Yeap… to the Times. Or maybe we’ll tweet something.
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In harsh font.
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Wing Dings for the win
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I think there will be violence.
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Merry Christmas to the Andrew, they get to spend it in the Baltic.
Interesting mix of ships 2 Frigates, 2 OPV’s and a couple of mine sweepers. Surprised they aren’t sending a Type-45 in case Russian air power gets involved and to show that we can send a proper surface action group. Although I suppose one of the other nations could be covering that commitment.
Back to Ukraine
Zelensky has released his Christmas message.
Long but worth watching.
This is allegedly a before and after of the Russian landing ship that Ukraine promoted to submarine last night.
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Bit of t cut and itll buff right out
What are your thoughts on Sir Patrick Sanders’s remark that Britons should prepare for conscription? Given that conscription and public service are largely alien to today’s young people (18-40 year olds), do you think compulsory conscription in the event of war with Russia/China is ever going to be a likely scenario? What would conscription look like in the 21st century? Civil vs military. Would fit and able uniformed CFAVs (without any prior military service or experience) be treated any differently to ordinary people when it comes to call up papers being sent out? Are we more likely to be conscripted for whatever reason, or less likely, because we’re already serving as volunteers in a government funded uniformed organisation? Maybe our day jobs will be more likely to dictate what form of service we would be compelled to provide. E.g. medical professionals, IT specialists, engineers, motor mechanics, etc. Do you think CFAVs would be more receptive than the general population to compulsory conscription and serving king and country?
Suggestions are circulating that China is more a paper tiger, and the Russians haven’t had it so great in Ukraine, exposing some unfortunate truths about their power that they, too, were hiding. I don’t think either could effectively take on an organised coalition of Western militaries in conventional warfare. Proxy wars and a bit of boundary stretching is their limit.
I don’t think conscription would be necessary for 2 reasons:
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in such an event that the UK was directly affected by warfare on or near home turf I think there would be sufficient will and desire to bolster numbers - Afghanistan had a relatively large effect on perception during the height of that conflict. It would prove true again that if the cause can be sold as just, it’s easier to recruit in a time of war that not.
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if it ever reached the point that we required it, we’re probably about to get cooked anyway. Fylingdales will be going nuts with pings after someone gets desperate, or somehow the entirety of Europe has fallen
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i suspect only if CFAVs have useful skills - and to be honest, i recall many moons ago when we were VRT that one officer said that any “call up” entitlement that the Govt had one them would be into a training environment - given the RAFACs ability to “admin” CFAVs would be fast tracked into a admin position or into a training environment role.
The transferable skills i can think of being Fieldcraft, first aid, radio and shooting - or at least weapons instruction.
if CFAVs had skills/quals in those areas they are more useful than someone who can teach the history of the RAF but if it really came down to it i don’t think it would matter what we had, we’d be in the queue to sign up on the dotted line and follow everyone else, all we’d really do to help is have prior experience of whatever training we’re offered before being sent to the trenches
We barely have enough equipment for 'full time" forces use!
The next war I presume would involve big red buttons …so the time from war beginning to smoking holes all over Europe would likely be very short
…At that point any survivors would be needed to clear up/manual labour etc and would most likely be under martial law …and paid with food rations etc…most ‘skills’ would be redundant except I agree medical …but even those would require advanced knowledge …not just a first aid badge!
I would imagine though that any recent ex service personnel would be likely first source of call up if things didn’t get too hot straight away!
I wonder what the numbers are for people who have left the services in the past 5 years are?
Won’t happen unless something radically changes.
I understand the perspective; there’s a lot of items kicking off across the globe that, if they were to conjoin, would require a huge uplift in the numbers of personnel available, but we’re still some way off that happening.
If it did happen, as others have highlighted there would be quite a number of volunteers step forwards. I personally think the recruitment/onboarding system for each service isn’t strong enough to deal with that and would need a full overhaul before it happened.
An invocation of NATO A5 might change the landscape, but this currently looks unlikely to happen even with everything going on in Ukraine. An accidental “attack” on NATO territory would be more probably, but then we’d probably only be talking A4 territory.
Then we have to consider the current political will. Politicians of all colours seem to see the Armed Forces as a convenient place to “trim the fat” from financially. There isn’t the political culture to look at military expansion presently, nor the finances to support doing so.
i cannot say i recall any time when the UK has been “expanding” the military, keeping up with the demands of war maybe but i do not recall any annoucement of a 10/20/other% increase only ever reports of UK forces to loose 10% of soldiers etc
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Interesting discussion on GBNews with Phil Campion regarding conscription.
“Interesting discussion” and “GBNews” in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
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In the 15 years since my Army discharge, there’s been a decrease of roughly 20,000 full-time soldiers - if I’m remembering my figures correctly. We currently sit at somewhere around 75k (note: this figure only includes the Army).
The likelihood of us going to full war tomorrow or even soon is slim, but we’d be up a creek with no paddle if we did with some other actors able to just maintain a high number of combatants and not worry about their casualty rates.
I suspect we’d deploy a division / brigade to the Continent, as a tripwire or valiant BEF style buffer.
But for the defence of the UK lightly armoured, mobile forces with NLAW and Javelin would probably have to do. And based on what we’ve learned from Ukraine might even do the job quite well.
If my reading of what the General said is right, he was talking less about conscription but the mindset change needed for type of rapid mobilisation of citizen based territorial defence we’ve seen in Ukraine. And which we did in 1940.
Just this time maybe we can use the L98s in place of broom handles. Now where are the spare SUSATs and do we still have the LSWs?
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That’s far more realistic than conscription.
Ultimately who could we conceivably be fighting? The Russians are a paper tiger so that out, I suspect China are too, they haven’t fought a war since Korea and they haven’t won a war in living memory. Iran or North Korea? We aren’t sending more than a Division to that sort of war, a reinforced brigade is more likely.
Since the Second World War when have we ever deployed a full division? Suez, the Falklands, Operation Granby and Operation Telic 1. (Korea was a Commonwealth Division)
it’s interesting to think that a defensive effort within our own shores would be very guerrilla in nature. We’re probably among the most experienced at those right now having spent 2 decades and then some facing exactly that.
My second thought comes from this:
I know how to disarm American civilians without them complaining. All-out war with Russia, executive command issued to surrender all serviceable firearms in private ownership to support the defensive effort, make it “temporarily” illegal to sell weapons into private ownership, anyone not willing must sign up to the defensive effort (it’s off to the front line for you, Texas Stu), then just never give them back or repeal the ban on sale.
- are you patriotic enough to support the war effort? are you patriotic enough to fight in the war? which is more honourable and patriotic?
- how are they going to fight to get their guns back if they don’t already have any?
- Texas Stu (and many gun nuts like him that would later like their guns back) unfortunately don’t have a good first encounter with the enemy.
- Back to school everyone; it’s safe now! Today, we’re learning the Cyrillic alphabet.