UK Defence Forum

Well done all

dmereifield wrote:

J. Tattersall wrote:

In the future, Wallace said that while Britain prefers the United States as a military ally, it may look to form alliances with other countries for specific operations.

"It may actually be more in our interest to join with other partners and we must have a force that is much more able to be interoperable as opposed to dependent," he said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-paci ... 021-08-24/

Well we can only believe this if the UK halts its cuts of key strategic assets that would allow us to become a framework nation for such a interoperability and reduced US dependence (along with a substantive uplift in defence spending, on top of the recently announced £4billion per year). Others on here will be better informed of which cuts we'd want to reverse, but I'd imagine it would be AWACS, C130 etc

Rather than looking at the cuts that have been made I think we need to look at increasing the mass of the capabilities we already have. In many areas we have fallen for the dangerous idea that one just has to have a given capability, ignoring that to be effective you also need a certain mass to make it useable. Ok this does mean we need to reverse the cut in the E-7 order, but rather than keep the C-130s, we should be looking to purchase a number of additional Atlas, say form the number that have been cut form the German Order to speed up delivery. We also need to greatly increase out ISTAR and EW capabilities as well as out logistics and so on.

We also need to speed up the deliveries of the new items we have on order especially for the Army. It desperately need the Boxer and the winners of the two phases of the MRV(P) programmes. New Artillery, both tube and rocket are also need to increase its capability and deplorability, as well as new munitions including Precision Guidance Kits and cargo rounds containing sub munitions. The list could go on and on, and all this will require additional funding beyond the current £4Bn per year over the next four or five years.

The thin pinstriped line's view.https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com ... n.html?m=1

Forbes has estimated the cost to America in dollar terms of 300 hundred million a day ,if such funds were now able to be put towards other areas of greater threat to American spheres of influence it may make sense to leave .
I would add this commentary suggesting the financial cost was crippling the budget
https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... ising.html

J. Tattersall wrote:The thin pinstriped line's view.https://thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com ... n.html?m=1

What were the C130 airframes so crucial in doing? I thought C17 and MRTT did majority of the airlift, and A400M is equally capable of operating from a prepared runway.

I would like to see something replace C130, but in my mind that would be the C27J or C295.

A400m is extremely capable on unprepared surfaces. The issue is more ensuring that crews are trained and service clearances done and up and running for when c130 goes. France in particular are much further on in this regard.

Numbers is always the question and it’s how many simultaneous deployments can be supported from a smaller fleet. Voyager and a400m were operating in uk Mali, Far East and south Atlantic at the same time as this. France and Germany will operate 50 a400m so I would say we need a few more at some point.