Its already started according to yesterday's Scotman!!

http://www.news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=844532003

Squadrons cut ahead of defence review

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT


THE British Army has begun cutting its fighting strength more than a month before the results of a far-reaching defence review are due to be published, The Scotsman can reveal.

With thousands of British troops still on the ground in Iraq, cuts have already begun which will remove a quarter of the army’s main battle tank squadrons. Among those regiments affected are the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, whose tank crews led the charge into Basra in April.

The cuts come amid growing concern at the scale of cost- saving measures in a government white paper due for release in the next couple of months.

At least two infantry regiments are believed to be under threat, with speculation that they could include the Highlanders, although the Ministry of Defence was yesterday at pains to stress that no final decision had been taken.

When the idea of cutting back the tank regiments was first floated two months ago, the MoD said that lessons learned from the war in Iraq were still being assessed, although the performance of the armoured units had demonstrated that tanks could still be an effective weapon in modern warfare.

But army sources yesterday said that the cuts had already started.

Each of the six main battle tank regiments, equipped with Challenger II tanks, has been told to get rid of one of its four squadrons. Each squadron should consist of 14 tanks, each with a three-man crew.

Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security, said he had been told the cuts had already begun.

He said: "A number of people have come to me and told me that there are manpower cuts coming up in the army and told me that these are going to focus principally on the Royal armoured corps and on the infantry.

"The government have decided to cut the fourth squadron from each of the main battle tank regiments. They are doing it as we speak."

The white paper is expected to signal a marked change in the way the army operates, with less emphasis on heavy armour and greater use of attack helicopters and new, light tanks capable of being transported by air.

Mr Mercer said it could take years to bring the regiments back up to full strength again but the army had little choice because of the need to find the cash to pay for new equipment.

"The government will not give the army enough money. They cannot afford it," he said. "The army has got to modernise certain equipment and it has got a stark choice between equipment and manpower."

Some defence experts believe the war in Iraq proved there was still a place in the modern army for the Challenger II, which, unlike lighter tanks or helicopters, is able to withstand repeated attacks from rocket-propelled grenades.

Charles Heyman, the editor of the leading defence publication Jane’s World Armies, said: "Those tanks are amazingly versatile. Attack helicopters are brilliant, but they are the equivalent of light cavalry. They cannot do what main battle tanks can do."

He pointed to the experience of the United States forces which attempted to use helicopters in place of main battle tanks: "They came a cropper because that is not what they are for."

An MoD spokeswoman said she was not aware that cuts had begun in armoured regiments, but said speculation about changes which would be recommended in the white paper was "hugely upsetting" for soldiers and their families.

Parachuting is fine and dandy, but it is too easy to lose sight of the role of 16AA bde. In a worst case scenario is it not to merely spearhead the heavier better equipped forces.

The problem has been that because of the hierarchy's love affair with the Airborne they have not had to suffer the death of a thousand training cuts that the rest of the army has. This has been a vicious circle, as the regiments that get used most then become the repositories of experience.

Unfortunately you can't afford not to have an airborne element, any more than you can afford not to have armour, armoured inf., light inf., armoured arty, light airportable howitzers or serious NBC capabilities.

The other problem is that any Airborne less than 3 bns is pretty pointless, because at the minimum to seize a decent sized airhead by parachute assault (a very plausible scenario) any less would be playing with fire.

What we have arrived at today is a state where in pretty much all arms we have reached a minimum size. A point where any smaller force becomes a state where we have Airborne forces (for example, though it applys just as well to any other arm) simply so that we can sit down with the other big armies and say we have them.

This is precisely the state which I think many of our European compadres are at. Just having a nominal airborne force, in order to have crevats and high leg boots.

The only way needs to be up. And if there is any question it is morally beholden on our senior seniors to point out to our political masters that any further cuts require a major rethink about where we sit in the league table of depolyable troops.

Oh, and it wouldn't hurt not to squander our measly budget on keeping aerospace workers in jobs .

In today's Scotsman -

http://www.news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=852962003

Army in the line of fire

FOCUS

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN


JUST before Admiral Sir Michael Boyce stepped down from his post as Chief of the Defence Staff in April, he warned that Britain would be unable to undertake any further major military operations for at least 18 months without "serious pain".

His point was that the country’s armed forces were now stretched so thinly that if those who had seen service in Iraq were allowed the period of recuperation they needed, there would be no-one left to take their place.

It was a point driven home by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which cautioned against committing more British troops to Iraq for fear of what it described as "overstretch".

And it was a point picked up by Sir Michael’s successor as Britain’s most senior military officer, General Sir Michael Walker, who told the Commons defence committee that it would take time to get people, equipment and supplies sorted out.

But Sir Michael had another, more ominous warning for an army already operating at 5 per cent below strength. With the number of 16 to 24 year olds who might potentially be available to the armed forces due to drop sharply by 2009, Sir Michael said that action needed to be taken quickly to head off the looming recruitment crisis.

There is no disputing that decades of cost cutting have reduced the size of the British army dramatically. It currently has about 102,000 servicemen and women (5,000 short of full strength), nearly 50,000 fewer than when the Berlin Wall came down. As one observer noted this week, the British army is now smaller than at any time since the 18th century.

According to the MoD’s own figures, there are currently 2,601 reservists serving in the Gulf, with another 232 operating outside the region on related duties, amounting to more than a quarter of the British force of 10,700 men and women. At the height of the campaign, hundreds of reservists working in the NHS were called up to provide medical cover.

The number of reservists called up this time round is in sharp contrast to the first Gulf war, when only 1,500 were drafted in, but even then the Commons defence select committee was warning that planned defence cuts meant Britain would be unable to mount another Gulf-style operation without much greater dependence on reservists.

In August 1991, the preliminary report on the operation to liberate Kuwait noted that British forces were "stretched" and if the cuts went ahead, it would only be possible for the UK to mount a similar operation again if it relied far more heavily on reserve forces.

Labour’s defence spokesman at the time, Dr John Reid, observed: "Our contribution to the Gulf war was only made possible by stripping the rest of our armed forces to the bone in terms of spares and personnel."

At the same time, Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, was warning against the government’s plans to reduce the regular army to 116,000 - 14,000 more than its current population. Britain’s defence policy was lurching into the 1990s with no clear political direction, he said.

Even those who believe such heavy reliance on reservists is justified would accept the position has been reached out of economic necessity. Now, with the dust from the war in Iraq still settling and the lessons of that conflict still being assessed, a new round of cost-cutting looms.

In the next couple of months the government is due to publish a white paper on the future of the armed forces. This is expected to detail a radical shake-up in the way the British Army operates.

Already there have been dire warnings of cutbacks and speculation about the abolition of historic regiments, although no decisions have yet been taken on where the axe will fall, if anywhere.

Some experts believe what will happen is a reorganisation that will actually increase the number of infantry companies available for deployment, while cutting back on administrative functions. But the feeling in army circles is the point is rapidly being reached at which the cost-cutting must stop if it is to be able to operate effectively.

Charles Heyman, the editor of Jane’s World Armies, believes there will come a time when the soldiers themselves have had enough and will vote with their feet.

"The army can always take slimming down, but what the army can’t take if you slim it down is taking more jobs on," he said. "It’s a vicious circle - in a regular military force, people have to be at home for some of the time. It is debatable if guys will sign on if they are away from home for more than four months a year and if they are doing too much and they are away too often, they just don’t sign on again and you have these terrible, terrible recruitment problems."

The Treasury, however, is reluctant to use financial incentives to attract recruits to the army. While an analysis by the Tories of figures from the Office of National Statistics this week suggested that within three years the average wage for a worker in the public sector would be £28,490, a soldier can expect just £11,152 on joining the army.

But according to Mr Heyman, it is not the relatively low level of pay which soldiers receive, but the refusal to equip them for life outside the army that is the biggest problem: "For the last 30 years, there have been recruitment problems and they will continue until they have some sort of enlightened recruitment policy. At the moment, they are still locked in the Dark Ages where they think someone is going to sign on for three years and then they are going to sit quite happily as a beggar in London."

The answer, he said, was to do what the United States did, and agree to pay for some form of further education for recruits once they leave the army.

"It has been proved time and time again that the most important element in someone joining the armed services is his or her mother," he said. "She will say ‘You’ve got to get a trade’ so they go into the signals or the REME or they join the air force as mechanics but if you are going to go into the infantry, you have got no trade, so mother will say ‘Don’t do this’. But if you said OK go and join the infantry for three years and they will fund you at, say, half pay through schooling and you will still be on the reserve then mother will say that’s a good idea."

Unless the army can address its recruitment crisis, its problems will continue whatever the defence white paper recommends. Not one of the Scottish regiments is operating at full strength because, Mr Heyman suggests, those responsible for recruitment won’t accept the world has changed.

"Traditionally, the infantry, the artillery and the cavalry recruited from people who found it very difficult to read and write and had no real options anywhere else, but the number of people like that has diminished, no matter what the papers say about schooling," he said.

The white paper is likely to recommend a more mobile army, with greater emphasis on the ability to deploy lighter forces quickly, in locations far from their home bases, in accordance with the thinking of the US department of defence.

Those who will be required to do that fighting are hoping it is not another excuse to shave a few more millions off the defence budget. As Mr Heyman notes: "The truth is that the threat always comes from the most unexpected direction. If someone had said to you in 2000 that you would see thousands of British troops deployed in Afghanistan, you would have laughed."

Just been reading all the replies in this thread and it's all very interesting.

I just have one point to stick in amongst all the very good ones already made.

If we lose a squadron from from the 6 or 7 Challenger regiments, what knock on effect will that have on future MBT development in the British Defence Industry?

Does anybody honestly think that MoD will spend Billions on R&D and bringing a Challenger replacement to fruition? Are they even looking into a future Challenger replacement? Especially when we may now only be talking about 200 vehicles, to eventually replace Challenger, and possibly another 100 Armd Recovery variants for the REME?

Maybe I'm being a bit simple here. (Well the wife is always telling me I am, but she has a Degree and I don't - so go figure.) But could we be inadvertently ringing the death knell on the future of MBT development in the UK? By downsizing the Armoured force yet again.

I can see a scenario where we will be buying whatever replaces the US Army's M1A2 Abrams in 20 years time because Vickers, for example, won't be making MBTs anymore except under license.

I aint a tankie, but I always did like having them about to see the bad guys off.

If we lose a squadron from from the 6 or 7 Challenger regiments, what knock on effect will that have on future MBT development in the British Defence Industry?

Does anybody honestly think that MoD will spend Billions on R&D and bringing a Challenger replacement to fruition? Are they even looking into a future Challenger replacement? Especially when we may now only be talking about 200 vehicles, to eventually replace Challenger, and possibly another 100 Armd Recovery variants for the REME?

There will be little effect on the defence industry. R & D costs are met now by the contractor not the MOD.

The contractor will hope to boost his overseas sales by saying that the British Army use his tank. The MOD will then try and use this overseas sales ploy to try and drive down costs further to the MOD..

My understanding is that CR2 is the last 'tank' as we know it, to be acquired. The empasis upon rapid reaction 'out of area' contingency operations, and consequent desire for wpns systems that are airportable means that both we and the US are looking for far lighter platforms that rely upon engaging the enemy at arm's reach, and relying upon information superiority rather than tons of Chobham armour. The system that will probably replace CR2 one day is called FRES - Future Rapid Effects system. There's some information on the internet, if you want to search for it. It's all linked in to the NEC (Network Enabled Capability) programme, as well.

Links that may be of interest:

Network Enabled Capability
The UK's programme to enhance military capability by better exploitation of information.
http://www.mod.uk/issues/nec/

FRES
UK launches search for rapid-response AFVs
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/e...0613_2_n.shtml

DM,

An interesting post with some good links for those who want to read up on it. However I would say that a future MBT is not yet dead in my view. We do need them but perhaps not in the numbers that we currently have.

Much water still to go under the bridge on this one. Yes to FRES in the fullness of time but I think CR2 will be with us for sometime yet.

The lead will be taken from the US I fear, and it will be interesting to see the success or otherwise of their modified transformation force which has seen quite a lot of modifications since its inception !

We need to use our technical advantage with BOWMAN to get our limited resources in sufficient concentration to where they make the best impact. Easy to say - harder to do.

Remember Sun Tzu:

When the enemy is at ease, be able to weary him; when well fed starve him; when at rest, to make him move.

Appear at places to which he must hasten, move swiftly where he does not expect you.

The results or otherwise of the Yanks' brigade of Strykers going to Iraq very soon should shed light on the issue. Apparently some of the ceramic armour isn't ready and they will have to rely on wire mesh as once only protection from RPGs. Rather like the Sheridans in Vietnam then.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...-stryker01.htm

"Each vehicle is covered with 132 plates designed to protect against up to 14.5-mm fire, slightly bigger than a .50-caliber bullet. But a subcontractor hired to provide the armor apparently deviated from the standards and at least one variation failed in a test firing, Army officials said.
The full extent of the plate problem is unknown, but it's serious enough that the Army has launched a top-priority test of all plates at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, with replacement tiles expected to be put on the brigade's vehicles later this month.
The Stryker brigade also is heading off to Iraq without a separate outer layer of plates designed to protect against rocket-propelled grenades, which insurgents have used again and again to deadly effect against U.S. troops in Iraq.
These plates are not scheduled to be ready for use until sometime next year. So the Army is installing an interim system a steel cage that surrounds the sides of the vehicle. It's designed to explode grenades away from the vehicle.
But the armor is far from perfect protection. An initial rocket-propelled grenade, for example, could destroy the armor, exposing the two-member crew and up to nine soldiers riding inside to deadly fire."

"Last year, during a "Millennium Challenge in California," a $250 million joint military exercise, 13 of 14 Strykers were taken out by small-arms fire, grenades and guns mounted on enemy vehicles, during ambushes and other "enemy" encounters."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...ity_of_war.pdf

Excellent article which makes the point that we need heavy armour - to stop not only RPG and its derivitives, but also against the many ex Soviet pact AFVs.

Whatever the solution is with Stryker - it needs to be a cheap one if it is to be feasible.

Originally Posted by DangerMouse

My understanding is that CR2 is the last 'tank' as we know it, to be acquired.

Now i'm not expert but what on earth is an army without Armour?

How do you hold-ground?

How do you neutralise enemy tanks if you do not hold air-control?

Where will you put all the lesser-nobility? (the true nobility are all in buisness, estate or the Guards)

What about me? I want to join the KRH, are you honestly telling me that they'll disband or dismount every Cav and Tank-regiment in the army?

Please help me, i'm confused...

Civ