British Armed Forces. In Decline?

[maqroll]

 

[KentVillan]

Obviously yes, although this started a long time ago, and spend has been pretty flat for about 20-30 years:

Edited March 22, 2023 by KentVillan

[TheAuthority]

I think I've posted this before, but my cousin was RAF before MI6.

When he was at Cosford he talked about sending memos to departments and could never work out why they didn't respond, only to find out later that the department in question had been closed for about 6 years 

[OutByEaster?]

I'm not against it

 

 

[MakemineVanilla]

4 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Obviously yes, although this started a long time ago, and spend has been pretty flat for about 20-30 years:

I suppose that someone has to work out how much kit can actually be bought for $565m, compared with $3.131trillion.

Edited March 22, 2023 by MakemineVanilla

[sidcow]

When the Ukraine war broke out the UK didn't have a single destroyer capable of putting to sea.  I think we've only got 2 or 3 capable now. 

Of course only having 6 full stop doesn't help.  Everytime kit is replaced it's the same bullshit story that these ones are more powerful than the previous ones so we don't need so many. 

So 14 type 42 becomes 6 type 45.

Current type 23 Frigate (16 no) to be replaced by 8 Type 26 and 5 inferior Type 31 Frigate with noises about maybe possibly some new Type 32 Frigates if they can get some export orders. 

450 Challenger 2 Tanks reduced to 227 in service. Instead of building or buying brand new tanks they're converting only 148 to Challenger 3 and scrapping the rest. 

The RAF has less jet fighters than many smaller nations now, only 100 Typhoon's in service. 29 Lighting's shared with The Navy to operate from the Aircraft Carriers (who seem to be mainly filled with US Marine Core Lighting's to make it worth even sending the Carriers to sea. 

The Army is decimated. 

You could go on. 

Frankly if we've only halved the amount allocated since the Cold War you wonder where the money is all going because top of my head I would have said we're probably spending less than 1/4 of what we would have been in those days. 

 

[KentVillan]

3 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I suppose that someone has to work out how much kit can actually be bought for $565m, compared with $3.131trillion.

Inflation, etc. For a relatively stable developed economy like the UK, % of GDP is probably the best measure.

If we want our military to punch above its weight without relying on the US, we’ll have to make some big public spending sacrifices elsewhere. Not sure there’s much appetite for that.

Or get the economy growing at a rate that simply hasn’t been seen anywhere in the developed world for decades.

[villa4europe]

So is our position as a global power...

The reality is we've (rightly imo) built up relationships with boys with bigger sticks (kw) let the yanks ruin their country with military spending not us

The notion that if putin or Xi step out of line our boys will go over and sort them out doesn't reflect the modern world, its gone

Now bin off trident too...

[MakemineVanilla]

7 hours ago, villa4europe said:

The notion that if putin or Xi step out of line our boys will go over and sort them out doesn't reflect the modern world, its gone

 

History seems to show that we go through cycles of cut-backs and then declare war as a matter of prestige, and are not prepared for it.

Churchill made cut-backs to the navy and then found we hadn't enough ships, so we had to swap territory for 50 American out-dated destroyers built in the 1920s.