Thin Pinstriped Line

Humphrey has a certain pet hate on some internet sites, and this is the trend to ‘fantasy fleet’ creation. While the merits of discussing possible courses of action are interesting, in recent years these sort of threads have routinely become an excuse to wishlist large numbers of ships, aircraft and vessels in an almost fantasian order of battle which bears no resemblance to any current reality. Almost without exception these threads prove immensely dull to read, and rarely achieve more than listing different types of impressive ships in arbitrary ‘fleets’. The concept of these so-called ‘fleets’ has often puzzled the author – it is something to which many posters cling to – the notion that the Royal Navy should somehow hark back to its imagined glory days and establish a ‘Far East Fleet’, a Med Fleet and south Atlantic squadrons, along with the supporting bases and dockyards. These impressive sounding titles are bandied around without really thinking what this means. Ironically...

The news this week about the appalling killing in Woolwich of Drummer Lee Rigby has come as a profound shock to many in this country. While as a nation we are used to the loss of our armed forces personnel, often serving far from home (indeed since 1945 there has only been one year where UK personnel were not killed on active duty), it is a truly appalling incident when a serving solider can be attacked and beheaded on the streets of south London. The incident has led to a wide ranging debate in the UK about the nature of terrorism and what can be done to deal with such appalling incidents. Additionally there has been a huge focus on whether the security services could have done more to prevent it. To the authors mind, the implied criticism of the Security Services seems unfair – one only has to look at the huge number of plots and attacks foiled over many years to realise how much evil that could have been wrought has been prevented from occurring. It is very easy to sit with th...

There was a lot of coverage of the MOD announcement on Tuesday 14 May that the UK would be changing its deployment routine for the final phase of Operation HERRICK (UK ops in Afghanistan). Since the operation began, rotations of the major formations have happened on a roughly six monthly basis, with units relieving each other in country. Originally, when set against the planned timeline for withdrawal, a further three HERRICK rotations were due to occur. Under yesterdays announcement the MOD has now changed its plans slightly, with the three rotations replaced by two longer deployments. In effect each of the last two HERRICKS will be eight months long instead of six.   The news has been met in some quarters with allegations that the Army is too overstretched and that this announcement is a direct result of defence cuts and not other reasons. Frankly these thoughts stand up to little scrutiny. When one looks into the timetable for the next two years, it is clear that the one o...

The National Audit Office report (NAO) into the decision by the UK MOD to change the procurement of the new carriers from the conventional to the short take off variant (CTOL and VSTOL respectively) has been released. The full report can be found HERE , and is well worth a read. At some 40 pages long, it provides a fascinating insight into one of the more controversial decisions taken in the last few years.   The background to the situation was the decision taken in the 2010 Strategic Defence Review to modify construction of the two CVF vessels from carrying the VSTOL variant of the F35, to carrying the CTOL variant. This change would also allow the planned F35 buy to not only carry out the Carrier Strike mission, but also fulfil the RAF Deep Penetration Offensive Capability (DPOC) requirement, which in turn was borne out of the old Future Offensive Air System (FOAS), which was designed to replace the Tornado GR4. Under SDSR, the intent was that the RN would only operate one ...

In the last week or so there have been two major Defence Reviews announced in France and Australia. Both nations are close partners of the UK and significant powers on the global stage, which means that these results are of direct interest to the UK.   The announcement of the French Defence Review, reported back on the future structure of the French military for the next 10 years. Essentially akin to the UK SDSR, the work was designed to address French budget challenges, and try to create a sustainable force which is affordable in the near future. The Think Defence website has helpfully collected a summary of all the reporting on the event ( HERE ) which are well worth reading.   In many ways the review highlights the challenging position France finds itself in at the start of the 21 st Century. Unlike the UK, the French have never had an ‘East of Suez’ moment, and arguably French policy for many years has been to continue projecting a low level amount of power a...