At this very moment,the United Kingdom's Prime Minister may be wondering why the British Army is unable to deploy a credible fighting formation to Eastern Europe,despite consuming the bulk of the defence budget,indeed,it is difficult to think of any conflict for which it was ever well prepared,herein we shall consider the options which would have been available with An Independent Army For An Independent Nation,a proposed force which does not exist at present but which could have been created within the current defence budget.
As expansion and contraction are normal states for an armed force,An Independent Army For An Independent Nation is designed to expand and contract and has changed only in scale over three decades,in stark contrast,the British Army suffers frequent radical disorganisations which reflect not changes in the enemy,the battlefield or technology but rather the prejudices of which ever senior officer is in post at the time,an indication that the army has the institutional memory of a goldfish.
An Independent Army For An Independent Nation shall be divided in to four ordinals (for want of a better word) only the first of which shall be available at short notice and this shall consist of the youngest soldiers and the newest equipment,soldiers recently retired from the First Ordinal shall join the Second Ordinal where they shall be issued with equipment also recently retired from the First Ordinal and therefore shall be serving with men and equipment they are familiar with,equipment which would otherwise be sold off for a fraction of it's replacement cost,for every soldier joining the Second Ordinal another shall be displaced from the Second Ordinal to the Third Ordinal and so on until discharge.
All soldiers shall be members of administrative regiments which in turn shall be part of administrative corps (the Intelligence Corps,the Royal Flying Corps,the Command Corps et ceteri),members of regular or Fencible regiments in the First Ordinal shall serve full time but members of Militia,Yeomanry and Volunteer regiments,who shall make up about a quarter of the total force,shall only serve part time,in the Second,Third and Fourth Ordinals all soldiers shall be mustered only once a year for roll call,pay,training,testing,inspection and parade,unless mobilised by Queen's Order,a process which shall take six,nine or twelve months respectively.
There shall be three operational field army headquarters in the First Ordinal,each commanded by a full general,such that under the proposed readiness cycle one may at all times be deployed or ready to deploy whilst a second commands domestic troops,subordinate to these armies being numbered field corps consisting of homogeneous role (infantry,light infantry,cavalry,artillery et ceteri) or mixed close combat,headquarters or train divisions each typically including a headquarters brigade,a train brigade and a number of role brigades which shall be in turn made up of battalions,each made up of companies,squadrons or batteries,each made up of platoons or troops,each of up to forty men drawn from various administrative regiments.
Under the terms of An Independent Army For An Independent Nation's proposed readiness cycle one third of the deployable regular First Ordinal force may be continuously deployed or ready to deploy,this shall typically include a small corps consisting of a composite division of corps and army troops and a mixed close combat division with a headquarters brigade,a train brigade,a cavalry brigade,a light infantry brigade and a medium infantry brigade and for a limited time this force may be doubled in size,with ninety days notice,by using part time soldiers to take over the regular's domestic standby tasks,the remaining third of the deployable force shall also be available at longer notice if need be.
Thus,depending of how soon or how late the Prime Minister chooses to act the First Ordinal of An Independent Army For An Independent Nation shall be able to deploy an army of one small composite corps with a single close combat division which may be sustained there indefinitely or,for a limited period,an army of several corps with several close combat divisions,in each case with equipment which out classes anything in Russian service,such as the Charger and Matilda vehicles,and with the full spectrum of corps and army troops including Royal Flying Corps squadrons (and which may be supplemented by Royal Naval Air Service air wings and Royal Marines),given sufficient notice this latter force may be doubled,tripled or even quadrupled,albeit at a lower quality,by calling up one or more of the other ordinals,the possibility of such a large British army rampaging through the Donbas shall send a strong political message to the Kremlin.
Whatever the force size may be,all elements of it shall be able to deploy to Ukraine directly by air using the Centaurus aircraft,the small fleet of which shall be able to air drop the ready brigade of the Light Infantry Division in a single lift,via the Channel Tunnel using railways or by sea via Poland using the proposed Agincourt class landing ships,a number of which shall be routinely loaded with the equipment and supplies of a brigade (although pertinent only in the case of a short notice operation,the Light Infantry formations may be more rapidly deployed than Medium Infantry or Heavy Cavalry formations but,like formations equipped with the Ajax and Boxer vehicles,they shall be unsuitable for tactically offensive operations against Russian armoured and infantry forces due to their limited protection and fire power).
The United Kingdom's most important military asset is it's civilian economy which generates the resources needed to fight a war,it is the defence industry which converts those resources in to the machines which win the war,the army is just the people who operate those machines,the last link in the kill chain (and historically the least successful,most expensive and least profitable link),An Independent Army For An Independent Nation therefore prioritises the nation's economy and defence industries over the whims of senior army officers.
Since the abolition of the ancient post of Master-General of the Ordnance,which existed for hundreds of years for good reason,the British Army has squandered thousands of millions of pounds on the Ajax fiasco,which is hardly surprising as army officers are just civilians who have been on a short training course and history suggests they know little about warfare and even less about design and manufacture,but by creating a Secretary of State for Ordnance (advised by a Board of Ordnance led by a Master-General of the Ordnance and made up of professional Ordnance Corps officers expert in all matters relating to design,manufacture,storage,construction,maintenance,purchase and contracting),as a cabinet level position alongside the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War,representing an Ordnance Office independent of the Admiralty Office and War Office,to oversee Royal Ordnance Factories,Royal Ordnance Depots and other facilities,army officers shall be confined to meddling in things which they might know a little about,whatever those may be.
The Royal Ordnance Factories and also the Royal Dockyards,which shall manufacture ordnance,equipment and supplies (such as the Quarter Inch Rifle,the Three Inch Mortar,the Four Inch Mortar,the Six Inch Rocket,the Five And A Half Inch Gun Howitzer,the Ballistic Artillery Rocket,the Ox,the Mule,the Pony,the Horse and the Elephant),shall be able to double production by temporarily working single set double shifts while a second set is recruited and trained,a process facilitated by increased numbers permitting greater specialisation,a nation which has the capacity to supply it's own armed forces shall also be better able to provide help to others.
Thus,at the start of the recent crisis,in November,An Independent Army For An Independent Nation shall have provided the Prime Minister with the option of deploying a small but well equipped army of tens of thousands of men at short notice and of sustaining it continuously,now,several months later the Prime Minister would have the option of doubling the size of that force and sustaining that for many months,in future there would be the possibility of deploying the remaining third of the deployable First Ordinal force or of mobilising the remaining three ordinals to deploy a force of hundreds of thousands of men,in addition to supplying Ukraine with British made weapons,equipment and supplies,all without the need to seek the consent of foreign governments and with all of the money spent being fed straight back in to the United Kingdom's economy.
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