Yeah, I've been following their drawdown too for a while now. There's been so much contradictory talk too. They talked about getting rid of all of their tanks but government balked. Those maintenance contracts bring a lot of money to certain chairs. I thought they were just going to put the extras in storage vs scrapping. As I understand, they wanted to reduce costs to afford more aircraft, in addition to the ones for the carriers. Although they have too few escorts as it is, since they're set to retire more than they're contracting to build.
Quite a few countries seem to be downsizing armies. It's weird gamers and collectors here have significantly larger forces than major nations. My modern Soviet navy is almost larger than Russia's current navy.
Although a lot of European countries seem to be arming up again, after the 2008 cutbacks and especially after the shock from Russias "adventures" in the Ukraine. Tanks and armoured vehicles are being moved out of storage (e.g. Germany, France), countries who abolished their armoured capabilities are slowly building it up again, and quite a few countries are ditching their Russian/Soviet-built equipment for Western tech, in addition to a higher defense spending across the board.
If I remember correctly, Germany has activated an additional 80 Leopards, ordered 210 additional Pumas, kept 40+ more PzH2000 in service than planned (~120 active, was supposed to be reduced to 81) in addition to modernizing 200 Marders, instead of putting them in storage. (Of course that's nowhere near the numbers that were active during the late 80s.)
Britain seems to be one of the few countries in Europe that still seems to keep downsizing it's conventional forces after 2013.
CG2, I don't have any crews yet either. I think I'm going to just use the WW2 crews when I get around to ordering some, but so far I have just been putting the towed guns on the table by themselves. On rare occasion I will put an infantry stand with them to represent the crew, but it doesn't work out very well.
A Russian land attack on the UK has to get through the whole of NATO and then cross the Channel - the Russian Army is not really our primary threat. There have been huge increases in cyber warfare where we are being attacked on a daily basis.
I haven't looked into it at alk, but I wonder if GB's emphasis on growing naval capability has something to do with trade and Brexit.
All blessings flow from a good mission statement.
Pogo was right. So was Ike.
"A Gentleman is a man who is only rude intentionally." (Churchill)
Give credit. Take responsibility.
That's part of it - the UK has recognised that Europe is stagnating and that South East Asia is where the future growth is. Add that to supporting the US (mainly politically) in keeping China in check and it's obvious that even a full division of UK heavy troops is of little use out there whereas Commando raids, missile strikes, interdiction of shipping etc is far more use in that context.
I think we're all waiting for the US to get serious and form a NATO equivalent with at least Australia, Japan, South Korea and India. Until then, it's all just politics and gestures.
We are probably in for disappointment. In post-WWII, all our critical leaders had played some part in post-WWI, which gave them plenty of experience in geopoltics. They didn't get it all right, and in some cases, made huge blunders, but they did ok. I do not see even the potential in our current crop of leaders to develop the intelligence to grasp what must be done. We seem to live in a world where TV and movies procidw make believe solutions to foist off on an uncritical population. "We'll just make something up and keep saying it until people believe it must be true!". Shades of Josef Goebbals!
All blessings flow from a good mission statement.
Pogo was right. So was Ike.
"A Gentleman is a man who is only rude intentionally." (Churchill)
Give credit. Take responsibility.
I agree, I don't think the US will wake up until the Chinese take the Philippines and Hawaii is threatened. Biden feels like a bit of a lame duck president and the impression is that everyone is just waiting until Harris has to take over although she doesn't seem to have a lot of experience.
Oh, I think we will get serious when China occupies Taiwan. If that happens, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and South Korea will be filling their trousers. Then we may see SEATO reborn.
Although some things have changed, we should keep in mind that Vietnam beat China after our Vietnam episode.
The real question is do we have the leaders with sufficient ballast to get us through. I'm not impressed with what I see in a number of countries, especially my own.
All blessings flow from a good mission statement.
Pogo was right. So was Ike.
"A Gentleman is a man who is only rude intentionally." (Churchill)
Give credit. Take responsibility.
You could stop a Taiwan invasion just by putting some nukes there as a deterrent. The fact that US has not done so is sending a message that the US won't save Taiwan if China invades.
You could be right, or we don't want to provoke. Could patrol with subs. We may be doing that.
All blessings flow from a good mission statement.
Pogo was right. So was Ike.
"A Gentleman is a man who is only rude intentionally." (Churchill)
Give credit. Take responsibility.
