Thin Pinstriped Line

 Every piece of military equipment will, eventually, be disposed of. Be it preserved in a museum, lost in combat or simply sold for scrap and recycling; an end is coming for everything that serves. The timing of such departures is not always ideal – the loss of HMS ARK ROYAL in 1978 was felt keenly in 1982. Arguably an even greater loss was that of the scrapping of the fleet repair ship HMS TRIUMPH, after nearly a decade in reserve in Chatham, barely a year before she would have been welcomed in the Falklands War. It is against this backdrop that a curious report has been published in the Mail, suggesting that the MOD is at fault for scrapping the Rapier missile system in 2021, when it could have been used by Ukraine instead. Apparently the MOD lack of psychic powers to predict the future (damn those pesky planning round options deleting this as a feature for staff officers) is a bad thing. This is a really curious article which consists of a group of think tank types, none of wh...

  Should your prior service be used as a guarantee of your future citizenship? This seems a hyperbolic question to ask, but one that has been raised this week following the revelation that several dozen British military pilots have reportedly been training the Chinese military. Reportedly contracted to provide technical advice in specific areas for around £250k per year (which buys a lot of watches), these pilots and aircrew have been accused of treason, demands to lose their UK nationality and resulted in swift action preventing similar occurrences in future.   On the one hand it is easy to feel strong moral indignation at the actions of these individuals, who having served their nation, have now taken the mercenary route of providing their knowledge and experience to help increase the capability of one of the worlds most dangerous states. Under President Xi, China has become an exceptionally hostile and aggressive dystopian totalitarian dictatorship, posing a clear and pre...

There has been a significant level of political and policy upheaval in   the UK recently following the change of Prime Minister from Boris Johnson MP to Liz Truss MP. Through a range of ministerial changes, policy shifts and new positions on previous policy goals, it now appears likely that the UK MOD may face the potential for reductions in defence expenditure.   The challenge facing the government as a whole is to reduce spending and the burden on the taxpaying population, while still delivering critical services and outputs. This is, to put it mildly, a delicate tightrope to walk along. The last Prime Minister had committed to a rise in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, while the Prime Minister has made clear her commitment to ensuring that in the medium term defence spending in the UK rises from 2% of GDP to 3%, although no specific timeframes have been set for this. Such a move would, in theory, generate tens of billions of extra spending for the MOD, which could...

  Sir Humphrey is currently on holiday, enjoying a very late summer leave and enjoying the delights of the west coast of the USA. The world it is clear remains in a complex and challenging place, with a range of problems that need to be carefully thought about in due course. Of particular note is the recent Foreign Policy article on the Royal Navy, which ostensibly focuses on the capability of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class, but in reality seems to be another tired attack on the UK and its reach and capabilities. An article on why so many media pieces seem to default to tired cliches of the UK as a power uniquely struggling needs to be written on another day, when time and bandwidth permit. In the short term though, one issue which may seem lighthearted but is worth thinking about is the near visceral reaction to recent twitter debates on the concept of beards in the Army. After a tweet went up by an RM, illustrating a bearded soldier, the response from both the pro and anti-Army be...