What Is a Tier One Military Power And Does It Matter If The UK Isn't One?


What is a ‘Tier One Armed Forces and why do we need them’? A simple question, reportedly reasonably posed by a Prime Minister and Chancellor seeking to understand why the UK needs to spend nearly £40bn per year on defence. It is a fair question to ask of the MOD – why does the UK in 2018 need this ‘Tier One’ armed force capability (which in itself is a truly dreadful phrase) and what benefits does the taxpayer reap from it?

The argument goes that the UK is, along with other permanent members of the UN Security Council one of the few nations able to deploy armed forces in numbers and capability globally at a time and place of their choosing. In reality Humphrey would argue that when you break the other four nations down, outside of the US (the only truly global superpower), Russia has at best a limited capability to deploy at distance away from its own borders, while China may be more capable, but remains focused on a predominantly naval global approach, not mirrored by wider land and airpower deployments – it remains unlikely in the extreme that the PLA would deploy an armoured division in (for example) Africa on operations. France maintains a global reach, but this is arguably as much to protect French global territories as it is a genuinely capable armed force. The French Armed Forces have reach and prestige, but would they do this if the nation did not have its overseas territory to worry about?

The UK is in the curious position of having high end globally deployable armed forces, theoretically capable of fighting in the most intensive theatres of conflict, but also maintaining these almost by an accident of history, with many capabilities and facilities dating back either to the Empire or the Central Front.  Were someone designing the British Armed Forces today, it is highly unlikely that the current model and structures would be adopted. To the eyes of many in Whitehall, while the individual personnel are superb, and immensely valued, the structures and capabilities represent historical legacy and anachronisms that are chronically wasteful.


Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright
The MOD has spent decades with a generous budget settlement compared to most Whitehall departments, and a strongly supportive backbench support network. Yet despite this, there is a regular case of special pleading for more money in order maintain the status quo and not reduce the military. But whenever proposals are made to try and make cuts, the cacophony of leaks explaining how mergers, closures and changes would threaten the status of the armed forces as they stand and the UK’s place in the world means these plans are cancelled or amended.

A strong argument could be made that the MOD has spent decades on the edge of institutional failure, propped up by successive Governments who are unwilling to let it fail, but where the organisations inside it are too reluctant to really ask or change their behaviours to move with the times and make the aspirations fit the budget. Perhaps it is this sense that the MOD is continuing to ask for more, without clearly defining ‘why’ is driving the reasonable questioning from No10 & 11 – what is it that means that the UK should continue to maintain the status quo and not look to do things differently?

A glance at the UK’s global commitments and armed forces would suggest that we continue to as a nation aspire to have the influence to be involved in shaping the outcomes of international crises and play a responsible part in the rules based international system. But the threats we face as a nation are changing, as are the ways in which they are dealt with.

The sort of threats that are emerging are not necessarily dealt with by maintaining a ‘balanced globally deployable military’. Do you need an armoured division to react to cyber attacks and fake news? Is the public willing to support the deployment of troops on the ground in response to the Russians moving little green men into a country somewhere in Central Europe? Do we as a nation need to maintain the ability to send tanks and guns half way around the world for exercises with nations that we are never likely to operate with in actual combat deployments?

A fairly hard cynical look at what the UK needs to ensure our national security as a nation would suggest that what is required moving forward is the ability to deter potential aggressors who threaten our integrity as a nation, the ability to contribute meaningful capability to coalition operations which benefit the national interest of the UK, and the ability to use our armed forces as enablers to support the delivery of wider national security goals.

This translates quickly into sustaining a credible deterrence force, which is both nuclear based and also other capabilities such as cyber and the like, where the threat of use would send a clear deterrence message to potential aggressors. At the same time maintenance of a small sustainable force that benefits our interests would seem to be an argument for carriers (operating well in multi-national task groups), special forces and intelligence assets, niche airpower capabilities like strike (e.g storm shadow and brimstone)  plus ISTAR/airlift enablers to support allies operations, plus a small ground force capable of fitting into the framework of wider allied operations.

This force would ensure continued value to our allies, particularly the US, whereby the UK can offer to put in capabilities that complement and enhance operations and ensure the continued flow of wider benefits under agreements like the 5-EYES treaty. In other words, structure our forces to be nakedly transactional in nature – the UK will provide assets to participate globally to get wider benefits, but will not invest in units that do not enhance our standing or access.

This model is based on the idea that the UK is unlikely to ever operate in isolation again. Other than the ridiculous idea that the Falklands are invaded (which as the years go by requires the smoking of ever more potent psychedelic substances to conjure up an invasion scenario), the reality that UK national integrity is threatened to the point where a purely national deployment on the ground abroad will occur without any allied support outside of our home territory is unthinkable.

If we assume all operations are going to be with our allies then the question quickly becomes – why should the UK be a tier one military? Why not invest in niche areas and offer up a strong package of capabilities that people will want to see used? If you are operating in a coalition then the trick is to be able to secure the best posts in the HQ chain to influence campaign planning and execution – offering up a package of ISTAR, airlift and SF, along with highly permissive Rules of Engagement will see nations keen to see the UK participate and maintain influential posts, without the requirement to send tens of thousands of troops.


This philosophy could arguably be seen in the recent strikes on Syria where the UK offered up a transactional bargain – access to UK bases, tanking and ISTAR abilities and niche assets in order to provide an additional participating nation in the coalition and a say in the aims of the strikes.

When you look to this model then it is clear that the RN and the RAF have a fairly positive future ahead of them. The RN likely to move to a model built around the deployment of airpower via the sea, and offering its carrier to support the USN (thus buying influence for wider support), nuclear submarines to support wider missions and a escort force to support UK interests globally. An even more focused military approach would perhaps also choose to put resources into ASW (such as seen in the 1981 defence review) to combat the very real threat of Russian submarines at the expense of a globally deployable escort force. The RAF too offers a range of flexible assets able to support coalition operations and secure top table access. The combination of basing, highly capable aircraft, sensors and weapons makes it a truly valuable player.

The problem question is ‘what do you do with the army’? The public appetite for deployments that involve long drawn out conflicts is simply not there. HERRICK demonstrated that an Army of 100,000 people was very good at creating an inordinately large number of process based staff officer jobs in Bastion which added almost nothing to combat effectiveness outside the wire, and tied up the air transport fleet and huge chunks of defence resources to sustain an operating base that seemingly existed to sustain the operating base.

The challenge with the deployable division idea is that while the Army want it badly as a measure of capability, it is hard to see what benefits it brings the UK beyond putting troops on the ground for 6 months and breaking the Army arms plot in the process.  Once it has deployed, it cannot quickly be redeployed, hence it is more of a deterrent one must hope is never tested for use as to do so would leave the army exposed.

The question ‘why tier one’ perhaps cuts to the bone of the existential question about the role of the British Army, and whether it is needed in the numbers that it is, or  the range of capabilities that it has. One must ask whether if we lost the sacred cow that is the deployable division, and instead invested in an ability to deploy a small but well equipped brigade at best, if the UK operational effectiveness and influence would actually be harmed, or if it would make no real difference?

In a world where the concept either seems to be ‘deployable division’ or ‘strategic raiding’ one senses that the public would not tolerate either outcome. A deployable division represents troops on the ground, and potential casualties against a peer nation likely to quickly exceed TELIC or HERRICK in the name of a multi-national entanglement that would see the British Army committed to hold ground and be prepared to die valiantly for a corner of Eastern Europe. Strategic raiding seems to represent a concept that the UK would be willing to put small parties ashore in random nations to inflict damage and withdraw, apparently then sailing on without then ending up at war with said nation.


In a world where Parliament is now seemingly consulted at every opportunity for the use of UK troops, it is hard to see where strategic raiding could occur without the element of surprise being reduced, and it is also hard to see public acceptance of the likely causalties that such an operation would bring about (if you are sending a small raiding party, you are not by definition going to be deploying with the wider protective top cover bubble that other operations had). Is there really public appetite for this sort of commando raid or parachute attack, knowing that it would essentially start a war and possibly inflict huge UK casualties?

The challenge for the UK is to define what it is to be a ‘Tier One’ military power – because at present in isolation the UK seems to be paying a large bill for a capability that won’t necessarily meet the requirements of the 21st century. But to make the changes necessary to modernise and adapt is likely to cause political problems and be unsustainable – leaving the armed forces in the worst of both worlds – over budget for a force structure that doesn’t make sense, while unable to coherently restructure to face future threats.

A better question is ‘is the UK a tier one power’ – which if you look at the range of levers of power including influence, diplomatic reach, engagement opportunities, security agreements, aid budgets and soft power, coupled with military capability, is a very different question indeed. Arguably the most effective UK military deployment in the last couple of years was the response to Hurricane Irma - and if this is the biggest threat likely to face UK national interests, then is this road we need to go down - investment in plant, engineering and logistics capability and not high end weapon systems?


UK interests in the world often do not require the deployment of a carrier battle group to be protected – the investment of a small embassy reopening, an additional bit of bilateral aid funding and support for a nations campaign to lead a multi-national organisation may be enough to secure the sort of influence and support to see policy changes that give the UK the outcomes it desires.

The aid budget, much maligned by fans of defence, is an example where the investment of resources provides a suite of tools to influence and shape how other nations work with the UK – it is perhaps fair to suggest that more governments are directly influenced by UK aid being available as a carrot than they are by the theoretical existence of a UK carrier battle group which is on the other side of the world as a stick.

The question that needs to be asked of the UK is whether we as a nation want to continue to pay the unaffordable price of being a ‘Tier One military power’ without its capabilities necessarily being of value or if we want to be a highly effective military power that matters because of its valuable capabilities. One only has to look at nations like Denmark, whose investment in niche assets and specialist areas has ensured that the Danes are keenly sought after international partners who punch above their theoretical weight as a result. This debate may hurt the pride of those who desire a military that is vast and mighty, but it needs to be had to ensure that we have a military which is right for the world we live in.

It will be interesting to see how the UK MOD responds to the question of ‘why do we need to be a tier one power’ and whether they can justify their answer or not…



Comments

  1. Dear Humph,

    Speaking as an armchair general, I humbly apologise for thinking the armed forces were going under. I'd read several Navy histories and the telegraph obsessively, and thought that because we had few major surface warships other than the carriers, that meant we were 4th rate. I wrote a silly article decrying the state of the Navy. Thanks to your well-informed articles, I am now aware of the treasonous inaccuracies spat out by the press, and I am grateful for being proven wrong. The Navy is fine.

    I am utterly ashamed of my previous attitude and will remain so until my dying day. That's not an overstatement- servicemen and women are probably ground down due to the despicable attitudes of people like me. There is no excuse, and probably no redemption. If you need someone to make an example of in an article on the perils of inaccurate information, use me. I'd happily contribute.

    So thankyou, and apologies.

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    1. You haven't signed it, so who do we contact?

      Delete
    2. Blogger seems to have taken away my signature etc. If it doesn't sign this one, my name if Geoffrey Simon Hicking. I've commented on here before. Tell me where to send contact details and I'll do it.

      Delete
  2. I'm going to say I'm not surprised, Gavin Williamson struck me as someone over promoted. An experienced minister would have stratagised this meeting and made sure the response to a fairly obvious question was already clearly understood by all parties before the meeting took place. He is badly out of his depth and doing the department a disservice.
    None of this changes that we need to look at what we want to achieve with our defence forces and what resources we have and make changes. If we aren't willing to spend on defence then let's be honest, say that, and follow it up with we won't put our forces in harms way and delete the capabilities to do so. It really is a case of go big or go home.

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  3. So ref this point: "see the British Army committed to hold ground and be prepared to die valiantly for a corner of Eastern Europe"

    So you would have us quit NATO ? Because isn't that the whole point and why the British Army leads the NATO EFP battle group in Estonia - because membership of an alliance based on collective defence actually requires British soldiers to die valiantly in a corner of Eastern Europe. Which I think the general public can get behind a lot easier than trying to understand why they were dieing in Afghanistan.

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    1. However if the troops are just a token force and you have no force to back it up and/or it takes forever to deploy any that would have a significant impact before the fighting is over. What is the point in them being there in the first place?

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    2. Well the answer to having the no back up issue is to have a backup. The answer can never be not to bother in the first place

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    3. To ensure that Russia doesn't have the soft option of intimidating / picking off each small country one by one. Same reason the US has a single brigade in Korea and maintains HQ structures, but not many people, in Germany.

      If heaven forbid the Russians did invade the Pentagon staff posted here would find a way of ensuring that some Americans were very visibly killed in the first hours which would provoke massive reaction, sanctions, retaliation against russian oil facilities etc

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  4. Excellent article. I was an Army officer for well over a decade, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other operational theatres. The Army is in decline for good reason. Britain has and needs few land-based operations. The débâcles in Iraq and Afghanistan have all but obliterated political support for large ground invasions. Britain is also in no immediate danger of facing a ground invasion of itself.

    The only land-based threat is that posed by Russia on the Baltic States. As The Economist recently noted, it would only take Russia 72 hours to overwhelm NATO defences there. Doubling the British Army, i.e. an additional 80k men, would change little in that regard. What Britain needs is to play to its comparative advantages: intelligence gathering, emergent technologies, and strategic deterrence. The upgrade of the submarine fleet, purchase of stealth fighters, and investment in AI weaponry are the right priorities. None of them has anything to do with the Army.

    Incidentally, Iraq and Afghanistan were the Army's fault, not politicians'. The generals demanded 'one more six-month push' year-on-year, as they were greedily milking taxpayers for pay rises, platinum-plated final salary pensions, private school fees for their children, further promotions, peerages, and prestige. The military was a giddy merry-go-round for greedy, unscrupulous men for whom the soldiers we commanded were mere cannon fodder to further their own ambitions. Our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and senior Army officers in particular, were a disgrace.

    On the topic of attribution of blame, I recommend 'High Command' by retired general Christopher Elliot. People shouldn't be put off by his insider status; on the contrary he used it masterfully to get inside the establishment, but thereafter didn't pull his punches. I suspect many of his interviewees got a nasty, but entirely deserved, shock. His book was superbly researched and exposed a side of the war hitherto invisible to most of us. It is a necessary antidote to the soothing, easy but false narrative of blaming the politicians. The military's hierarchy were desperate to prove themselves after strategic failure and humiliation in Iraq, and they were congenitally unable and unwilling to either properly manage the war in Afghanistan, or admit what everyone else already knew from early on: that we had failed, and every additional month there was simply creating work for Casualty Notification Officers to inform horrified parents in the UK that their children would not be coming home. In a just world many senior officers would have been court martialled and sacked. We don't live in that world, but we can seek to muzzle the Army, cut its budget, and keep it on a very short leash: given the opportunity, the institutional incentives to 'do another Iraq or Afghanistan' have not changed. An excellent review of Christopher Elliot's book can be found here, and if it's not already obvious, I think it's well worth reading: www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/a-major-general-names-the-guilty-men

    Perhaps the *only* benefit of Iraq and Afghanistan - and this truly is grasping at straws - is that contemporary politicians, such as May, appear to have rightly learnt that military officers are ruthlessly self-serving lobbyists. They will say or do anything - including sending other people's children to pointless deaths - to advance their own interests. Our current leaders are therefore gratifyingly more skeptical about the military's asserted ability to achieve anything positive outwith genuine defence, e.g. protection of UK airspace and borders, including deterrence.

    I say cut the Army to a fraction of its size, and invest the money in something useful - either RAF, RN or non-defence (I'd also bin the ringfenced overseas aid too, but that's not the focus of my point here).

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    1. Good post, agree with everything here. Senior Army officers were clearly both incompetent and deceitful in Iraq and Afghanistan and continually used these questionable interventions to protect their own short-term interests at the expense of wider UK defence.

      Whatever the likes of rose-tinted spectacle wearers like Max Hastings may believe, land forces are not a priority for the UK and the budget should be allocated accordingly. National/regional defence comes first with the focus on naval, air, intelligence and cyber-warfare.

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  5. Can you not or still be Tier One via non-military means? The UK has one of (or probably has) the best intelligence service (SIS, MI5, GCHQ and Defence Intelligence) that has supported military and non military operations, including ODA/foreign aid.

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  6. Willamson seems to be the poster boy of the armchair generals but he is making quite a mess of things on the quiet (not so quiet now, obviously). His unstatesmanlike behaviour is not going to get him far and as for becoming Tory leader one day I very much doubt it. If he wants more money (unlikely to happen) this is most likely to be achieved through quiet persuasion, not acting like a spoilt child.

    I too am confused by the 'Tier 1' debate. France is supposedly T1 but clearly not in the same league as Russia or China and in turn these two powers are not within a country mile of the US. As this article says, the US is the only global military superpower.

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  7. It does appear the MoDs constant hysteria has finally bit it.

    It was nearly 30 years ago that the last Field Marshall spat his dummy out, and yet the world failed to end.

    One of the problems with "coalition" ops is, if you exclude the US, few partners offer us anything in return.
    We can provide vast resources to help Estonia defend Estonia, but Estonia provides little to defend Estonia and nothing at all to anything else.

    I see what they get from a coalition, I dont see what we get.


    What do we bring?
    Where do we bring it?
    Why do we bring it?


    ISTAR is very nice, but few potential allies could use the information, its pointless to provide it without providing corresponding strike, unless, the its a permanent fixture, and that brings us back to, whats in it for us?


    What attracted so many bloggers to "strategic raiding" was it was essentially self contained

    Please note, this is an utterly ridiculous example purely as an example and all who treat it as a serious aspiration are morons.

    India would beat Pakistan in a war
    Its 10x the size, of course it would.
    But if a British expeditionary force, say, 36 F35s, 50 SPGs, 100 heavy tanks, 200 IFVs and 200 APCs landed behind the front and destroyed Indias supply bases / seized its supply roads, that conflict could turn out very differently.

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  8. Anthony Morgan Davies22 June 2018 at 19:29

    Great article. I've been thinking something along these lines for years. Heart breaking to scale back an army with such a rich tradition but has to be done to enhance the capabilities we need.

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  9. Very interesting article and well-argued. I wonder if Sir Humphrey could spare a few lines to outline what he would do if he were Defence Secretary. For instance, what capabilities would he downgrade/eliminate/enhance, what would be the size of the army, would he retain the Falklands garrison, more escorts and subs, and that kind of thing, all assuming the current level of spending. I am sure those who read his excellent posts would be interested to hear what he had to say.

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  10. Anthony Morgan Davies25 June 2018 at 08:40

    Second that Clive. How about building five more astute and introduce nuclear cruise instead of dreadnought...enough deteredet capability but significant multi role capacity created to sustain a ssn presence in artic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.

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    1. SSBNs are the most cost-effective way of maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent. Nuclear cruise is not a viable strategic deterrent and would most likely save very little if anything. We do need more SSNs but unfortunately this is most unlikely to happen in the current climate. Better to keep the deterrent and attack roles separate than try to put both in one class of boat with the result that neither is done effectively.

      It is also too late to go back on the Dreadnought programme now. Ordering of long-lead items began in 2011 and construction in 2016. A lot of work and money has already been put into the programme and it would not be possible to switch to another system without setting things back by several years, throwing Barrow into disarray and writing off everything that has been done and spent over the last 7 years. In other words, out of the question.

      The only option now is to stick with the current proven system and, if the technology has evolved sufficiently, consider nuclear cruise for the next generation deterrent in 30 years time.

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  11. Pakistan is our no1 aid recipient, they our not our friend and their behaviour towards us has been unaffected by our generosity. All over Africa we support schools and hospitals thus freeing up money for corrupt dictators.Its totally ineffective, much of the money dosnt leave London, being snaffled up by NGOs consultants,etc.
    Theres nothing tier one about having a big aircraft carrier and not enough escorts.
    Its amazing how we were constantly told that there was a shortage of Chinooks when we have 60 of them and we were able to train a young man with influential connections as a pilot even though there was no possibility of him ever being deployed,other than to a stag do on the isle of Wight.

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    1. Care to back that up with evidence? Out of the top ten recipients of aid only Syria could be described as a dictatorship and the money isn't going to Assad's regime.
      Failing to grow a countries economy to use up all the labour available is a prime cause of migration, which puts pressure on the border and security services. To my mind this seems like a sensible attempt to tackle the cause of a problem.

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  12. Stunning post. thanks for sharing with us!!!
    Visit us: Graphic t-shirts

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  13. Fruitcake,
    After studying your question, I find that things are even worse than I had thought. Basically, we are freeing up cash to provide funding for civil war in Syria and Afghanistan and supporting corrupt governments in the other countries. Aid has never helped anyone,by doing the work that governments should be doing we are actively undermining democracy.The majority of cash never gets near the poor as its ripped off by wealthy London consultants NGOs and local government officials thereby strengthening the hand of local strong men.
    If you want lift people out of extreme poverty, enhancing their ability to trade is the only proven method.If you want even things out you need to remove tariffs and restrictions that protect our interests and prevent free trade.

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    1. I asked if you cared to back your assertions with evidence, you chose a very long way to say no.....

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  14. This is the most defeatist article i'v read on here so far. The only answer can be to properly fund defence. The funding is to low and has been for a very long time. 2% of GDP cleary is not enough. 3% of GDP isnt in anyway extravagant.

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    1. Give us a clear,well thought out strategy or even some plausible missions and we'll think about increasing waiting times for people needing urgent medical attention.

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  15. The strategic raiding can make sense in some rare circumstances, military coup or revolution in west Africa UK alone could either safely evacuate UK citizens or provide enough force to support say the Sierra Leone Government, similar but unlikely possibility of Comonwealth Caribbean.

    It’s when people start pretending we can bring enough independant power to impact a ground war in Asia that that you need to start laughing. India has a proffesional ground force of 1,000,000 plus, either Korea is in the 600,000 level and the impact we are going to have if we turn up with an undesrstength brigade.

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    1. "It’s when people start pretending we can bring enough independant power to impact a ground war in Asia that that you need to start laughing. India has a proffesional ground force of 1,000,000 plus, either Korea is in the 600,000 level and the impact we are going to have if we turn up with an undesrstength brigade."

      Its less about numbers and more about speed, mobility, and of course quality
      It took India 3 weeks to mobilise and deploy to the border in 2001, by which point Pakistan had dug in and India would face a bloodbath punching through.

      A fast, mobile, and superior force could be inserted behind their lines to allow an attack on both sides, or to simply carve up their supply lines.

      Do I really need to post examples of what happens when Mirage3 equivalents pick fights with F15s, or when "Lion of Babylon" tanks pick a fight with Abrams or Challys

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  16. A good article from Sir Humph, Tier 1 status is some kind of myth with demanding we must be able to everything independantly worldwide while in truth only US reaches that level.

    If we keep nuclear status then 4 x SSBN probably is the minimum but it’s expensive and even more so at the point when you are renewing the submarines. The UK public is supportive of keeping nuclear weapons, if Russia has them we should have them too, even for some if France has them we must have them too. But they are not willing to spend more on defence than the French do to keep them.

    Once you have accepted the public is not going to support much more than 2% of GDP unless France, and Germany and Italy and Poland are spending at that level as well.

    Then you prioritise Cyber, Intelligence, (5 eyes), RAF, Royal Navy and you are left with what’s the Army for?

    Sherrard Cowper Coles claimed a well known high ranking General claimed Helmand was to give the Army something to do and hide them from the Treasury, said General fiercely denies it but there is some truth. The independant Imperial operations ended with withdrawal from Aden in 1967. Ulster is active duty for the next 30 years and BAOR was a real commitment for most of that time. Lose BAOR and Ulster and it is hard to justify a significant Army when the only possible enemy in Europe is Russia and every other nation in Europe is between us and them.

    Operations outside Europe are not in the public or politicians interest after 15 years of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan. Give the Army the capacity to do a long term operation and they will want to volunteer to do it just because...

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  17. Ok,so how about you coming up any evidence what so ever that all this aid is "growing countries economy "or producing the desired friendly effect.

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    1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/these-are-the-world-s-fastest-growing-economies-in-2017-2/

      That will be Ethiopia, long standing UK aid recipient with world's fastest growth rate in 2017.

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    2. That's not what I said,you need to show that the aid had anything to do with it.I beleive that aid to China is being wound down ,are you claiming that their incredible growth has been down to UK aid?Pakistan's ICBM program has been effectively financed by UK aid.

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    3. A summary might help at this point.
      1. You made an assertion.
      2. I asked you to back up that assertion with evidence.
      3. You made more assertions, didn't supply evidence for either those or the previous assertions then asked me to supply evidence for my points.
      4. I supplied evidence as per your criteria.
      5. You denied the evidence supplied was evidence, citing a new criteria.

      If you want to dispute my evidence, that's fine, please state why high economic growth in developing countries is not caused by UK aid designed to increase economic growth in developing countries. Maybe you would like propose an alternative mechanism which explains the data.
      That's how a discussion is held.
      The UK aid to China is being wound down because it did its job and China moved from poor to middle income. That's a sensible policy.
      Pakistan doesn't have ICBMs, it has MRBMs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaheen-III. Your suggestion that the UK paid for Pakistan's nuclear missile project is another assertion which requires evidence.

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  18. So,UK aid lifted the population of China out of poverty?Evidence?

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    1. I'm glad I've converted you to the benefit of providing evidence in a discussion, looking forward to reading your posts detailing support for your assertions.

      The level of causation is difficult to pick out of a more advanced country like China because it's impact is through productivity gains. International aid takes many forms and comes from many countries. If you look at China there was a huge amount of advice from the Soviet Union in the early 50s. That shows up in the growth figures. During the opening to to the West post 78 again there was advice and poverty reduction measures. The figures point to an accelerating in the trend growth during the 80s and 90s.
      Teasing out what is due to external support, what is due to opening of markets and what would have occurred as a result of an absence of drags to growth from political interventions is difficult.
      https://www.imf.org/EXTERNAL/PUBS/FT/ISSUES8/INDEX.HTM

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    2. A long winded way of admitting that you have no evidence whatsoever.We know for certain that India and Pakistan built their rocket and nuclear bomb programmes whilst in receipt of large quantities of UK and other foreign aid, thus effectively financing them.

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    3. I've supplied the evidence and detailed the mechanism in simple terms. If you disagree with it, please detail what part.
      Your India and Pakistan argument lacks even basic support, when were the nuclear weapons developed? When was economic support provided? What are the amounts involved? Again a lack of evidence for your assertions.

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  19. Worthwhile discussion which leads to the obvious conclusion that except for a direct unprovoked attack on the UK homeland where the military response would be greatly augmented by the population, the UK does not see itself as a miltary power with the superior capabilty needed for overwhelming success anywhere in the world save Russia and China. Ergo, the need for accelerated integrated alliances beyond NATO. We all know what that means.

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  20. Humphry a couple of points :
    The publicly available numbers list defence spending as GBP 22 billion in 1998 out of total managed spending of 259, ie8.5%. By 2018 it was 45 out of 802, ie 5.6%. I am not sure that would qualify as a "generous settlement compared to other departments".

    Im also puzzled as to what exactly these wasteful anachronistic legacy structures are. The existence of the RAF? The fact that we have aircraft carriers?

    The fact is the UK is an island and uniquely dependent on international trade as we import much of our food energy and raw materials. That has consequences in terms of the force structure. No enemy ever was defeated purely by cyber security. The same Russia that is sending cyber warriors is also regularly buzzing UK and Baltic airspace and engaging in large war games on the border of Europe.

    You raise a good point about what to do with the army post BAOR/Ulster. Personally I'd gift heavy armour and warrior to Poland or Estonia and restructure the army on the basis of a medium weight deployable brigade +Paras/Marines/SF. So on the rule of 3 to 1 that's 3 Strike brigades plus Airmobile and Marines with some ex-British "advisors" no doubt permanently stationed with the ex-Uk tanks.

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