Just how great is the threat ?
 

A gross dereliction of duty: How Coalition defence cuts have left Britain terrifyingly vulnerable | Mail Online

This just in from the Daily Mail, if the concerns are as serious as claimed, just what is it that the country and the Government are missing? After all, we can be sure that any future Labour government or perhaps worse still, Labour/Liberal coalition of any description, will hardly be likely to reverse the trend.

FB:confused:

What threat? Threatened by whom? To achieve what?

Typical Maily Dale!!

I take you both read and knowledgeably dismissed the observations of Mr Heffer then!?

FB

Interesting angle that the BAE system order book has suffered as a result of all this - vice the opposing view that it caused a lot of it.

FB, I think the answer to your question is no. Both replies were one liners, one of which included questions which were covered in the article. OK, it was the Daily Mail but from just the MPA viewpoint, this has all been mentioned by professionals in the Military Aircrew thread.

No need to worry. If the threat was that serious, they'd need to recall all we old buggers from PPRuNe to go and sort it all out. As they haven't yet it's safe to assume all is well.

..oh, and they'd buy back all the Harriers to get the maffia involved. Where's WEBF, etc?

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As you know tranche 32 of the redundancies has just been completed and I have gathered all of you that have survived the final cut here to let you know that myself and the country are proud of you all.

Classic renta crowd. Big bloke, row 5 on left, mind in neutral. Giant, row 5, looking down, some private joke. Dark guy to the the right, same joke.

Guy by green beret, RAF officer? looking at Dave's wig or something above him.

Guy over Dave's right shoulder, yeah what.

Gal immediately behind Dave's head, catching up on some sleep.

Typo, not paying attention :)

The threat is precisely from that sort of head in the sand la la la attitude displayed by politicians and bean counters who don't want to pay for defence, labouring under the misapprehension that because the barbarians are not physically charging at the gates, then everything is just fine.

There is one thing that I am mindful of here and that is the book The Guilty Men, co-written by none other than the late Michael Foot. The Michael Foot I was presented with as I started taking an interest in current affairs, was a radical, CND badge wearing, bomb banning lefty who had, seemingly, no appreciation of any kind of military threat from the U.S.S.R. and the Warsaw Pact. However, the book, the Guilty Men, was written during the 1930s and pointed the finger at those politicians of the day whom Foot and co-authors accused of doing little or nothing to prepare the country militarily to oppose the threat from Nazi Germany and this long before that threat could, without hindsight, be reasonably identified. As it was, the country did have a number of rearmament programmes on and off through the later half of the decade, which proved to be too little in any case.

But to get to the point, had Foot been our first Labour Prime Minister in the 1920s, would he have maintained any kind of credible standing military capability? would he have been likely to accept the case made by Lord Trenchard to retain an independent air force? I can't see it myself. From what start position in the 1930s could the government begin rearming? had, for instance, a more left leaning pacifist government have preceded the situation?

Sorry to be so long winded here, but it strikes me that the left have a sudden martial take when the threat is from an identifiable right wing element. But fail to appreciate any such threat could come from anyone else.

Just one more example, George Galloway says he supported the military action to retake the Falklands, on the principal grounds that it was a rightwing junta. He refuses to accept that we are in the same position with any kind of threatening posture from the current Argentinian Administration and regards any kind of assertive manner on the part of the British to be small minded, arrogant and imperialist. Just how do people like George Galloway explain away their subjective mind set on such matters. But it proves the point above about the left and their openly selective concerns about defence concerns.

FB:)

PN, could even be a Gal grabbing a power nap. Or maybe I should visit Specsavers.:O

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Well any credibility is lost very fast... :ugh:

Melchett, head in sand maybe, but what threat?

I would suggest that the only threat to the UK now and in the unforeseeable future is to the Government's political aspirations. If we had no deterrent we would not need MPA to protect them. If we didn't try and project military power we would not need aircraft carriers.

If we don't intend to have a stand up and fight war we don't need main battle tanks. I could go on.

The countries that have aspirations of power projection are very few. America with a global capability. Russia with a growing capability but by no means global, and who else?

China? Could the UK have any hope of ever countering any Chinese expansion?

Global commerce? We have difficulty countering a couple of skiffs let alone a serious naval capability and no interest in putting boots on the ground.

Oil? SASLess has a solution there.

Iran? Exactly what can the UK do, even in cooperation with other countries.

That is the nub. We simply do not have the money to support any credible force that could actually achieve something against an unidentified threat. As Sir Michael said, we don't know what the next conflict will entail. (Or words to that effect).

We must tailor our political aspirations to what is possible not what we would like.

A few of the many potential threat scenarios posited by the UKNDA here in red font:Also see:

Wow, Brian like WOW? :ugh:

I think the biggest threat to the UK is internal, and I don't mean slim boy Alex either....but of course it's VERY difficult to quantify that in PCUK today...

however...'Foreign Jihadists are flocking to Syria' - Defence Management

final sentence
"The worry is that British Jihadists could return from Syria to wreak mindless havoc on the streets of Britain's cities."

{quote] 1. a confrontation with President Putin’s Russia;

2. a widespread humanitarian crisis in sub-Saharan Africa;

3. a piracy incident;

4. crises in the Middle East;

5. a conflict between India and Pakistan;

6. a confrontation with China;

7. the Falklands;

8. and a more global scenario set in 2025, with European
forces yet further reduced and an ambivalent America.[/quote]

I grant that #1 may be valid but to what extent should the British armed forces be built to maintain a credible deterrent with our European allies?

#2 where does defence diplomacy fit with a humanitarian crisis?

#3 only limited resources have been applied to this long standing issue which seems to have responded to increased military activity. What more is required?

#4 yes a certainty, but what level of force could we afford to bring to the party? After over 20 years involvement in the ME do we have an appetite for another 20?

#5 Two nuclear powers facing up to each other. What could we bring to the party?

#6 China; issue yet, British military? You must be joking. The old SEATO boundary at 105 East probably still holds.

#7 yes.

#8 So we rearm to replace America?

I haven't read beyond the executive summary but I think my point - politicians egos and money remain the issues.

Defence spending is like an insurance policy. You hope you never have to call it down, but if you do, you make sure you have adequate cover and have kept up the payments.

Successive governments have been skimping on this, and history shows what happens.