Third tier and no plan in sight
When your friends and allies tell you that you no longer have a “first tier army” and are struggling to stay in the second tier, you know you are already firmly in the third.
The fact is that Tory defence cuts have left the Armed Forces and not just the Army in a terrible state, which all the talk about the quality of our troops, special forces and the continual reworking of Second World War glory cannot hide.
The Navy has too few ships and too few experts to man them, it is short of aircraft, pilots, submarines, frigates, destroyers, logistical support and any plan to fill the holes.
The RAF fired trainee pilots during the austerity years and now has too few to man the few fighters it has.
The Army cannot put a single armoured division in the field when there is a land war in Europe. It has a plan to produce a weakened division in a few years time that no one, including itself, believes and which no one, including itself, believes would be able to stand up to a serious enemy. Its armoured vehicles are out of date, the replacement process is a farce and the Army is under manned.
In short like every other part of the state it needs billions now and even then it will be years before it is capable of anything but posturing.
This is what spending cuts do, not cut fat or remove waste or cut down on pen pushers. The big savings are in cutting capacity immediately and that is what happened, almost ten years ago. The consequences are painfully clear.
Just when the pathetic posturing of Global Britain means the government wraps itself in the flag at every opportunity, we learn that it has reduced the country’s armed forces to the third tier.
Not a happy pairing, in fact a very dangerous one.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media