From the Daily Mail, June 9:
Britain's armed forces are too weak to stop a war or protect the nation from attack, says former head of the Royal Navy
- Lord West of Spithead shared bleak assessment of armed forces at Westminster
- Former top military commander highlighted chronic underfunding of services
- He told peers forces lacked the equipment and manpower to keep country safe
Making the bleak assessment, Labour peer Lord West of Spithead, who served as First Sea Lord from 2002-06, highlighted the chronic underfunding faced by the services, which he argued were 'too small'.
Lord West said it was 'probable' there will be a war in the future but that the armed forces 'lack the equipment and manpower to keep us safe'.
He was speaking as peers debated at Westminster the impact of the conflict in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, leading to heightened international tensions....
....MUCH MORE
On a somewhat related note, military historian Ricky D Phillips is tweeting the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War. Although he already has dozens of tweets up, this one at the beginning of the British effort to regain the islands is worthy of especial mention:
June 11th 1982: Tonight, the battles to take back the Falklands begin. Brigadier Julian Thompson now orders up doubled ammunition to all five of his six-gun batteries, 1,200 rounds per battery, to begin the work of blasting the Argentine army out of British territory.... pic.twitter.com/CgVZrgFdxk
— The First Casualty - Falklands War History (@FirstFalklands) June 11, 2022
Note the first thing the General does is not just to focus on his artillery but make sure the guns have enough ammunition to begin and continue the job.
Something the Americans and the British supplying the Ukrainians did not do.
Which is why I was writing stuff like this a couple weeks ago:
WaPo: "Ukrainian volunteer fighters in the east feel abandoned"
This was known six weeks ago.
It's the artillery. It either kills the Ukrainian troops or it drives them insane. Very few severely wounded by artillery.
To compensate for the Russian tactics—which are not quite WWII's Operation Bagration where the Katyusha rockets ("Stalin's Organ.") were out in front of the artillery which were lined up wheel-to-wheel to destroy anything between 2 and 20 miles—but still overwhelming, the Ukrainian soldiers are literally back to trench warfare, where all you can do is duck your head and pray that today is not your last day on earth.
It's WWI all over again. And the doctors, one of whom supplied the lack-of-severe-wounds factoid, are seeing shell shock cases like this poor bastard, just as the doctors at the Battle of the Somme did 106 years ago:....
And the week before that:
None of the electorate in the NATO countries voted for another of these inconclusive, forever wars, so profitable for a select few and so costly in life and treasure for regular people. Surely no one in the developing nations signed on to pay for sanctions with their food budget. It is time to figure out a) What our goals are and b) What the hell we are doing, period and in furtherance of those goals. This isn't some game of RISK with let's try this, or let's try that and no consequences at the end of the night. Since the Maidan coup in 2014 the West has had eight years to plan for this.
Do it or don't do it; because trying to finesse a halfway reaction is nuts.
As the philosopher asked the generals and armaments producers some time ago:"When was the last time you b****es won a war?"
