrated that when you are equipped for conventional warfare, that's the only tool you have in your bag. Typhoon, Type 45 and Challengers have not exactly proven to be decisive in Afghanistan.

While we are waiting for the war in which our equipment is relevant and effective, we are wasting lives and budget on a never ending series of Procurement White Elephants. This League Table is about as meaningless as it gets.