London (Photo credit: @Doug88888)
The plan has always been to reduce the Tri Forces to 100,000, abolish the RAF and subsume it into the Army Air Corps and close down our bases in Germany and bring the troops back to the UK where they can be housed more cheaply.
We have aircraft carriers with no aircraft, a navy which is forced in many cases to “co-operate with the French” and the so-called grand plan is to make our forces a “plug and play ” component of the US military whilst expanding the TA under a different name for any future wars we might have to fight ourselves.
To my mind, this is dangerous folly because the French who have a Tri Forces of 250,000 men have the ability to at least punch their weight whereas we manifestly do not.
As an island we have last year got rid of our coastal protection vessel and we only have a 4% margin in terms of food supply with farmers going bankrupt at the rate of 5000 a year and committing suicide at the rate of 100 plus a year.
Most of our food is imported and has to come by sea into 5 main ports, each of which has a port entrance leading to a main road such as Felixstowe which uses the A14.
We are not self-sufficient in natural gas and we have a less than 4% margin in energy supply and a rising population.
A potential adversary, with stealth bombers and a cloaking facility and powerful thermobaric weapons, could take out each of these ports, knock out our main power stations and effectively shut the country down whilst starving the people to death.
Well trained terrorists could do the same thing, with suitcase nukes, closing down all the access roads to the main ports through which our food comes and shut down power stations.
During the previous century, we were nearly starved to death by E boats in World War 1 and U boats and the Luftwaffe hammering our ports during World War 2.
We prevailed then, with a lot of help from the Americans, with expanding our industry to be able to equip 55 divisions and we, at that time, had a powerful navy and the Russians to help us on the Eastern front.
We seem not to have learnt anything from these experiences and are hell-bent on placing our safety in the hands of America whilst imagining that we can still tell others what to do and interfere in other countries as we are already doing in Syria and more actively in other places.
If we are to dramatically reduce force numbers then we need fighting robots, ekoskeletons which our remaining troops can wear, large numbers of unmanned drones, automated stealth ships, stealth submarines and stealth bombers.
We lack the money to do this and the Treasury are cutting defense so this is not an option.
Relying on others for defense, even where we imagine we have a “special relationship”, is dangerous because allegiances change, people change and as the weaker partner we can be dragged into situations we would do better staying out of as the price for being protected.
We in the past have been able to rely on not being invaded because 50% of the world’s financial transactions flowed through the City of London and it was in the interests of an adversary and the wealthy in that country to not damage their interests.
Today New York which overtook London in 2012 is about to be eclipsed by Singapore within the next 2 years and within 3 the Chinese in Hong Kong will be the number 1 financial center.
Within 10 years and probably less, China Merchants Group plus 2 others, will be the world’s top insurers so the old equation of leave the UK alone because of money flows will no longer hold good.
We have to recognize that we are a small financially strapped country which exports next to nothing and with an economy and public sector that needs cutting down to size in order for us to be able to protect ourselves in what is still a hostile and dangerous world.
The Treasury and, their political masters, Cameron and Osborne, are creating hostages to fortune by neutering the country’s ability to defend itself without invoking the help of others.
They need to reverse course.
Any thoughts?
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