On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:44:31 +0100, Paul J. Adam wrote:
In message , Jackie Mulheron
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
It'll be worse for both sides.

Well Phil Hunt seems to think otherwise and is posting some good detailed
stuff. You don't think the MOD is a model of efficiency do you?

No. However, some countries have "Ministries of Defence" in the genuine
sense that their military capability is limited to their territorial
waters/airspace, and some UN blue-helmet work if they're so inclined.

Yes. While Britain, on the other hand, seems to have a Ministry of
Being Bush's Poodle.

Our armed forces seem to be specialised towards being a small
"niche" force which can't really do much on its own but which can be
used as a component for any advanturism our masters^W valuable
allies the Americans wish to get into.

And I expect if the Tories ever won power (which they won't in the
next election, the electoral system pretty much guarrantees that --
if the Tories get more votes than Labour, Labour can still win an
overall majority) they would be even more sycophantic little
poodles.

They've no choice really -- Britain can either go with Europe or
with the USA and too many Tories hate Europe for ythe first
possibility nto happen.

That means you're planning for an unlikely contingency and if it
happens, it's on known home ground.



Other countries - like the UK - maintain the capability to send and
support most of a division to pretty much anywhere in the world.

Only as part of an Amnerican force, in which case it would be mainly
there for political reasons, to give the likes of Bush and Rumsfeld
a thin veneer of multilateralism.

And since it would only be for political reasons, why not just send
a battalion? It shows the flag just as well.

The RN is currently getting rid of its Harriers. This means it will
be without air defence capability until we get the new F-35s (I
wonder if the USA will deign to sell its loyal ally the fully
stealthed version, or whether like most foreign partners, we'll have
the "monkey model" foisted on us?)

In any case, the F-35 isn't going into production until the 2010s
and I doubt if it'll be operational with the RN in much less than 10
years. And until then it's pretty much unthinkable that the surface
fleet would go anywhere against any country with any significant air
capability -- even tuppeny-ha'penny ********s like Sudan would
represent significant dangers to an RN without air cover.

That
means that you may find your forces fighting anywhere from the South
Atlantic to the al-Fao Peninsula, and they have to be flexible,
adaptable and survivable enough to cope with that.

Once the Harriers are gone, Britain will lose the capability to
mount another Falklands operation.

This becomes a *much* larger problem, involving large overheads in
everything from multiple uniforms in sufficient supply (witness recent
problems in Iraq where 9,000 soldier-sets of desert CS95 was nowhere
near enough) to having dozens of large ships with crews and security
detachments available at short notice to get to where the fighting is,
and keep the supply of beans, bullets and batteries flowing.

I would not want to fight the Finns or the Norwegians on their home
turf, but neither could they project power to any significant extent.
The UK currently can do so. Would an independent Scotland be willing to
maintain that capability?

On its own? Of course not, since it's highly unlikely it would want
to pay the money to do so (10% or more of GDP wouldn't go down well
with the voters).

In concert with other European nations, as part of an EU that's a
full military alliance, it's a serious possibility. If you
extrapolate the armed forces of Sweden or Finland to the full EU you
get the possibility of very substancial foreces indeed -- e.g. 200
army divisions and 5000 fighter aircraft would be entirely possible.

As you correctly point out, logistics are an important
consideration. If there is a major war which the EU is forced into,
it is very likely to be in the Middle East. Turkey wants to join the
EU, and should be allowed in. Then, Europe would have a land border
with the middle east, which would make logistic constraints a lot
more manageable, especially if the road haulage, air feight and
airliner industries were made part of the war effort for the
duration of hostilities. Europe's substancial transport
infrastructure would be capable of supplying very sizable forces in
the middle east; certainly larger forces than the USA could put
there, which would have to be transported and supplied by ship or
air thousands from halfway around the world.

All this could be done without large extra spending on defence;
something like 2% of GDP, throughout the EU, would pay for it.


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