This would also mean the closure of RNAS Yeovilton.

And the lynx and commando Heli force go….?

I would convert the current heavy and medium organisation into 6 Medium Armoured Brigades, each with one Tank Battalion, 1 Armoured Infantry Battalion and 2 Mechanised Infantry Battalions equipped with the “Son of FRES” Pooled support elements would include 2 Artillery Regiment with 3 6 gun AS-90 Batteries and one 8 gun GMLRS battery together with 2 Force Recce Battalions allowing a Company/Squadron to be attached to each brigade. Finally 2 Air Defence Regiments equipped with HVM would be attached rounding out the teeth component.

I would re-role one Light Brigade into a designated peacekeeping formation, equipped with platfoms purchased for Afghanistan and additional platforms to round out its capabilities.

The 3 light artillery regiments would be reorganised fo rthe current 5 105LG batteries into 2 of M777 Light 155mm, 2 of 105LG and 1 of Light GMLRS the latter of which is the UK version based on a Suoercat chassis. All three are air transportable and can be carried underslung by Chinook.

Well that’s just a few ideas.

So six essentially “heavy” warfighting brigades and one to play at policemen?

Does that include 16AA and 3Cdo? because that adds up to more deployable brigades than we have at present. Surely more money not less?

I have to say I am not a fan of “peacekeeping” brigades. You train and equip for less than war you get bad results. The best peacekeepers time and again have proved to be fully trained war fighting units of western armies. I can recomend a couple of good books on that (for it was my long ago dissertation) if you are interested.

Interesting discussion on 155mm vs 105mm. Barmy thinking partly points out that unarmoured infantry cannot advance close enough to 155mm fire. You have to lift 155mm fire earlier if supporting light infantry and that allows the enemy recovery time. With 105mm you can pretty much lift the fire as your guys reach the objective. It depends if you want “suppressive fire” or “destructive fire”. It matters less to guys in warriors as they can advance nice and close in thier metal boxes, as it is even mech units in more lightly armoured vehicles (Saxon!!) can not get to close to 155mm fire.

PS the logistics unit supporting your light artillery units would be having kittens with hree different types of munition to carry…

“Just” 10-12 subs at faslane, do you forget what is in those subs? their is a reason they’re kept in that kind of place.

Why are those “things” dangerous? The MOD says not. If they are perfectly safe then basing them in downtown plymouth surely makes not a jot of difference…unless there is something a) untrue about safety b) politically unpalatable about “them”….

As for Portsmouth, half the naval shore establishments are in the area, not to mention a good deal of the refit facilities.

The refit stuff is in private hands…it can stay open. Why can’t the shore stuff move? Having 3 ports for such a small navy seems like a very expensive luxury (and mre to do with vote wnning than good accounting)

RAF Kinloss is home to the ARCC, Leeming is home right now to most of the units who were going to scampton (which is much more likely to get the chop when the arrows move to Waddington)

Shut Scampton too! Move ARCC, move the other units! Think Long term savings.

As for 1st armoured, Our current divisional structure is quite outdated IMO, though current MBT levels are at about their minimum sensible level, and them being in germany makes little difference to spending anyway.

Except soldiers pay goes out of the UK exchequer and into the german economy. A lot of money goes on travel expenses, RAF flights etc etc

As for MBT levels, you are probably right, but we need savings, we need to keep the capability and I would argue as long as we can mount an armoured op the size of 2003 we are on. Treat amour like 16AA and 3Cdo – entry forces, the units that kick down the door.

I sincerely hope some of that was a joke…

maybe, maybe not….:p

seriously though why keep Kinloss and Leeming? Kinloss will house 9 nimrods and Leeming has a sqn of hawks. People want savings and I would rather lose real estate than any more airframes or sqns.

Same with Portsmouth and Faslane. Portsmouth will house two carriers and 6 destroyers (and probably half that number day to day) Faslane just 12-10 subs.

We keep all these bases because they help win votes, a private business would rationalise something the size of the MODs property portfolio and save millions.

As for 1st Armoured being reduced to a Brigade…two MBT regts, one force recce rgt, four armoured inf, one 8 gun four battery art rgt etc. It would be the size of 16 Air Asslt or 3Cdo, would mean we maintain a heavy armour force and is the size of armoured force we used in 2003. Save money and maintain capability, what do you want?

The Tornado always has the two outer wing pylons reserved for chaff/flare pod on one wing and an ECM jammer on the other. When the aircraft had a mid life upgrade why weren’t these incorporated onto the aircraft leaving the two wing pylons free to carry additional stores?

Space. The Tonka is actually quite a small aircraft, put all that stuff internal and you lose fuel and space for other things like the one remaining gun etc.

Also its easier to adapt and upgrade a pod. If you need a new def system its (almost) as easy as changing the pod. If it was internal that would be a much bigger job requiring the aircraft to spend more time off the line. Also adaptable, if you don’t need ECM but a ton of flares then you swap pods etc…

I agree that actually putting the remaining Harrier squadrons under the FAA and moving them to Yeovilton is a good idea but as the RAF is already giving up its Merlins I am sure they will fight that one. As for Wittering, they redeveloped the base to house the Tactical Support Units. Where are they going to go?

Well its unlikely to happen but I would suggest that some of the sup goes to Yeovilton as the RN should create an “EAW” of its own that can slot into the line but the rest could be sent to Honington as a central pool of resources, or redistributed amongst other units.

There are even options being looked at to draw down the Army in Germany! This could be used as an opportunity to reduce them further if I was being pessimistic.

I would have no problem with withdrawl from Germany, I would rather squaddies hard earned pay went into UK bars etc rather than in German brothels and cutting out travel expense would be good, as would lowering any air transport requirement the RAF has to shoulder. As for drawing down 1st Armoured…hmmm torn on that one….MBTs have been used in short high level conflict ops such as both Gulf wars, but on both occasions “mass” tank units were deployed only for a matter of months. In Iraq there was only a small number of Challengers stationed there after the war. Its hard to justify a whole armoured division as it stands. We need MBTs etc but perhaps a force similar in size to 16 Air mob which is a very large brigade, almost a “light” division, perhaps a force more akin to a US Cav regiment???

With little chance of extra money I think we are going to have to lower are aspirations.

Yes agreed, but I think the key will be deciding on and maintaing some core capabilities that are difficult to regenerate if we drop them. Some hard questions need to be asked….Do we need a “parachute” Regiment? for instance, its a very expensive capability and we last dropped paras on mass in 1956….is it a role the UK needs? or if still required does it need to be on the scale it is…i.e. would the Canadian model of para trained companies within light battalions be enough? Is it enough to have 2sqn RAF Rgt, some RMs and the SAS trained in the role?

I am well aware the the UK has fought all ita major wars as part of alliances, what I was reffering to was that we cannot deploy forces on the scale of the operations I mentioned and one of the key lessons learnt in Telic was that Capacity is just as important as Capability.

I am not sure that we couldn’t make a Telic sized deployment now? I can’t see why we couldn’t, we essentially have a divisonal sized deployment in Afghan at the moment that has been supported at long range for years, I am pretty sure the UK could make a Telic sized op happen in the future, for the short duration it occured for. certainly the three brigades that were used still exsist and are in some ways better equipped -Apache for instance which would take much of the CAS burden off of a smaller harrier force. Throw in sentinal, Reaper, Brimstone etc…..?

Currently we have 2/3 Harrier Squadrons and 6 Tornado Squadrons. This is likely to be reduced to 1 or 2 of the former (including RN) and 5 of the latter with the Harriers being exclusively deployed only on the carriers leaving 5 Tornado squadrons to cover all operations deployments. I think a pool of 7 squadrons is more flexible. Also if Belgium and the Netherlands can make deployment with even smaller airforces but a single type add to my arguement.

The squadron numbers has been discussed already. I agree that a single type is useful in many respects but 7 sqns is too few. As for Belgium and Netherlands, they have had small short term deployments – less than a squadron and for a few months, but they are incapable of long term squadron sized deployments

In future we may only be able to deploy a single squadron on long term operations. The Navy is trying to develope a two stage operating process so ships are either deployed or in port with crews transferring on station. this way they hope to have 4 T-45s available though I am sceptical.

I hope your single squadron prediction does not come to pass. As for the Navy, it makes sense to get rid of the transit part of the deployment of a ship, there is no need to have a ship in UK port unless its under maintenance etc, but I think they are being overly optomistic.

Sure emergencies can arise whilst on exercise but the training budget for anything but Afghanistan has already been butchered and is likely to get worse especially for any unit type not applicable to that theatre.

Still happening though, Red Flag is happening now and Magic Carpet in Oman is about to happen with Typhoons etc. So its not all been thrown out.

One simple question, there is a £40Bn+ hole in the defence Budget over the next to years, how do we fill it without further cuts etc?

(errors aside) You are correct, I’m not saying there will not be cuts but cutting the RAF to 7 FJ sqns is very severe. The Typhoon will shoulder the burden in future but a dedicated strike force of Tornados and later F35s/UCAVs etc will be required if the UK wants to follow its current world role. The alternative is to change UK foriegn policy aims and expectations, in which case 7 sqns of typhoons might be all you need.

A number of “Gold Plated” programmes will have to fo or expectations lowered, the Army’s Medium AFVs and the Navy’s C2 being prime examples. For the RAF 7 Squadrons of Typhoons should meet existing requirements.

How are medium AFVs and C2 “gold plated”? Both are lesser types or versions of the ultimate (i.e. Heavy AFV and C1 !) Both are the cheaper option to more expensive types of kit.

As for 7 squadrons of Typhoons being enough??? How?? Lets assume one of those is a training outfit, that leaves 6 units. So one in afghan, one preparing for afghan, one just back. That leaves us three squadrons to do UK air def, exercises, and provide a squadron for “contingencies” Lets not forget that 1435 flight will need supporting too. We are going to have some very busy aircrew and knackered airframes. In a worst case we could have 3 sqns involved in afghan, one in the US on red flag, one being rushed off to deal with “the next crisis” leaving 12 jets to protect the UK…..forget it, RAF would fall apart.

The days of mounting operations Granby or Telic let alone Corporate are over. We will still have a world class Armed Forces but will have to act in partnership with others. We are exceedingly unlikely to ever go up against another Country in high intensity conflict without being part of a coalition including the US.

And you are absolutely sure about that? We couldn’t mount Corporate as it was done, but why would we? There is barely a a scrap of kit left from 1982, the UK would fight corporate entirely differently….Think of the kit we now have that we didn’t have in 82….HMS Ocean, TLAM, E3 Sentry, SK7 ASAC, Merlin, Apache….we would have no need to fight corporate as we did, that would be insane, if anything it would be easier now, imagine Goose Green supported by Apaches, in fact imagine Apaches full stop roaming over East Falkland supported by SK7 ASACs etc….ouch, it would have been over far quicker.