Thin Pinstriped Line

Think Defence has kindly offered me a spot to post occasionally on matters of interest. While many readers of this site are long time TD regulars, I strongly recommend anyone who hasn't been there to take a look. The text below is the first part of a three part series on the UK engagement in the East of Suez region. The original article can be found at http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/06/east-of-east-of-suez-the-uk-military-presence-in-the-asia-pacific-region/ East of East of Suez – the UK commitment to the Asia / Pacific Rim. The Far East is an area which has long held a fascination for many in the UK – both as a tourist destination, a source of economic prosperity, an emerging powerhouse of influence and dynamism, and a location where over many years the MOD has been engaged in one form or another. The region conjures up images of UK forces fighting in the jungles and seas of the Pacific, of the fall of Singapore, of great national humiliation, and immense pride, in wars su...

Meeting with Scandinavian colleagues recently, Humphrey was told about the latest interesting military appointment in Denmark. Not a phrase one usually expects to see (standfast Hamlet), but in this case, a well-deserved one. Gen Bartram (Copyright Artilleriet.dk) The new Danish Chief of Defence Staff took up post a couple of months ago following what can best be described as an open job competition. Rather than the previous approach, more usually seen around most NATO countries, whereby the 3* heads of Service are in competition, the Danish Government decided to advertise the job openly. In theory, anyone in the country was eligible to apply, and the rumour was that at least one fast food franchise manager had applied for the job (“Do you want fries with that airstrike Prime Minister? ”). The successful applicant (General Peter Bartram), was an in service military candidate, but by no means an experienced senior officer. The General was serving as a local acting...

In the last part of this series, we looked at the importance of the recruiting and training system in creating a modern Naval Service which has, at its core, an extremely well trained and motivated cadre of personnel. We’ll return to the issue of personnel in a later piece, but for this instalment, Humphrey wants to focus on an often forgotten reason why the Royal Navy (RN) can be quite positive about its future – namely, the infrastructure to support the RN. Current Shore Bases Since the mid-1990s, the RN has operated around a cluster of three primary naval bases – Portsmouth, Plymouth and Faslane. There remains a large refit complex in Rosyth, although no vessels are based there permanently. Overseas the RN maintains a reasonable support complex in Gibraltar, a large fuel depot and wharves in Singapore, a small naval party and ‘Z’ Berth in Diego Garcia (albeit with minimal berthing), and a small military port in the Falkland Islands. There is a cluster of support and infrastructu...

As regular readers of the blog will know, Humphrey tends to take a fairly positive outlook on most things in Defence. For all the comments about the loss of capability, power and military numbers, he remains upbeat that actually things aren’t looking too grim, particularly for the Royal Navy. While the popular narrative remains that the RN is declining after years of neglect, and that the UK has ceased to be a credible military power, there is actually a lot of good stuff going on in the RN at the moment. Too much of what the RN does, or achieves daily is taken for granted, and never actually commented on by the media. The aim of this post is to take a look at the sort   of things about the RN that make it so potent, and why, despite the loss of hulls, it remains a genuinely credible naval power. Too much has been written about ships, and how the loss of frigates or fixed wing carriers impacts on the UK ability to project power. This post aims to look beyond a simple ORBAT, and...

Yesterday was ‘R Day’ – the point where thousands of service personnel found out whether they were being made redundant or not. The process identified those at risk of redundancy many months ago, and based on the many military colleagues that Humphrey saw, there appeared to be three reactions: a.        Disappointment that they would be leaving HM Forces unwillingly b.       Delight that they had been selected for voluntary redundancy c.        Disappointment that they hadn’t been selected for voluntary redundancy. It was telling that despite the difficult jobs market, 72% of those on the redundancy signal were volunteers. Many the author spoke to couldn’t believe their luck that they were going to receive large sums of money to leave the military, and spoke of being able to pay their mortgage off and never work again. For most of those on the list yesterday, there was real excitement ...

The speech by the Secretary of State for Defence, Phillip Hammond, on the evolution of UK defence got a large amount of media attention this week. The entire transcript of the speech can be found over at the Think Defence website ( Link here) .   The speech was noteworthy for starting to expose the thinking underpinning the structural changes in the armed forces at present. As has been seen, the procurement budget has now been balanced, and the PR12 exercise completed. Theoretically the MOD procurement budget is now properly sorted and able to deliver everything still left in it. The next herculean task is to try to solve the problem of downsizing the military to meet the requirements of the future. SDSR Vision Although widely seen by many as a cuts exercise, one thing SDSR did well was to try to extract the UK from the long term defence ambition of building large armed forces optimised for entry on to foreign territory with a view to staying for a prolonged time. The lessons...

The Think Defence website has been carrying a piece on nominations for the Defence IQ Military Blog 2012 awards. The article can be found at http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/06/defence-iq-blogging-awards/  (text is also below). Humphrey would strongly encourage all readers to nominate any blog that they feel warrants recognition. There is a plethora of excellent blogs and military matters sites on the internet, and it is a great idea to generate recognition for them. The author would personally support both the Think Defence website, and also the excellent Canadian 3Ds blog ( http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/ ) where Mark Collins does a superb job of summing up Canadian defence developments. Nominations close on Wed 6 Jun, so move fast! Link from http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/06/defence-iq-blogging-awards I wanted to get in touch to let you know about the Defence IQ Blogging Awards which aims to recognise and reward the industry’s top bloggers and the efforts they go...

Humphrey was lucky enough to get excellent ringside seats for the Thames River Pageant on Sunday, and was incredibly proud to watch as the flotilla passed by. This was a day to be proud to be British, and one in which the Royal Navy should be very proud of the role that it played. There has been some minor comments over the role played by the Royal Navy, and why there was no Fleet Review during the jubilee period. Also, there were some ill-informed comments as to why no RN frigates were on the river.   There are several points that need to be made about this event. Firstly, Buckingham Palace made very clear that they only wanted one official function this year, and this was the Jubilee Muster which occurred at Windsor. Anything else was seen as a non MOD function. The Windsor Castle muster was an excellent opportunity to show off the military in one glorious afternoon. A fleet review, in this author’s opinion would have added relatively little.  While it may sound lik...

I t has been announced by US Secretary of Defence, that by 2020 60% of the USN will be based in the Asia Pacific theatre. This is a significant shift in posture, and reflects the wider changes occurring to the US military as it orientates itself away from a global posture, and into a more Asian century. Lets consider for a moment what this means – the reality is that by 2020, 60% of the USN, including ‘a majority of’ surface combatants, submarines, and no less than six carrier groups will be based in the Pacific fleet. This is a very substantial shift in resourcing, and reflects this authors long standing view that the US is experiencing its ‘East of Suez’ decade, where increasingly difficult choices have to be made about where resources are applied. In practical terms, as hull numbers drop ever more steadily, and replacements seem interminably delayed, the USN appears on track for an escort fleet of between 70-80 surface ships by 2020. This will be coupled with a currently 50 ...