Thin Pinstriped Line

The COVID-19 virus continues to dominate the global way of life. This pandemic has changed in a few short weeks how the planet operates and fundamentally altered many long held assumptions about our way of life and values, particularly in the West. For the UK the response has been focused around the NHS and the magnificent people who work in it. But equally it has seen pressure and challenge placed on a wide variety of other sectors including the retail industry, the emergency services and a variety of other actors who have all found themselves called to serve in ways previously unimaginable. For the British Armed Forces the response has been one of stepping up to provide military assistance to the civil authorities (MACA) – a well tried and tested process which has seen the military deploy assets across the UK to provide support on a range of areas. The MOD has quickly deployed a combination of logistical support, air assets and other niche capabilities to help provide a...

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) is being attacked by a variety of actors including the media and Parliamentarians for not doing enough to help get Britons stranded by the Corona virus (COVID-19) home. Is this criticism fair, or is it a case of attacking those doing their best to help. The FCO has long attracted suspicions that it isn’t necessarily on the side of the UK taxpayer. There is a (possibly) mythical quote attributed to WW2 with a senior officer being asked by a member of the public, who responded with ‘ours – I think’ (or words to that effect). There is also perhaps some public misunderstanding about the role of the FCO. Many people imagine the Embassy overseas being full of plucky Brits, probably wearing pinstriped suits or pith helmets adorned with Turkey feathers wondering if it’s too early for a snifter of brandy at 11am before a Ferrero Roche filled reception that night. The reality is the modern FCO is a busy globally focused operation that harne...

As the COVID19 virus continues to dominate the global agenda, fundamentally changing how many nations conduct their way of life, rumours are beginning to spread. In the UK as a raft of government measures intended to reduce the spread of the virus kick in to effect, there has been a marked rise in the amount of misinformation, or misunderstanding about what is going on. This is particularly notable in the defence space where fears of some kind of London lockdown have led to some people tweeting images purporting to be of British Army convoys getting ready to apparently lead the way into a lockdown situation. This fear seems to come from bad disaster movies where the Army is usually called into help and this happens with ominous effect, from troops trundling down the street, to callously machine gunning those who would escape (or in the British Army’s case, a bunch of people in shirtsleeves rolled up and down in the manner of a curious masonic ritual with belts on the outs...

On Wednesday 11 March a rocket attack hit a military base in Taji, Iraq. The attack killed three people, two US and one UK service person. News of the attack was swiftly reported by US media outlets, including the news that a UK service person had been killed. This was picked up on and broadcast in the UK in some areas, generating a strong reaction from the veteran community. The subject of reporting on UK military deaths is highly sensitive and one that generates a lot of emotion. This specific incident though perhaps highlights the real challenges at the heart of the relationship between Defence and the Media, and the different drivers that both organisations have to consider. For many years during Iraq and Afghanistan, the MOD had developed an extremely effective and well-honed process of notifying about casualties. In the event of an incident involving deaths, all UK forces in theatre would go onto what was called ‘OP MINIMISE’ switching off internet and telephone access....

The Secretary of State has confirmed the launching of a review into the UK’s defence and security industrial strategy where he confirmed the goal of the UK remaining a ‘tier one military power’.   But what is a ‘Tier One’ military power and is the UK one? Its a simple question, but one that can easily spark intensive debate about the nature of power and capability between nations. Usually when people want to get an easy story on defence they talk about how cuts to the armed forces threaten the UK’s position as a top tier military power, and how deleting carriers, the Red Arrows or the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment threatens this position. Its often intertwined with some kind of ranking, suggesting that if something is done then the UK will be less powerful than France, Germany, Vanuatu etc. The problem though is that national power and capability isn’t something that can easily be ranked in the form of a quantifiable metric. A country with a small potent military...