Thin Pinstriped Line

In a letter to the Times on 29 December, the Chief of the General Staff Sir Nick Carter claimed that he had reduced the number of 1* and above appointments in the Army by 40% since taking up his post. This is the latest intervention in ‘The War On Stars’, a long running and perhaps uniquely British view that any senior officer is a bad thing, and that where possible we should get rid of lots of them, and spend the savings on something else instead. The challenge is far more difficult than just saying ‘lets get rid of 10% of all manpower at 1* level’ though. It has wide reaching consequences, and needs to be done carefully to avoid impacting across a range of key Defence issues. In simple terms, Officers at the rank of 1* and above could be said to do posts that encompass the following concepts: a.        Command Formations / Units / Organisations b.        Manage Programmes / Directorates / Capabilities c. ...

As 2017 draws to a close, it is a good time to take stock on the state of Defence, and in particularly whether 2107 was ‘the year of the Royal Navy’. The headlines in December focused on the perceived lack of Royal Navy ships overseas, with outbreaks of near hysteria among some commentators that the UK would somehow lose influence because of not having an escort ship deployed somewhere outside of home waters. This period perhaps summed up a year where Defence felt like it was on the back foot against often ill-founded criticism.  For the MOD 2017 has been a year in which much was promised, commitments were kept, orders were made, but somehow the public relations battle was lost. On the positive side the UK throughout the year continued to demonstrate its global reach, presence and capability. As the MOD reminded us over Christmas there will be thousands of British personnel deployed on 25 live operations in 30 countries. There are UK assets deployed right now on every continen...

The Times reported yesterday that the Royal Navy has no major warships deployed outside of home waters for the first time in hundreds of years. This reflects a combination of factors including the unexpected return to the UK of a Type 45 from the Med, several deployments ending and the next planned batch of escorts sailing not due to occur until early in 2018. There is a careful balancing act required in programming warship deployments, and historically the RN has tried to run its years on a ‘term’ concept, whereby there are three major periods of ‘block leave’ (usually Easter, Summer and Christmas) where operational tempo is significantly reduced, ships will usually be alongside and their crews on leave. For ships deployed abroad, it is unusual to see them at sea over the Christmas period unless there is a very high priority operation going on. The move to 9 month deployments has seen a mandatory 4 week stand down period built into each programme, where the deployed ship will...

The headline news across much of the UK media today was that HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH has reportedly sprung a leak during sea trials and will require repairs. This is the cause of woe, despair and misery and is apparently a huge embarrassment for the Royal Navy. Sea trials are an integral part of a ships life, they are designed to take a complex mechanical creation, built from millions of parts and make sure it all works together as expected without any major problems. The purpose of sea trials is akin to not only testing things work, but also working through the ‘snagging list’ that identifies issues that perhaps didn’t quite work as expected, or where minor issues need tweaking. It also occasionally identifies more serious issues too. Every warship in modern history has undergone some form of sea trials, and without fail every warship will have identified some form of problem as a result. That HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH has experienced a very minor issue is not remotely unusual or unexp...

The recent news that Qatar has signed for the purchase of 24 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft from the UK is a welcome piece of good news. It represents a significant defence contract in Qatar, and is a tangible symbol of the UK reaping the reward for its sustained re-engagement in the Gulf since 2010. Following the UK withdrawal in 1973, official policy was to have a non-permanent military presence in the region, and no bases or other long-term infrastructure were formally sanctioned. This led to the mildly odd position that while the region was one of the busiest for the UK operationally, these tasks were funded and looked at as discrete operations, and funded accordingly, and not as part of a coherent longer-term presence. There was a clear perception by many Gulf states that the UK was losing interest in the region, and that it saw its interests as lying closer to home -a relationship that reached its nadir under the Brown government, where hardly any Ministers visited or enga...