**British Armed Forces Discussion Thread**

KatanaDV20 said:
We need satellite surveillance surely to keep an eye on them due to the radar limitations! We need to launch one into one of those geostationary positions. No escape from cameras 400 miles or so above the surface!
Click to expand...

We don't need to though! The current defenses are faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more than enough to put off any thoughts of aggression from them. Seriously, they would be utterly and completely mad to start anything as they would lose so, so many people in the process. We most likely would too mind, but the point stands that the defenses we have there at the moment are enough of a deterrent to make any offensive action a completely awful dreadful idea.

I think of it like this. Two thugs will fight if they're just in the street unarmed. Give them a chainsaw and a blowtorch each and they'd probably think twice :p
 
Last edited:
Zefan said:
We don't need to though! The current defenses are faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more than enough to put off any thoughts of aggression from them. Seriously, they would be utterly and completely mad to start anything as they would lose so, so many people in the process. We most likely would too mind, but the point stands that the defenses we have there at the moment are enough of a deterrent to make any offensive action a completely awful dreadful idea.
Click to expand...

This is true, Im glad we got the Eurofighters there. At one stroke they are the most advanced fighters south of the US border all the way to Patagonia! You are right they would be nuts to tangle with the Typhoons and would get pwned in a dogfight :D
 
KatanaDV20 said:
We need satellite surveillance surely to keep an eye on them due to the radar limitations! We need to launch one into one of those geostationary positions. No escape from cameras 400 miles or so above the surface!
Click to expand...


You can be rest assured that we probably have cameras watching everywhere we need to.

Zefan said:
Money money money.

To be honest I can't help but think it's kind of right... over the past 10 years I think most places have got used to running with the manning level that goes with having lots of guys out in Afghanistan/training to go out to Afghanistan/on leave from being in Afghanistan... so it makes sense that with our withdrawal that manning now becomes surplus to requirements.
Click to expand...

It is sad and I think it's the case that it is easier for the government to justify other hats that aren't infantry. "oh we need all these techs to look after all our high-tech, we need an int corps to pre-empt things, we need these super expensive jets to repel the imminent threat of Russian invasion over Scotland ...etc". Justify that we need so many infantrymen to sit in their barracks and not a lot more after 2015, well :(

I'm always sceptical, I don't think I've hardly ever seen miiltary spending done logically, they always seem retarded in retrospect, do you think military cuts wouldn't be done so either? For example, a unit I work with at the moment has a nice glossy 100+ page magazine sent to each and every soldier to read every month, most of which end in the bin. Now I know that is just a tip of the iceberg, but surely wasted money like that needs addressing before chopping peoples jobs.
 
Last edited:
I_M_Weasel said:
Don't quite understand the decision on which units are getting the chop - I would rather see none go, but:

Guards - why are they immune.
Para's - again why not them
Rifles - 5 battalions and they keep them all
Gurkha's - foreign mercenaries, untouchable though

Some regiments are down to a single battalion, they must be feeling mightily upset at the above units getting away free.
Click to expand...



No offence but the **** units are getting the chop, which is a good move, and that makes sense. They are all massively undermanned and rely of commonwealth soldiers. The ones you have listed above are actually decent, and well-manned
 
Last edited:
A point they make for the cuts is that they hope we will never fight on 2 fronts again...

Im glad their crystal ball is working and of course we have learnt every lesson from the past
 
lemonkettaz said:
A point they make for the cuts is that they hope we will never fight on 2 fronts again...

Im glad their crystal ball is working and of course we have learnt every lesson from the past
Click to expand...

But we weren't exactly 'prepared' for WW2 either, it's not like we had all those men and equipment on standby just in case and Hitler then attacked.

We were producing weapons and planes like nobody's business during the conflict so I'm sure in the unlikely event another World War did happen I'm sure the government and the people would react accordingly.

The fact is, after WW2 the world changed and whilst anything is possible I can't see one country having anywhere near the same threat level as Nazi Germany did. Throw in the UN and it is very unlikely.
 
That is the point, we haven't learned much from the past...

And we didnt exactly hammer the germans, we were on our knees at one stage and we needed the help.

I'm not saying lets prepare for a world war, but we can't be so short sighted
 
With the government pushing to get more reserve forces to replace regular troops, have they even fixed the laws regarding reserve troops? for example from what I've been told, if you get sent overseas your employer has to keep a job for you, but when you get back they don't have to give you the same job, or at the same pay so you could end up much worse off job wise when you return. Also what's the commitment of reserves like? for example I understand regular soldiers agree to server x number of years, but what's stopping reserves going to a TA centre once a month for the money, then as soon as it looks like they will be sent anywhere just quit? My final question on reserve forces is, say someone is on £20k a year, and signs up for the TA, would they really be forced to be sent overseas and put on the army payrole (of ~£17-£18k a year I'm guessing) when that low a pay from the army may not be sufficient to pay their mortgage or bills?

I'm just trying to get my head around how exactly the reserve forces work, because there seems to be a lot of situations where it just won't work out and if the person is not willing or financially able to leave their job to go overseas at the time of being called up, then the government may recruit 15,000 more reserve soldiers, but if only part of them are in a situation to fight then that further reduces there effectiveness compared to full time soldiers.
 
Increasing the TA must be a hard challenge.

First off getting people to actually give up some of their free time, secondly having workplaces allowing them to leave to be a part time soldier and finally if they reach the 30k part timers, if we are in deploying places what sort of percentage of the TA will actually deploy... at the end of the day they dont have to
 
If you're deployed as a reserve and earn in your civilian life, say £50000, you will be payed that much by the army (whilst called up - not on normal training weekends).

This gives you the ridiculous situation of the army paying £500,000 to some rich idiot who wants to play soldiers every now and again - enough to pay the wages of 25 regular private soldiers for a year.
 
Erm, that's not true, T.A. get paid the equivalent of what a regular soldier in that rank get paid. T.A. Don't have the same entitlements as Regulars, but they have other things, like annual bounty which eventually goes up to around £1600 odd after 5 years.

This is off the MoD website
As a Territorial soldier, you get paid for each quarter day of training. The pay scale that you’ll be on is based on what a Regular soldier with the same job and rank would get. So as a new soldier recruit, you get £35.04 for a full day, but this rises to £43.54 when you finish basic training. And if you’re a graduate officer cadet, you’ll get £62.07 a day. Remember that this increases as you get promoted and gain experience.
Click to expand...
 
They can be paid extra, to top up their wages to that of their civilian jobs, however, there are limits and restrictions to how much can be claimed. I very much doubt someone who's on a £500k/year salary would get their wages topped up to such a level.
 
Dist said:
With the government pushing to get more reserve forces to replace regular troops, have they even fixed the laws regarding reserve troops? for example from what I've been told, if you get sent overseas your employer has to keep a job for you, but when you get back they don't have to give you the same job, or at the same pay so you could end up much worse off job wise when you return. Also what's the commitment of reserves like? for example I understand regular soldiers agree to server x number of years, but what's stopping reserves going to a TA centre once a month for the money, then as soon as it looks like they will be sent anywhere just quit? My final question on reserve forces is, say someone is on £20k a year, and signs up for the TA, would they really be forced to be sent overseas and put on the army payrole (of ~£17-£18k a year I'm guessing) when that low a pay from the army may not be sufficient to pay their mortgage or bills?

I'm just trying to get my head around how exactly the reserve forces work, because there seems to be a lot of situations where it just won't work out and if the person is not willing or financially able to leave their job to go overseas at the time of being called up, then the government may recruit 15,000 more reserve soldiers, but if only part of them are in a situation to fight then that further reduces there effectiveness compared to full time soldiers.
Click to expand...

If people are worried about their "normal" wage whilst on operations then imo they are not the people the army want or need :rolleyes:

As for mobilisation you or your employer can object but you must have bloody good reasons you cant just say "nah i dont fancy it i have a holiday booked with family etc etc :rolleyes:

More TA is not a bad thing imho, maybe we will rethink trying to be the worlds police force in future ;)
 
The TA are a joke.
Don't get me wrong. There are a bunch of them that are very good but on the whole they are under trained and nowhere near the standards of a regular soldier.
You get some that turn up regularly for all the training etc and some that just put in the bare minimum so they can get their bonus at the end of the year.
Also, don't forget those that are ex 22 year soldiers that are just in it for the social life etc.
I reckon no more than 20% of the TA are capable of deploying and doing a proper job other than just making up numbers.

This is of course my opinion and probably does not reflect the truth :)


Oh, and on the issue of defending the Falklands? 5 Eurofighters against the whole Argentine air force?? Really?
As soon as they've took out the eurofighters they'd have a nice full sized runway (that we've built since the last war) to use as a base and could move all their long range bombers straight onto the islands. Once they did that, we'd never take it back.
 
There have been lots of cut backs and redundancies in my trade. I don't know how the future will bode for me as a techy. Hopefully this wave opens up improved promotion possibilities for me in the future.
Chances are ill be looking at civilian jobs a few years down the line though.

Overall my feeling on defence cut backs is maybe it's just time we started to accept we are a pretty small country and maybe our military size needs to reflect that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom