ARmy Rumour SErvice

I love it that Mr Fingers agrees with Mr Nosey. Picked a fine place to do it...

I was listening to various talking heads on the BBC this morning discussing the long term effects of the cuts by 2020. The navy chap (who seemed to have some very good arguaments) basically stated that the Navy will be f*cked within a few years and will lost so much skilled manpower that it will be unable to operate effectively.

Personally, I think the crunch will come when:

A. One day the government commits a woefully small force overseas only for it to be cut off, outgunned, massively outnumbered and overrun or run out of town by the local opposition.

B. Said opposition, on being threatened with military force by HM goverment, tells HM Govenrment to do one or else, and the service chiefs point out to HM government that the opposition are actually strong enough to back up their threat give us a good kicking.

I hope I'm not around to see the day but I'm not holding my breath.

Rodney2q

Interesting timing, on the day over a thousand more redundancies are handed out. I don't suppose any of those he refers to are among the 1000?

what do you expect turkeys voting or xmas?
trident and its replacement are a vanity project I would argue quite forcefully are whole nuclear programme has been delusional self aggrandizement that in the real world was fucking meaningless soviets weren't deterred by it neither was any country we've had a bust up in the last 50 years either.
buying a system off the yanks means its not independent
a trident sub loaded with a 100 conventional armed missiles like say storm shadow all addressed to whatever clown has insulted her maj are just as an effective deterrent without the cost or inconvenience of nukes.
theirs no credible nuclear threat to the UK terrorists aren't going to be deterred and most of the regional nuke owners or would be developers have got more problems closer to home
we are not going to be using nukes to bitch slap uppity wogs or the Mythical Argentine invasion fleet save the cash.

Originally Posted by Rodney2q

I was listening to various talking heads on the BBC this morning discussing the long term effects of the cuts by 2020. The navy chap (who seemed to have some very good arguaments) basically stated that the Navy will be f*cked within a few years and will lost so much skilled manpower that it will be unable to operate effectively.

Personally, I think the crunch will come when:

A. One day the government commits a woefully small force overseas only for it to be cut off, outgunned, massively outnumbered and overrun or run out of town by the local opposition.

B. Said opposition, on being threatened with military force by HM goverment, tells HM Govenrment to do one or else, and the service chiefs point out to HM government that the opposition are actually strong enough to back up their threat give us a good kicking.

I hope I'm not around to see the day but I'm not holding my breath.

Rodney2q

Like Basra you mean ?

Originally Posted by Alec_Lomas

I think he has a point on the percentage of chiefs to indians considering the overall size of our armed services. As such I don't think that he's shying away from making 'real' decisions, if anything it's his current inability to grip the
existing MOD culture and bring it to proper account. Binning many of the head-sheds is a start.

How many admirals were among the 1020 sailors sacked today?

Originally Posted by brighton hippy

what do you expect turkeys voting or xmas?
trident and its replacement are a vanity project I would argue quite forcefully are whole nuclear programme has been delusional self aggrandizement that in the real world was fucking meaningless soviets weren't deterred by it neither was any country we've had a bust up in the last 50 years either.
buying a system off the yanks means its not independent
a trident sub loaded with a 100 conventional armed missiles like say storm shadow all addressed to whatever clown has insulted her maj are just as an effective deterrent without the cost or inconvenience of nukes.
theirs no credible nuclear threat to the UK terrorists aren't going to be deterred and most of the regional nuke owners or would be developers have got more problems closer to home
we are not going to be using nukes to bitch slap uppity wogs or the Mythical Argentine invasion fleet save the cash.

You miss the point. Our IND is there for us to sit at top table at the UNSC.

Oh yeah and some cuntries called Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Putin's Russia etc that don't exactly love us will soon be pointing nukes in our / our allies' direction and making demands.

Originally Posted by MrNosey

The MOD is like any other government department - they have no real interest in cost control because their incompetence in managing their budget can be covered either by increasing taxes and/or by passing the blame off onto the public-sector workers (forces, police, NHS staff, etc) by calling them wasters.

For my money they should shelve the idea of upgrading trident (which will prob cost upwards of 30 billion) and fill the SSBNs with conventional cruise missiles instead. Would be cheaper and more useful and still leave a few billion quid to keep more bodies on the payroll.

And the money saved would go to the NHS or the Indian Space Programme via DFiD.