A post with content

[chickenfeet]

The recent spat between Admiral Brownship, General Brownjob, Mr Brown the Prime minister, Mr Browne the Defence Minister and Captain Darling the Chancellor (Where was Colonel Mustard?) about the size of the British Defence Budge was a classic example of ignoring the elephant in the room. Yes, the British defence budget is too small to support forces capable of fighting two pointless foreign wars simultaneously. Yes, the British defence budget is the second highest in NATO and must compete with other public services for available funds. Well done everybody! Could the answer perhaps be that Britain can't afford to fight two foreign wars simultaneously? O Woes, we haz no Empire.

Neither side will bring up the elephant of course as the military chiefs would advocate larger armed forces whatever the level of commitment and British politicians seem to have some, probably Freudian, need to prove their potency on the world stage especially if there is an American dick to use for comparison.

Britain has been trying to play a role on the world stage greater than its economy can support for at least 100 years. The army and navy of 1914 put a huge strain on the national finances even then. Since then war has become impossibly expensive. It always has been of course but I'm not sure Joe Punter realises by how much. Measuringworth.com claims that the purchasing power of a pound in 1914 was the same as 66 pounds today. Bear that in mind. The cost of fully equipping an infantry battalion in 1914 was less than a million pounds (quite a lot less). Today it's over a billion pounds. That's an increase of more than 1000 times as much or 15 times as much at constant purchasing power. One can produce even more dramatic figures for things like fighter aircraft.

What this means is that, in real terms, the British taxpayer is contributing more than two and a half times as much in real terms to maintain the 20 deployable infantry battalions of today (fn1) as they were to maintaining the 120 battalions of 1914. Clearly, a second class economy on the fringes of Europe can't hope to outspend in real terms a world empire but that seems to be the intention. It doesn't make sense.

Note 1. There are forty infantry battalions on the current British Army Orbat. However, there is only enough kit to deploy about half of them in a role in which they could do serious fighting (actually it's a bit less; probably 17 battalions). The rest would be equipped with hand held weapons and Land Rovers. They would have fewer heavy weapons than a battalion in 1939.

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

It does kind of amaze me just how many people are responsible for supporting the armies of First World countries. The war in Iraq is 1.5% of US GDP, if I remember right, which is striking considering how few US soldiers are actually there.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The US Army has been described with some justice as "the world's largest organization for moving things around". It has the highest ratio of support to combat troops of any army in history. The front end bits also have amazingly expensive gear which consumes staggering amounts of fuel.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

It has the highest ratio of support to combat troops of any army in history.

And did in the past. My father was stunned by the lavishness of supplies in 1944 - I remember his marvelling years later at receiving one new pair of socks a day (and the rest of the kit was commensurate.) This of course meant that GIs fought with dry feet - it made, he said, a huge difference.

[topicaltim.livejournal.com]

This is, of course, part of the budgeting process in which the UK is about to commit to spending £20 billion on a new Trident system, with the real justification, of course, being that the French have something similar and we can't let the neighbours have a shiny new car without matching it.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

See "Penis; size of"

[topicaltim.livejournal.com]

The surprising justification I hear quite a lot is "Terrorists might have nuclear weapons in years to come and we need to be able to respond in kind", which doesn't quite take into account the nature of terrorists; as far as I can see, if we responded that way to terrorists, the response to 9/11 should have been to invade Saudi Arabia (quite easy given how many US troops were based there) and the 7/7 London bombings should have been followed by the shelling of Leeds city centre.

If my resolve wavers, I remind myself that Norway has successfully avoided being invaded since World War II, despite its lack of nuclear weapons and obvious mineral wealth / high GDP / apparent satisfaction among the population. Surely it's been a tempting target for someone?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Terrorists might have nuclear weapons in years to come and we need to be able to respond in kind

Which obviously require nuclear submarines... I can't even think of a funny/sarcastic reason why one would need submarines as a launch platform for nuking terrorists even if one thought that nuking terrorists made any sense at all.

[topicaltim.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The terrorists would probably be close enough to be hit by a short-range land-based nuclear deterrent...

The question I want put to whichever politician is prepared to sign away £20 billion on New Trident is who do they imagine they might one day be firing it at? I'm genuinely interested.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Remember The Grand Design (http://www.yes-minister.com/ypmseas1a.htm)? Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn wrote it all back in 1984.

Sir Humphrey: "Don't you believe that Great Britain should have the best?"
Jim Hacker: "Yes, of course."
Sir Humphrey: "Very well, if you walked into a nuclear missile showroom you would buy Trident - it's lovely, it's elegant, it's beautiful. It is quite simply the best. And Britain should have the best. In the world of the nuclear missile it is the Savile Row suit, the Rolls Royce Corniche, the Château Lafite 1945. It is the nuclear missile Harrods would sell you. What more can I say?"
Jim Hacker: "Only that it costs £15 billion and we don't need it."
Sir Humphrey: "Well, you can say that about anything at Harrods."