Thin Pinstriped Line

The Sun has reported that the Royal Navy was forced in a state of desperation to send a ‘plastic’ warship to escort a small Russian force in the Channel last August. This was not revealed in a press release by the MOD, leading to speculation that the RN had something to hide, namely embarrassment that no larger vessels were able to escort it. The debate on social media quickly became one as to whether the RN was right not to flag this up, or if it has a duty to notify all escort operations as a matter of course, and let the media decide as to whether the release is newsworthy or not. To Humphrey this story captures the essence of the difficult relationship that the RN and MOD has with the media. To his mind there are three equally plausible reasons for the escort mission not being announced, although he has no direct knowledge as to why this was actually the case. The first point to note is that the Hunt class MCMV is not merely a plastic warship. It is the worlds largest Glas...

The Guardian published an article today by Ian Keddie on what the UK armed forces could look like if they had a truly blank slate to renew and refresh themselves ( HERE . The article put forward a number of ideas, many of which felt less original and innovative, more restatement of old ideas that have often been considered and discarded for good reasons. The vision of the piece is built around the notion that a truly revamped British armed forces would look to let go of full spectrum capability and instead choose to become deeply specialised and of more relevance to NATO by losing some capabilities and instead focusing on a few niche areas. In the paper this is turned into a vision of a force which culls heavy armour and the Tornado, but buys more Typhoons, focuses on ASW and still keeps the carrier. The fundamental problem that Humphrey has with the article is simple – the prescribed solution is neither innovative, nor genuinely specialised and seems to only consider the UK i...

“Scrap the aid budget, spend it on Defence” is a common refrain heard on social media and elsewhere by many commentators, who feel that the UK aid budget is too large, that it is out of control and that it does little to support UK security compared to the MOD. There is also usually a view that the armed forces should take a much stronger steer on delivery of aid, and that it should not be granted to countries with space programmes, nor spent on providing counselling to llamas wearing hand woven 100% vegan sandals and suffering from low self esteem. It is easy to think this at times – after all when you read headlines like the suggestion that the UK provided money to an Ethiopian girl band, taxpayers rightly may wonder why they are spending this abroad, and not at home, and why not use it on the armed forces instead. To Humphrey though, the work of DFID is perhaps one of the most important parts of the external UK government influence toolkit, able to do work that can, if done...

The Guardian published an article by Dr Mark Galeotti ( HERE ) recently focusing on what purported to be the Russian view of UK defence priorities, and putting forward suggestions that UK defence planners should focus on. It is an intriguing article, which focuses on three broad themes that are perhaps slightly at odds with each other. Firstly that the UK cuts high mobility light infantry at its own risk, secondly that fewer high end ships like QUEEN ELIZABETH are needed, and finally that there is a need to focus on morale and training, with the overall aim of generating light forces able to deploy globally, without necessarily the inconvenience of possessing Trident. Humphrey has been lucky enough to travel to Russia and visit many of the sites from the Great Patriotic War and Russian Revolution. He has a respect for the culture, history and civilization of Russia, and has been fortunate enough on occasions to work with the Russian military. He also harbours a deep respect for...

The MOD Civil Service is the fourth arm of Defence, an organisation full of dedicated professional people who do an amazing job in helping keep the UK safe. Yet it is an organisation that is criminally understood by people, and much maligned by others who see it as a refuge for penpushers and officialdom, more Vogon poet than Vanguard class. Humphrey makes no effort to hide his bias here. He regards the MOD Civil Service as an organisation that has brilliant people doing exceptional work, and who encapsulate the very best of what it means to work in Public Service. It deserves a far better press than it gets. This article is an attempt to level the playing field after comments on social media complaining about the 56,000 civil servants in the MOD and wondering what they all did.  This article is intended to be a primer which tries to explain what the MOD is, what its people do and some of the challenges they face. It is essentially ‘MOD 101’, and the aim of it is longer te...