Quote:
Originally Posted by Toy Soldier
To be fair, though, isn't this sort of the point? War has changed; a standing army is worthless in the face of nuclear weapons, and all of the major powers have them now. A large-scale conflict involving ground troops like WW2 will never happen again. So that leaves the sort of small, tactics-based conflicts we've seen for the last 30 years... and a LARGE army isn't really necessary for those, either. An effective military force is now down to having the best tech and equipment, not the most feet in boots.
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Well, yes... that's the excuses that are being given for the cuts to the military. But the military themselves, while they agree that warfare has changed, and that a massive army is no longer needed, a standing army of less than 80,000, when they are called on for all kinds of stuff is just not big enough. When the Fire Service go on strike for instance, or when the security at a major sporting event like the Olympics goes tits up, who you gonna call? When the ebola crisis started, the Royal Navy were the first people there, followed by the British Army. And the humanitarian and peacekeeping work they do, which often goes unreported because it's not controversial, is going to be hard to automatise. Furthermore, the government is trying to fill the gaps by making the Territorial Army bigger, and involving them now where only regular troops may previously have gone. Part-timers, while I don't want to diminish their great contribution, are not the same a regular soldiers.
So in conclusion, I do kind of agree that a massive standing army is no longer required, but we've gone too far the other way. The people making the cuts are civilians, with all the reasons why a smaller army is okay. But the military themselves say something else entirely. I do have a little hope in the latest Minister for Defence, even though he seems kind of young for the job, seems to be quite keen to allow our armed forces both the equipment and the manpower needed to do the job we ask of them.