British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson has once again made threats against Russia. The British minister said that he fully supports Donald Trump's call for NATO countries to increase funding for their armies and called on the British leadership to prepare for a demonstration of "hard power" to protect their interests. Describing the current political situation in the world, Gavin Williamson said that the boundaries between peace and war are becoming blurred, respectively, London needs to be prepared for a variety of scenarios.
"Got" and Russia. Williamson warned Moscow that it could face "retribution" for certain actions. Apparently, the head of the British military department was referring to the murky story of the poisoning of Skripal's father and daughter. But, be that as it may, Williamson reaffirmed the aggressive line of Great Britain towards our country.
By the way, the Minister of Defense said that China is also threatening Great Britain, so the former "queen of the seas" will send the flagship of the Royal Navy, the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, to the Pacific Ocean with American and British squadrons of F-35 aircraft on board. "With American" is what is important in this news. The fact is that the military power of Great Britain has long been “not the same”. The power of London, which once controlled vast territories from West Africa to Southeast Asia, is a thing of the past. Modern Great Britain has financial resources, there are levers of pressure on foreign capital in the form of London banks, but the army and navy of Britain are weakening from year to year.
Despite the fact that the UK, hiding behind anti-Russian rhetoric, spends colossal funds on defense, Gavin Williamson calls for further increasing spending on the army. It is clear that British businessmen who control the military-industrial complex and financial flows are interested in this, but seriously speaking, there will soon be no one to fight in Great Britain.
The reduction of the British armed forces began in the 1990s, after the collapse of the socialist camp and the end, as it seemed to Western leaders at the time, of the Cold War. As a result, the size of the once powerful armed forces was reduced to 160 thousand people. A new blow to the combat capability of the British army was struck when he was the country's prime minister, David Cameron. Under him, the British armed forces were reduced in size by another half and began to number just over 80 thousand people.
Not so long ago, the former head of the Joint Command of the British Armed Forces, General Richard Barrons, prepared a special report in which he very critically assessed the defense capability of his country. In particular, Barrons emphasized that the British army would not be able to defend the country if it was faced with an attack by a strong state, for example, the Russian Federation. According to Barrons, the financial policy of London led to such disastrous consequences for the country's armed forces, although the British government already allocates impressive funds for the maintenance of the army and military industry.
Barrons drew attention to the fact that now Great Britain retains only a "showcase" of its armed forces. For example, the UK has aircraft carriers to maintain its image of a great naval power, but things are not going well with the ground forces. Their number was reduced to the limit, which led to the country's inability to participate in the "classic" war on land.
General Barrons was echoed by Major General Tim Cross, who said that Britain would not be able to confront Russia or China on land. After all, the named countries are not Afghanistan or Iraq, not the formations of Middle East terrorists. And if the British army, and then with American support, could somehow act in the Near and Middle East against radical groups, then such a strategy will not work with the Russian or Chinese armed forces.
One of the most serious problems of the modern British ground forces is the understaffing of units and subunits. This problem is most acute in the infantry units of the British army. On September 20, 2018, the British Department of Defense published information about the shortage of personnel in the infantry battalions of the British army.
Now the British ground forces include 31 infantry battalions - 29 British and 2 Gurkha (manned by Nepalese highlanders - mercenaries). Of the 29 British infantry battalions, there are 5 motorized infantry battalions on BMPs, 3 heavy motorized infantry, 5 light motorized infantry, 9 light infantry, 4 special infantry, 2 airborne battalions and 1 palace guard battalion. As of July 1, 2018, the shortage of personnel in the battalions amounted to 12.4% of their regular strength. And this despite the fact that the number of special infantry battalions, which were intended to carry out training tasks, is only 180 people in a battalion (that is, a little more than a classic company).
If we talk about the missing number of infantry units, then the total number of British infantry is now estimated at 14,670 people, and the shortage is 1,820 people. Moreover, in 12 battalions out of 20 battalions, more than 100 staff units per battalion are vacant. In 5 battalions, the shortage is 23%. The 1st Battalion of the Scottish Guards has 260 vacant posts, which actually makes it incapable of fighting even by the modern and very loyal standards of the British command.
It is interesting that the full-time positions of privates and non-commissioned officers remain understaffed. There is no particular shortage of officers. But on the other hand, those who want to join the British army as ordinary soldiers are becoming less and less. It was this circumstance that forced the British War Department to turn to the tried and tested method of replenishing personnel - the hiring of foreign mercenaries. It was decided to create an additional Gurkha battalion.
For the Nepalese highlanders, service in the Royal Army of Great Britain is traditionally considered prestigious, in addition, this is almost the only chance for them to radically change their financial situation. After all, it is almost impossible to find a job for an ordinary guy from a mountainous Nepalese village in Nepal with a salary comparable to that of a soldier of the Gurkha battalion of the British army.
But you cannot equip the entire army with Gurkhas, and the British themselves, and especially the Scots, Welsh and Irish, are less and less willing to be hired to serve in the armed forces. Even the guards recruited in Wales and Scotland faced a shortage of soldiers. Service in them has always been considered very prestigious, but now young people do not even aspire to the Queen's Guard, what to say about the rest of the British ground forces. The total understaffing of the ground forces is more than 5 thousand people. The generals sadly admit that since 2012, that is, for seven years, the military department has never been able to fully equip the ground forces with new recruits.
Meanwhile, even of those Britons who serve in the ranks of the armed forces, not all are combat-ready soldiers for medical reasons. The British War Department also published the unfortunate data. Thus, 7,200 British troops are unfit for participation in operations outside the country for health reasons. This is a huge figure for the British army, given that the staffing of the kingdom's ground forces is set at 82,420 people, while 76,880 people actually serve in the ground forces. It turns out that every tenth British serviceman is not suitable for foreign business trips. Another 9,910 military personnel are capable of performing only a limited range of tasks outside the country.
Thus, in fact, 20% of British military personnel cannot be involved in overseas operations. The very high-ranking British military consider such indicators to be catastrophic for the armed forces. After all, Britain today, if it fights anywhere, is very far from its borders - in the Near and Middle East, in Africa. It was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya that British servicemen were gaining combat experience, but it turns out that every fifth British soldier cannot be sent there at all.
Colonel Richard Kemp, who once commanded a contingent of the royal army in Afghanistan, says he is simply amazed at this data. After all, the unpreparedness of 20% of the soldiers for foreign operations directly threatens the combat capability of the British army. And the shortage of soldiers and non-commissioned officers is closely related to the health status of servicemen.
The remaining healthy soldiers have to serve "for themselves and for that guy." As a result, not wanting to experience unnecessary stress, many soldiers and non-commissioned officers leave the army immediately after the expiration of the first contract. Returning to civilian life, they tell their relatives and friends about the state of affairs in the British army, rumors spread quickly and among civilian youth there are fewer and fewer people willing to give the best years of their lives to serve in the name of the Queen.
The next serious problem of the British army is the lack of coordination in the actions of units and subunits due to the crisis in the command and control system. The already mentioned General Barrons stated that Great Britain is now not able to simultaneously use all the country's armed forces in a combat situation. There are simply no resources for this - neither engineering, nor material, nor organizational. The British War Department will not even be able to quickly mobilize reservists, who, like soldiers of regular units, are becoming less and less. Considering that the size of the British army is decreasing, and it is staffed exclusively by contract soldiers, there is practically no mobilization reserve in the country.
While Great Britain operated with minimal forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, where only individual units were sent, which in fact were "prefabricated hodgepodge" from various parts, it could still carry out military operations. And even then, as the experience of military operations in Iraq or Libya shows, the British ground forces acted badly and disappointed their "senior partners" in NATO - the Americans. What can we say then about the confrontation with the Russians or the Chinese, the war with which the forces of separate consolidated divisions are simply impossible!
However, the British War Department seems to be losing touch with reality. While seasoned generals are sounding the alarm, civilian leaders like Williamson are showing their inadequacy. What is the battalion of 800 soldiers and officers and 10 tanks sent to the Baltic states, which the British military department is positioning as a force capable of defending against the imaginary "Russian aggression". Even among the British military themselves, the presence of the battalion on the territory of Estonia is called nothing more than Operation "Decoy Duck". After all, even the most frostbitten officers of the royal army do not think that such a unit can resist the Russian armed forces.
The technical equipment of the British armed forces also leaves much to be desired. According to some reports, 21 out of 67 Tornado bombers and 43 out of 135 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters are in a depressing state. The ground forces also have a lot of defective armored vehicles. During a joint exercise with the Americans, held in 2017 at the US garrison of Fort Bragg, it turned out that all the weapons with which 160 British soldiers arrived to take part in the exercises (isn't it a "large" unit?), Turned out to be unusable.
Against the background of this state of affairs in the Royal Armed Forces of Great Britain, the question involuntarily arises, why is Gavin Williamson, like his immediate superior, Theresa May, all the time trying to rattle a non-existent weapon? Is this just a game on the domestic consumer - the British man in the street, or is it just another way to increase funding for the military department? But since the British military is already allocated good money, and the state of the army is getting worse, it remains only to think about the scale of corruption and "cutting" in the British War Office.
