An Army for the 21st Century?

Is the British Army fit for purpose?  As usual the snappy soundbite gets the most attention, but the real answer is another question.  What is that purpose?  Only once that is defined with some clarity can you decide if the force can fulfil that purpose.

• Deter or counter Russian aggression in eastern Europe?
• Fight counter insurgency campaigns in the middle east or elsewhere?
• Provide a force of last resort for UK national disaster?
• Put on a good parade with historical uniforms?
• Expeditionary capability?
• Anything else I forgot.
• All of the above?

Following on from that, what type of forces are required to perform that role.  What threats are they going to face and what do they need to defeat those threats, this needs to include the ability to sustain the effort over a realistic period.  Finally how many people and sets of kit are required to achieve this.

So far the process has been easy.  There is a nice big list of men and material that you require.  Then reality bites and you find out that you need the whole of the defence budget just for the Army.  So are there things that the Army does that are outside its core role and should be done or at least funded by other agencies, be they companies or other government agencies. Should some roles be reduced?  

Finally you accept that you might be able to all of your reduced list if you are not doing any of the others at that point in time, others you might be able to do simultaneously.  Is the army organised so that it can efficiently perform these roles?  Is the structure too fractured, do the historical divisions still need to exist?  Are some of those in name only or do they have additional posts and as such cost because of it.  Armoured Regiments, Armoured Cavalry Regiments and Light Cavalry Regiments for example, do they fulfill such different roles they need to be classified differently?  If you were to set out to blueprint an Army today, it would not look like the one we have.  A nod needs to be given to history, but it should not dictate the shape of the army going forward.

Do we need so much ceremonial paraphernalia?  I include horses and uniforms in this.  If other departments benefit from these activities, City of London, Department of Culture etc, then they should contribute to the upkeep of these ceremonial posts/events.

There is much discussion at present about whether the British Army can field a "war fighting division", and how long it would take to get the division into the field.  Or whether the UK should concentrate on having an enhanced brigade, but being able to follow the first with another brigade able to take over from that brigade some time later.  Bear in mind that army send 50k personnel to the first gulf war and the majority of 46k to the 2nd.  Now we are wondering if it could deploy 15-20k depending on the support elements as a war fighting division.  The question begs why we would struggle to deploy less than a quarter of the army? 

I realise this post is a little rambling and does not address the issues of aging kit and purchase of new vehicles to replace those that are obsolete and worn out.  However until you get your house in order, how can you decide what you need to buy.

Honest Mistake or deliberate misinformation?

This article was posted on the Guardian website two days ago just below halfway down there is an innocuous looking graph duplicated here.

As you can see from the text above the graph it shows that the UK spends more that other European countries on defence.  This however brings us to mistake number one the axis is labeled as billions of pounds.  It would be nice to think that we could fund defence for £2.7 billion.  It looks like the axis should be labeled as a percentage of GDP, but that got me thinking, when was the last time the UK spend 2.7% of GDP on defence.  So find the Secretary Generals annual report online and read through it.  Here is the graphic I believe the Guardian took its information from

So remembering that the Guardian graph is labeled 2014/15 then we are using the while columns above, I would suggest that not only has the UK level being exaggerated, but that the French level may reflect the 2017 numbers and not those from 2014.  The level of exaggeration of the UK expenditure is well over half a percent of GDP which equates to somewhere in the region of £8 billion, which I believe is about the figure most Defence commentators believe is an amount that defence needs to start rectifying the funding issues it has.

TLAM - More than just a missile

Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) has been in service in various guises since 1983.  It is a cruise missile that flies low at sub-sonic speeds to its target, upon reaching its target it blows up and hopefully destroys the target.

So the question is can the TLAM be turned into a delivery vehicle for sub munitions.  The obvious follow on question is why would you do this.  My answer is TLAM has good range, but is designed to attack static or slow moving targets, therefore the ability to hit different targets by using different submunitions. 

My original though was Meteor or such, but a Meteor is 2/3 the length of a TLAM, so that is really a non starter.  ASRAAM would seem better fit.  This combination would bring enemy force multipliers into range, i.e. AWACs, air to air refuelling assets etc.  Also a couple of these mixed in amongst a standard TLAM strike might give enemy combat air patrols something else to think about rather than just shooting down the TLAMs.  

In a similar vein attacking multiple ships by mounting a pair of Sea Venom on a TLAM would enable enemy ships to attacked beyond the reach of other assets, but also could be use to provide and additional attack vector from where an enemy would not expect it.

I was going to suggest that Brimstone also could be mounted, but I am not sure you would want to kill 3 tanks or AFV some 700 miles away, but then again I might be missing something.

Might these suggestions work?  Or are these just plain daft?