English: George Osborne MP, pictured speaking on the launch of the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2009 European Parliament elections, at Keele University. (805×1207 px, 283,711 bytes) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In today’s news, the UK deploys six thirty year old war planes from Cyprus to bomb targets in Iraq.
Being a keen student of history, I try to compare this to the height of the British Empire. Even at the end of the Empire, the military capability was formidable.
What angers me most is the Coalition Government’s cuts to the defence budget, despite the protestations of military professionals. Of course, the depth of the cuts were not necessary. George Osborne‘s austerity has been excessive according to most leading economists, including the IMF. Osborne is not a professional economist, with very little suitable work experience prior to high office – Osborne’s austerity is politically motivated.
Meanwhile, UK newspapers are full of related stories. Some are already worrying about the follies of military adventure. As usual, I worry about the absence of robust strategy.
Whilst, I am sure that there are special forces “advising”, as well, the deployment of six thirty year old war planes is deeply worrying.
Surely, it’s time for the UK Government to re-evaluate the UK military deterrent?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
Dr Alf says he is angry but what has happened is part of a strategy devised a long time ago, which is and was, to reduce the Tri-Forces to 100,000 people, merge the RAF into the Army Air Corps and bring back the troops from BAOR in Germany.
Then, the plan calls for all forces housing stock to be sold off, the sacking of more regular Army troops and their replacement by the TA, which represents the newly re-badged “Reserve”.
The UK has some Trident submarines and they represent a deterrent to small countries with no nuclear weapons but beyond that the UK has no deterrent worthy of the name.
We have just 17 escort vessels for our shipping, a figure which Lord West, a former Admiral and First Sea Lord, says is a dangerous disgrace.
We have no control over our own borders and permit traitors and seditionists to campaign for a Caliphate, commit atrocities in other countries and return to this country.
So far, 250 have returned whereas anyone with an iota of common-sense would have had them eliminated with “extreme prejudice” before they got here.
The plan to recruit reservists to replace sacked soldiers is failing, which means that we should be looking at National Service once more.
Dr Alf rails against 36 year old planes, I worry about our lack of a single coastal protection vessel and the fact that we are little more than a “plug and play ” component in America’s global military.
It means that we are totally reliant on them for defence and are incapable of projecting power in pursuit of our own interests. Relying on others in this way is dangerous. We should stop pretending that we are a great power and re-equip our forces properly, re-introduce National Service and modernise the forces we have with Stealth ships, Stealth aircraft, invisibility suits for our troops and thermobaric weapons, capable of producing the explosive power of a Hiroshima style nuclear bomb but without the harmful radioactive fallout.
ISIL/ISIS cannot be destroyed by air power alone. It requires action against the countries which fund it by removing and replacing their regimes. It requires the application of the Treason Act 1318 against them and their sympathisers here in the UK, the deportation of imans not from here who preach sedition or treason.
Mosques where this dangerous nonsense is propounded need to be closed and the sites cleared for building essential worker housing.
In the end, we are going to have to reintroduce conscription, raise an army of millions and go after ISIS militants wherever they are. This is because we have left it too late to obliterate them whilst they were moving about in large numbers across the desert when we could collectively have used the techniques employed in Arclight during the air campaign in Vietnam except that this time there would be no jungle or tunnel system for ISIS to hide in as the North Vietnamese did–ISIS would have been sitting ducks and anyone left could be finished off with napalm.
That missed opportunity caused by Obama’s vacillation and the inability of Western leaders to act with ruthless precision means that people are going to have to be used to root them out in another great loss of blood and treasure.
If there is “blowback” in terms of terrorist acts in the West, then we will have to look more widely at the Muslim community, stop further mosque building, close Muslim schools, stop the building of more schools and mosques and reverse the charitable status of all those that remain.
Jihad has to be treated as incitement to murder and calling for Sharia law as sedition and those demanding it should be arrested,tried and imprisoned on remote Hebridean Islands with no possibility of escape.
This with money spent on a long war rather than on creating growth and jobs for the vast majority of us who are not feudal barbarians infused with a warped doctrine that has no place in today’s world.