Massive military cuts

We spend way too much on the army anyway. It's ridiculous spending so much that you can barely even maintain what you've got. After all we don't even have all of our soldiers or planes or ships etc. all go out. I don't particularly see our army as a fixer of problems either with the way things are looking with the world. They seem to go over to war torn places and not quite manage to stop the civil wars or blood shed but still have huge bills and expect us to keep stumping up more. We need a more efficient, more focused army if we're even going to make it viable.

Still trying to make sense of this post!
 
Average annual cost of training a Royal Marine Commando is £5500 whereas the annual cost of training an Army Infantryman is £7000.

Average service life of Royal Marine Commando is 12 years, Army Infantryman only 8 years, this leads to significant cost savings across the operational life of a Soldier.

The CoastGuard will take away some of the cost of the Navy and incorporating them into a civilian single agency responsible for all duties currently spread across Border Agency, MCA, HMRC. Moving the fiscal and operational responsibilty of three separate Agencies into a single one.

The US operate a 9 month Tour of Duty. UK Tours of Duty are being reduced to 119 days from Jan 2011, this can be suspended. Currently T/D can be anything from 3-6 months, with four month tours being the optimal.

Most of mine were around the 5-7 month mark.
Nice source for your information a marine website ;)
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/new...l-command/article-2468039-detail/article.html
 
Do you know any better?

Have you any experience in the Armed Forces in your 21 years?

I would suggest an Adult Education Centre to address your literacy problems before attempting to give such sage advice.

nope but good friends with people who have. to be honest i don't know any better just like to talk rubbish. my literacy isn't to bad and is enough to get by on.

but i do have a general idea about military on a larger level not from my own experience but from reading books which is probably the same things everyone else on here is going by!

my only valid point is that mergeing paras and marines probably wouldn't bother me as much for eg and would probably be cost saving and not a bad idea! I have faith in the military overlords anyways as they have more exp then everyone.

sorry if offended anyone will leave this post alone, probably for the best!
 
nope but good friends with people who have. to be honest i don't know any better just like to talk rubbish. my literacy isn't to bad and is enough to get by on.

but i do have a general idea about military on a larger level not from my own experience but from reading books which is probably the same things everyone else on here is going by!

my only valid point is that mergeing paras and marines probably wouldn't bother me as much for eg and would probably be cost saving and not a bad idea! I have faith in the military overlords anyways as they have more exp then everyone.

sorry if offended anyone will leave this post alone, probably for the best!

I wasn't offended as such. Although my reply to AmTechFox may have been a little short and Stringy may well be right that I was being an ass I do have some experience with the Armed Forces. As an Ex-Marine I cannot countenance the merging of the Para's and Marines under Army operational control, but I am obviously going to be biased about such a move.
 
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I wasn't offended as such. As an Ex-Marine I cannot countenance the merging of the Para's and Marines under Army operational control, but I am obviously going to be biased about such a move.

not sure what this means 'countenance' but can work it out from the rest of the paragraph! plenty of serving marines i know are of different opinion though, probably not as old school as you which is definantly not a good thing.
 
not sure what this means 'countenance' but can work it out from the rest of the paragraph! plenty of serving marines i know are of different opinion though, probably not as old school as you which is definantly not a good thing.

I am hardly Old-School, but I do not know any serving Marines (I know quite a few) who would support being moved to Army control under any circumstances.

I think you underestimate the rivalry between the Para Regiments and the Royals also.


Countenance means Tolerate or Accept.
 
This is GD rather than SC, but without getting into too much detail we could...


Cut the RAF, reduce the Army, create a single unified force with elements of the RAF and Army added to an expanded Royal Navy.

Expand the Marines (better trained and cheaper than Army Infantry) while decreasing overlap and reduce the amount of regimental separation. Increase of tours of duty in combat zones slightly. Cut the insane amount of civil servants in the MOD, which number almost the same as the entire British Army.

Streamline the Command Structure, reduction in the number of Senior Commanders.

Create a civilian Coastguard with full responsiblity for border control, immigration, search and rescue etc, discarding the separate agencies we currently have.

You keep banging on about cutting the RAF completely and reducing the Army (because you're clearly a Navy fanboy) but the Navy cannot fully support the essential aspects that the RAF and Army bring to the table.

As I already said; the Navy for one does not even have an Int branch (!), probably one of THE most important aspects of modern day warfare. How would it be financially viable to cut these fields that the RAF and Army specialise in and reintegrate them in to the Navy? You're clearly indoctrinated into the "senior service" mentality. Get a grip, the Navy is not THE only service.

I'm all for cutting the ridiculous numbers of civvy employees and command though! One thing in particular is the ridiculous pension given when you reach 1star level :\
 
I think Int is pretty much a secondary duty in the navy :eek:

(For the layman, 'secondary duty' is something someone does in their spare time)
 
You keep banging on about cutting the RAF completely and reducing the Army (because you're clearly a Navy fanboy) but the Navy cannot fully support the essential aspects that the RAF and Army bring to the table.

As I already said; the Navy for one does not even have an Int branch (!), probably one of THE most important aspects of modern day warfare. How would it be financially viable to cut these fields that the RAF and Army specialise in and reintegrate them in to the Navy? You're clearly indoctrinated into the "senior service" mentality. Get a grip, the Navy is not THE only service.

I'm all for cutting the ridiculous numbers of civvy employees and command though! One thing in particular is the ridiculous pension given when you reach 1star level :\

Are you in the RAF by any chance.

You do know that Defence Intelligence is made up of Officers from all three Services, so is JARIC.

HMS Ferret is part of DISC at Chicksands.


But it makes sense that if we are to endure massive cuts in defence spending then the Navy should be the basis for any Unified Force. Ideally I would like to keep all three services separate, but it seems increasingly obvious that the current Government is intent on cutting the RAF hugely and the rest of the Armed Forces is sure to follow.
 
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You do know that Defence Intelligence is made up of Officers from all three Services, so is JARIC.

HMS Ferret is part of DISC at Chicklands.

I do know this, and none of the infrastructure or command chain is led by the Navy, particulrly so the sensors that collect the int. The Navy have only recently began to put officers in Int posts as a knee jerk reaction really since they realised they actually lack any real experience or prowess in the field. DISC is on an Army camp, previously a US and RAF camp. JARIC is led by RAF imagery analysts, well skilled in imagery analysis. The Navy are very lacking in any representation bar the odd commissioned rep.
 
I do know this, and none of the infrastructure or command chain is led by the Navy, particulrly so the sensors that collect the int. The Navy have only recently began to put officers in Int posts as a knee jerk reaction really since they realised they actually lack any real experience or prowess in the field. DISC is on an Army camp, previously a US and RAF camp. JARIC is led by RAF imagery analysts, well skilled in imagery analysis. The Navy are very lacking in any representation bar the odd commissioned rep.

The Chief of Defence Intelligence was Vice Admiral West from 1997-2000.

But anyway, as Defence Intelligence is the responsiblity of the Ministry Of Defence and not the individual services, the question of infrastucture and staff reassignment is moot.
 
The Chief of Defence Intelligence was Vice Admiral West from 1997-2000.

But anyway, as Defence Intelligence is the responsiblity of the Ministry Of Defence and not the individual services, the question of infrastucture and staff reassignment is moot.

Rubbish, the question lies in who has experience because that is something cannot be taught. The Navy does not have the experience.
 
Rubbish, the question lies in who has experience because that is something cannot be taught. The Navy does not have the experience.

But by reassigning any operational system does not mean a loss of experience. The people who work at the DI need not be lost, so the experience would remain.

The same thing happened when the NID and the other intelligence depts of the the other services were amalgamated into the MOD in the 60's.


Anyway, how would you suggest we create a single force and around which service would you build it around and why?
 
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Okay, and what is cut to achieve that whist reducing the overall MoD budget significantly?

Apoligies I was busy shortly after posting my iinital post so I will elaborate later in this post.

This is GD rather than SC, but without getting into too much detail we could...

Cut the RAF, reduce the Army, create a single unified force with elements of the RAF and Army added to an expanded Royal Navy.

Expand the Marines (better trained and cheaper than Army Infantry) while decreasing overlap and reduce the amount of regimental separation. Increase of tours of duty in combat zones slightly. Cut the insane amount of civil servants in the MOD, which number almost the same as the entire British Army.

Streamline the Command Structure, reduction in the number of Senior Commanders.

Create a civilian Coastguard with full responsiblity for border control, immigration, search and rescue etc, discarding the separate agencies we currently have.

Thanks for answering my stead. You've summed up exactly what I would've posted if I had more time.

Cut both the Army and RAF expand the Royal Navy. As it stands the RN is the only force that can deliver all three roles of the armed forces. So it is logical to emalgamate forces into the RN as they have expiriance with all three.

Warships, Ground troops, and aircraft. If you increase the Royal Marines by a significant number then they are able to perform their traditional role more effectively and also take over responsibility from what would be Army roles(which they are doing already in afganistan) as they are better trained and for the most part better equipped

The RAF, at the moment (apart from escorting a could have Russian MPAs out of UK airspace) share roles with the Fleet Air Arm in afganistan, why not increase the Fleet Air Arm

Increasing the remit of the RN and creating one combined force that is truely able to handle all aspects of UK defence would obvioulsy be for the better, as at the moemnt you have all three services clamoring for the lions share of the budgets. Have that all going into one post under a centralized command and the potential for saving will go up.

You keep banging on about cutting the RAF completely and reducing the Army (because you're clearly a Navy fanboy) but the Navy cannot fully support the essential aspects that the RAF and Army bring to the table.

As I already said; the Navy for one does not even have an Int branch (!), probably one of THE most important aspects of modern day warfare. How would it be financially viable to cut these fields that the RAF and Army specialise in and reintegrate them in to the Navy? You're clearly indoctrinated into the "senior service" mentality. Get a grip, the Navy is not THE only service.

I'm all for cutting the ridiculous numbers of civvy employees and command though! One thing in particular is the ridiculous pension given when you reach 1star level :\

The Navy doesn't have a int branch you're right but what they do have is PJHQ (permanent Joint Headquaters) down in Northwood(where I served out my 18 months noitice for the Royal Navy) that does have a rather large and capable Int unit made up of staff from all three services. Why not combine them under one banner?
 
Anyway, how would you suggest we create a single force and around which service would you build it around and why?
My suggestion would be that we don't create a single force unless we were willing to radically scale back how many fingers we have in pies around the world, which the government will be unwilling to do. If we were going to go for a proper defence force where we were only interested in protecting our shores and having no force projection at all then the Navy as we largely know it would be scrapped, you would need a massive fleet of coastal craft and nothing else. If we plan on projecting any sort of force then we should stick with the current 3 service approach and put more efforts into jointery - amalgamating the three forces would be more trouble than it's worth. The only reason it's on the table is because the members of the two more senior services can smell blood and want to save their own empires.
 
ok forget all this rubbish,

I've realised what/s going on, we have to have loads of big weapons, otherwise the people that lend us money will say screw you, so long as we have big weapons we might blow the crap out of them.
 
My suggestion would be that we don't create a single force unless we were willing to radically scale back how many fingers we have in pies around the world, which the government will be unwilling to do. If we were going to go for a proper defence force where we were only interested in protecting our shores and having no force projection at all then the Navy as we largely know it would be scrapped, you would need a massive fleet of coastal craft and nothing else. If we plan on projecting any sort of force then we should stick with the current 3 service approach and put more efforts into jointery - amalgamating the three forces would be more trouble than it's worth. The only reason it's on the table is because the members of the two more senior services can smell blood and want to save their own empires.

I would agree, however I was discussing possible alternatives to huge cuts damaging our operational effectiveness, We have seen with the Falklands that joint operations can be led effectively with the Navy as it's core and as we are an Island and most, if not all of our operations are overseas it seems pertinent to expand that disposition.
 
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