General UK Defence Discussion

[topman]

I noticed on here another part of the MoD is struggling with retention.

There was a review into this
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ ... tivisation

However it still has been published, I wonder if it's been kicked into the long grass. Probably the same place the MoD's pay rise is hiding.

For those not aware, the military's payrise for April still hasn't been announced let alone gone into pay packets. People are our most important asset though...

[SW1]

Institutional failure in retention and recruitment and the inability to allocate capital investment. It’s unsustainable at present.

[topman]

It's easy to be down about and wonder if it'll come crashing down, however we may just bump along the bottom.

It may need things like rengagment bonuses to be brought back. Specialist pay brought in or increased. A complete fresh look at housing etc. I think the first step is to be realistic, although I think that might be a step too far.

[topman]

https://news.sky.com/story/some-militar ... s-12900704

[topman]

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralev ... 13249/pdf/

If you want to more about why we don't deploy xyz more often it's in here. J Bronk must have his ear very close to the ground.

[tomuk]

https://committees.parliament.uk/oralev ... 13249/pdf/

If you want to more about why we don't deploy xyz more often it's in here. J Bronk must have his ear very close to the ground.

I took Professor Bronks input to mean the opposite he seemed to be saying that by deploying all over the place doing air policing and shader etc that this was disrupting and using up the limited resources the air force have to carry out proper training for it's core mission.

[topman]

That's more for the type of training rather than numbers.

He gives a good explanation as to why buying more aircraft isn't always particularly useful. The example he gave about F35 is insightful in this regard.

[downsizer]

Francois is a tool reading that.

[tomuk]

That's more for the type of training rather than numbers.


He gives a good explanation as to why buying more aircraft isn't always particularly useful. The example he gave about F35 is insightful in this regard.

No its all about the numbers if you have so few aircraft and associated spares, crew etc deploying them on relatively low level ops is wasting flying hours you should be spending on training for high intensity conflict.

[tomuk]

Francois is a tool reading that.

It has taken you this long to work it out. He as always been an ahole. He is only useful for giving the appropriate senior politican, officer, or civil servant the proverbial hair dryer treatment when they already deserve it. Plus the occasional useful tidbit of information does get misspoken when he is in full on bull in a china shop mode.

[topman]

That's more for the type of training rather than numbers.


He gives a good explanation as to why buying more aircraft isn't always particularly useful. The example he gave about F35 is insightful in this regard.

No its all about the numbers if you have so few aircraft and associated spares, crew etc deploying them on relatively low level ops is wasting flying hours you should be spending on training for high intensity conflict.

I wouldn't describe it as wasted more a choice, we can specialise or be average generalists.

This is forced on us through two main factors ones of choice, things like budgets or ones we have to deal with like retention.

[SKB]

[SW1]

https://news.sky.com/story/updated-plan ... d-12903953

[Repulse]

Probably a smart move to move after the NATO summit - optimistically the review could be used to enforce the strategic direction of NATO announcements and the UK’s contribution. Either that or Wallace doesn’t want a cloud hanging over him as he pitches for the big job. Can’t make my mind up…

[wargame_insomniac]

On a more serious note, there are some tough decisions to be made, and without a significant increase in cash one of the following needs to go:

1) CASD
2) UKs lead in JEF
3) CEPP
4) UKs SSN commitment to AUKUS
5) Tempest
6) BOAR v2 (significant British Army resources in Central & Eastern Europe)

IMO it’s #6 that is a dream too far and least important (others are better equipped/located to do it). #1 is a must in the current climate, #2 is critical to UK defence, #4 & #5 are too strategic with global alliances. This leaves #3 which is the logical approach for a globally engaged maritime nation.

[topman]

Following on from another thread, if people find manning issues confusing/difficult to follow what would you like to see to make it easier to understand?

If you find it boring, which part of it do you find boring?

[topman]

https://news.sky.com/story/royal-navy-b ... t-12905148

And another one.

[SW1]

It’s a pattern being repeated across the board in all the technical branches in particular and it’s not just in the military. Even in the private sector I have never know so many people in engineering disciplines retire as I have seen in the past 2 years and so many more planning it in the next 18 months and there is no one coming thru to replace them.

In particular in the nuclear area we need as a country as a big a renaissance as Australia is having, in our case in the civil enterprise as well as military to tie energy security and dependability in to national resilience. I don’t think either political party particularly that head banger miliband have grasped that.

[topman]

Why are they retiring in increasing numbers and with no one to replace them?

[SW1]

Why are they retiring in increasing numbers and with no one to replace them?

Had enough after covid and the current company pensions and IR35 regulations means it is more effective to now retire than continue working so they are. It’s a bow wave that’s been coming something like 40% plus of engineering staff are now within 5 years of retirement.

Theirs is so few coming thru because over the past decade few have been taking the engineering route after university going to the city/IT instead also a massive scaling back of apprenticeships. Most of the basic skills learning tasks that would previously been given to new starts has been farmed out mainly to India so no need to really attempt to restart the programs in the numbers required.

Where I’m working they’ve had to bring in a significant number of fitters from the Philippines most ex airforce guys from there and while there all very gd it’s just covering holes.

[Poiuytrewq]

Had enough after covid and the current company pensions and IR35 regulations means it is more effective to now retire than continue working so they are. It’s a bow wave that’s been coming something like 40% plus of engineering staff are now within 5 years of retirement.

Possibly a positive rather than a negative.

Wonderful opportunities for the next generation.

Of course HMG could just ignore the problem until it becomes a crisis.

Theirs is so few coming thru because over the past decade few have been taking the engineering route after university going to the city/IT instead also a massive scaling back of apprenticeships. Most of the basic skills learning tasks that would previously been given to new starts has been farmed out mainly to India so no need to really attempt to restart the programs in the numbers required.

The tide is turning on this one. High quality apprenticeships are gaining traction especially where clear career paths are identifiable. The changing culture in UK universities and huge debt burdens amassed through to course completion is also having an impact.

[SW1]

Had enough after covid and the current company pensions and IR35 regulations means it is more effective to now retire than continue working so they are. It’s a bow wave that’s been coming something like 40% plus of engineering staff are now within 5 years of retirement.

Possibly a positive rather than a negative.

Wonderful opportunities for the next generation.

Of course HMG could just ignore the problem until it becomes a crisis.

Theirs is so few coming thru because over the past decade few have been taking the engineering route after university going to the city/IT instead also a massive scaling back of apprenticeships. Most of the basic skills learning tasks that would previously been given to new starts has been farmed out mainly to India so no need to really attempt to restart the programs in the numbers required.

The tide is turning on this one. High quality apprenticeships are gaining traction especially where clear career paths are identifiable. The changing culture in UK universities and huge debt burdens amassed through to course completion is also having an impact.

Not really a positive tbh experience walking out the door before passing on knowledge of what not to do hence repeating the same mistakes. Which is all too evident already I’m afraid.

Or worse simply being farmed out to low cost suppliers with even less of a clue.

Not seen a whole lot of evidence to back that up, the new starts seem to want promotion right away before they’ve have the technical knowledge to support it. Leads to f**kup central

[Poiuytrewq]

Echos of Barrow but that’s improving now. A template for the future.

Decades of underinvestment are showing up now across the board.

Perhaps a change of administration will go full speed ahead with the technical apprenticeships. We can but hope.

[Poiuytrewq]

Thankfully someone, finally, has found the balls to say it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... l-warning/

Britain ‘just holding on’ to Nato influence because Army is now too small, deputy commander warns
Gen Sir Tim Radford said Britain risked losing its 'fortunate' position in the alliance if it did not invest for the future

Gen Sir Tim Radford
Britain is only “just holding on” to its influence in Nato because its Army is too small, the alliance’s deputy commander has warned.

Gen Sir Tim Radford, the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR), the second-in-command of Nato’s military arm, said Britain’s position as one of the organisation’s leading nations could be in doubt after years of defence cuts.

The Army currently has 76,000 serving troops, 21,000 fewer than a decade ago and less than a third of the total when Gen Sir Tim joined the military.

In the past decade, the number of regular soldiers has fallen from 97,000 and is to come down further to 73,000.

“I think we [the British Army] are too small,” Gen Sir Tim, 60, told The Telegraph. “We do need to grow.”

He warned that the country’s position of influence, “hard fought” for by Second World War commander Gen Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, risks being lost.

Speaking from Nato’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, Gen Sir Tim said: “We’re in danger of not holding on.

“It would be wrong to say [we’re] living off the past, but we’ve got to be really careful that we don’t slip too low.

“We’re in a fortunate position here. We’ve got a position of influence right across Nato. I worry that if we don’t invest and we don’t build up our industrial base and we don’t lead as we should, we might lose that position.”

Troop numbers are to drop to 73,000, with further cuts announced in the last defence command paper, published in 2021.

Gen Sir Tim, who retires next month after 38 years’ service, lamented the shrinking numbers, arguing that Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine shows technological advancement cannot be at the expense of personnel.

“Equipment is only as good as the people that are managing and operating it. We have lost the numbers that we should have,” he said.

“I think we’ve had a slight awakening after Ukraine, but we need to do a twin track approach. We need to stay at the leading edge of innovation and technology and lead on that as much as we can.

“But at the same time it needs to be underpinned with hard fighting power.

“If someone comes toward you with a tank, you can’t cyber it away. You can’t cross a bridge with cyber. It needs to be balanced.”


Army reduction ‘beggars belief’
Gen Sir Tim’s comments were echoed by a former head of Britain’s armed forces.

Giving evidence to the Commons Defence Select Committee on Tuesday, Lord Houghton of Richmond, who was Chief of the Defence Staff between 2013 and 2016, said: “It beggars belief that we have a reduced size of Army.”

He said the war in Ukraine had demonstrated the need for troop numbers, adding: “We don’t have a properly functioning reserve. To me it’s a national embarrassment but they don’t appear to want to do anything about it.”

Lord Houghton said there has not been a step change in defence funding since 2010, but rather “a series of bungs from the Treasury to bail out a series of in-year dramas about keeping the major programmes going.”

He added this was “no way to run a 20-year defence equipment programme.”

An MoD spokesperson said: “The UK is a major leader across Nato, contributing to every Nato mission and underpinned by the largest defence budget in Europe.”

Gen Sir Tim, an Afghanistan veteran, works daily from the desk bequeathed to the headquarters by Viscount Montgomery, the first DSACEUR, but as he prepares to leave, it is the war being fought in Europe today that demands much of his attention.

He said he has been “hugely impressed” with Ukraine’s performance, but warned Russia is “not going to go away”.

“They’re going to be back as a major threat [in] between three to five years. They’re not short of people or mass,” he said.

“From a Western perspective, we need to make sure that we prepare ourselves for that.”

Gen Sir Tim has been central to Nato’s preparedness for when the “sleeping bear” wakes up.

‘We need to grow’
The West has forgotten what high intensity combat looks like, he said. Distracted by the counter insurgency operations after 9/11, such operations have been ignored.

“The industrial base is not in a position where it should be, right across Nato, all the allies and the partner nations. We need to develop the industrial base to be better prepared,” he said.

“There’s a lot of areas that we need to grow that quite frankly, we’ve let go over the last 20 years, as we’ve all been in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

He declined to say how big the Army should be, but warned Britain’s Nato influence is in danger of waning as a result, partly, of swapping personnel for new innovations like cyber warfare which, he said, should be in addition to, not instead of, “good people”.

Talk of structural reorganisation comes easily to Gen Sir Tim who has spent three years heading the first root and branch reform of Nato since 1967.

The 31-nation alliance has changed markedly since it was created in 1949. Sweden is expected to join soon, once diplomatic wrinkles with Turkey are smoothed over.

As such, the plans, structures and modus operandi of old are no longer relevant.

Gen Christopher Cavoli, Nato’s current supreme commander, signed the strategic plan, which is the blueprint for the organisation’s future.

Gen Sir Tim has worked within that framework to help guide the redesign of its military plans, forces and command and control.

Speaking from his office in the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape), which were set up in 1951 by US army general Dwight D Eisenhower, he said: “Shape is emerging as a proper military strategic headquarters that can, for example, turn up the rheostat in the Baltics and turn it down in the Balkans and pose strategic dilemmas to any enemy that wants to take us on.”

Nato calls the resultant plan Deterrence and Defence of the Euro Atlantic Area.

It was agreed by defence ministers in June and will be formally adopted at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month.

Gen Sir Tim, who has been in post since April 2020, said the work has been a three-year journey, but will finally bring coherence to Nato’s defence against state threats, primarily Russia and those in the Euro-Atlantic area and terrorist groups that threaten the alliance’s southern flank.

As for the future, is Nato likely to become a champion for democracy, perhaps welcoming other states outside Europe?

“I don’t think there’s a desire to pivot east in any way. What we’re trying to do is welcome friends coming west rather than us going east.”

He quickly pointed out that “there’s no intent by Nato to confront China in any way”, adding that “what’s really important to us is to make sure we protect the area of responsibility that we have”.

‘Every day, I think about the soldiers I lost’
The area immediately adjacent to, and irrigated by, the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan was known to British troops deployed there as the ‘green zone’. And it was, compared to the dusty beige desert and scrub further out. Even with the river though, the summer heat was oppressive, brutal even.

As he nears retirement after 38 years service, Sir Tim, said the summer of 2009 was the “lowest ebb” of his career and brutal for another, altogether tougher reason.

As commander of 19 Light Brigade he had 76 soldiers killed and 300 wounded over a six-month tour. The memory of command and of the people lost, will never leave him.

“Any commander is going to feel that deeply,” he said. “It was a high professionally to have commanded 10,000 people on operations. But like everybody who served in Afghanistan, particularly commanders, it was a blend of highs and lows continually.

“I still have a book with all the names and pictures in which I read occasionally, just so I don’t forget the sacrifices that have been made,” Sir Tim said.

“You feel every death strongly and every injury very acutely. And even now, which is 14 years on, I still think about it every day.”

That’s the price to be paid, he said, for the huge privilege of command.

[Tempest414]

Where dose this figure of 76,000 come from the Army's own figure for the end of 2022 was 79,000 plus 4000 Gurkha's for me I feel we need to try and get the Army back up to 90,000 with 84 ,000 UK troops and 6000 Gurkha's