The Few,the handful of pilots who heroically defended the United Kingdom in it's darkest hour,or as racist and misandrist Royal Air Force officers might describe them: "useless white male pilots".
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 June 2023
Monday, 13 March 2023
Joint Leader's Statement On AUKUS
"In September 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced AUKUS – a new security partnership that will promote a free and open Indo-Pacific that is secure and stable.
The first major initiative of AUKUS was our historic trilateral decision to support Australia acquiring conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs). Today, we announce our pathway to achieve this critical capability.
Together we will deliver SSN-AUKUS – a trilaterally-developed submarine based on the United Kingdom’s next-generation design that incorporates technology from all three nations, including cutting edge U.S. submarine technologies. Australia and the United Kingdom will operate SSN-AUKUS as their submarine of the future. Australia and the United Kingdom will begin work to build SSN-AUKUS in their domestic shipyards within this decade.
In order to deliver conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines to Australia at the earliest possible date, we intend to pursue the following phased approach, moving through each phase based on mutual commitments from each nation:
Beginning in 2023, Australian military and civilian personnel will embed with the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and in the United States and United Kingdom submarine industrial bases to accelerate the training of Australian personnel. The United States plans to increase SSN port visits to Australia beginning in 2023, with Australian sailors joining U.S. crews for training and development; the United Kingdom will increase visits to Australia beginning in 2026.
As early as 2027, the United States and United Kingdom plan to begin forward rotations of SSNs to Australia to accelerate the development of the Australian naval personnel, workforce, infrastructure and regulatory system necessary to establish a sovereign SSN capability.
Starting in the early 2030s, pending Congressional approval, the United States intends to sell Australia three Virginia class submarines, with the potential to sell up to two more if needed. This step will systematically grow Australia’s sovereign SSN capability and support capacity.
In the late 2030s, the United Kingdom will deliver its first SSN-AUKUS to the Royal Navy. Australia will deliver the first SSN-AUKUS built in Australia to the Royal Australian Navy in the early 2040s.
This plan is designed to support Australia’s development of the infrastructure, technical capabilities, industry and human capital necessary to produce, maintain, operate, and steward a sovereign fleet of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines. Australia is fully committed to responsible stewardship of naval nuclear propulsion technology.
When we announced the AUKUS partnership in September 2021, we committed to set the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard. The plan we announce today delivers on this commitment and reflects our longstanding leadership in, and respect for, the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. We continue to consult with the International Atomic Energy Agency to develop a non-proliferation approach that sets the strongest precedent for the acquisition of a nuclear-powered submarine capability.
Our plan elevates all three nations’ industrial capacity to produce and sustain interoperable nuclear-powered submarines for decades to come, expands our individual and collective undersea presence in the Indo-Pacific, and contributes to global security and stability. In these outcomes, AUKUS reflects the principle that shared action, taken in partnership, can benefit all.
Implementing AUKUS will also require robust, novel information sharing and technology cooperation. Our nations are committed to further trilateral collaboration that will strengthen our joint capabilities, enhance our information and technology sharing, and integrate our industrial bases and supply chains while strengthening the security regimes of each nation.
For more than a century, our three nations have stood shoulder to shoulder, along with other allies and partners, to help sustain peace, stability, and prosperity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific. We believe in a world that protects freedom and respects human rights, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states, and the rules-based international order. The steps we are announcing today will help us to advance these mutually beneficial objectives in the decades to come."
Saturday, 27 August 2022
Remember The Little Belt!
Today Her Majesty's Ship Prince of Wales departed for the rebel colonies where she shall host the Atlantic Future Forum,which is an opportunity for officials from the United Kingdom and the United States of America to discuss such pressing matters as the return of the thirteen colonies,reparations for the attack on His Majesty's Sloop Little Belt and why sharing is caring.
Thursday, 2 June 2022
The War In Ukraine: The Arsenal Of Democracy
Armies do not win wars,industries do,unfortunately a generation of senior British Army officers has been allowed to destroy the United Kingdom's,once war winning,ground combat industry,which is why the Prime Minister now has to beg for permission to send foreign made military equipment to Ukraine,to be the arsenal of democracy one must first possess an arsenal.
Sunday, 10 April 2022
Nobody's Perfect
Budget increases,industrial strategies and,in particular,a National Shipbuilding Strategy,Boris Johnson has done some very good things for the United Kingdom's armed forces,but wasting tax payers money on one hundred more,militarily useless,German made,Boxer vehicles is not one of them.
Tuesday, 1 March 2022
Alpha And Omega's Kingdom Come
This is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,who is not afraid to shoot down Vlad the Invader's combat aircraft (the rules of the game were written in Syria).
This is Boris Johnson,who is.
Wednesday, 16 February 2022
An Independent Army For An Independent Nation: Ukraine,The Sixteenth of February,Twenty Twenty-one
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.
_01.jpg){kind=link}
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.
Monday, 20 September 2021
The Cost Of A Sikorsky Black Hawk
The advent of military forums exposed the extent to which myths become received wisdom within the British Armed Forces,one of these myths is that Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters are a fraction of the cost of their British counterparts,herein we shall look at how much other countries pay for Black Hawks purchased via Foreign Military Sales,which is the route used by the United Kingdom to acquire helicopters from the United States of America.
The sale to Lithuania of six Black Hawk helicopters and associated items for three hundred and eighty million United States' dollars was approved on the Sixth of July,Twenty Twenty.
The sale to Croatia of two Black Hawk helicopters and associated items for one hundred and fifteen million United States' dollars was approved on the Thirtieth of October,Twenty Nineteen.
The sale to the Czech Republic of twelve Black Hawk helicopters and associated items for eight hundred million United States' dollars was approved on the Third of May,Twenty Nineteen.
The sale to Latvia of four Black Hawk helicopters and associated items for two hundred million United States' dollars was approved on the Third of August,Twenty Eighteen.
These four recent Foreign Military Sales approvals total one thousand four hundred and ninety-five million dollars for twenty-four helicopters and associated items,an average of just over sixty-two million dollars per aircraft,which at current exchange rates is over forty-five million pounds sterling per Black Hawk helicopter.
Monday, 22 March 2021
Defence in a Competitive Age
Defence in a Competitive Age describes Defence's contribution to the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.
It may be downloaded here.
Saturday, 20 March 2021
The Six Aeroplanes: Prefect,Pegasus,Perseus,Centaurus,Falcon And Furious
Further to an earlier piece on rationalising the United Kingdom's naval and military helicopter fleet and another on Hector,Hercules and Hermes,herein we shall list the only aeroplane types which the United Kingdom's armed forces actually need (rather than have or want).
The Prefect is an aeroplane of approximately one and a half long tons maximum take off weight used for both naval and military initial aeroplane pilot training.
The Prefect shall eventually be replaced by an aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
Picture: Grand Logistics
The Pegasus shall be an aeroplane of approximately ten long tons maximum take off weight used for both naval and military multi engine aeroplane pilot training,low intensity combat operations and for other,noncombat,tasks for which a larger aeroplane is unneccessary or impractical such as the Waterguard Service (surveillance and search and rescue) and Scottish Ambulance Service (air ambulance) charters.
The Pegasus shall be an all new aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
Picture: Grand Logistics
The Perseus shall be an aeroplane of approximately fifty long tons maximum take off weight used for both naval and military multi engine aeroplane pilot training,combat patrol and for other,noncombat,tasks such as Foreign Office (secure transport) charter.
The Perseus shall be an all new aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
The Centaurus shall be an aeroplane of approximately three hundred long tons maximum take off weight used for military four engine aeroplane pilot training,strategic transport,tactical transport,naval mine laying,aerial refuelling and for other noncombat tasks for which a large aeroplane is necessary such as the Foreign Office (foreign aid) charter.
The Centaurus shall be an all new aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
The Falcon shall be an aeroplane of approximately ten long tons maximum take off weight used for both naval and military combat aeroplane pilot training,and for other noncombat tasks such as weapons trials and the Aviation Medicine Flight.
The Falcon shall be an all new aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
The Furious shall be an aeroplane of approximately fifty long tons maximum take off weight used for both naval and military combat aeroplane pilot training,air defence,air attack and aerial reconnaissance.
The Furious shall be an all new aircraft designed and built in the United Kingdom to stimulate the United Kingdom's economy and secure the future of the United Kingdom's aeroplane industry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)