Push Button Warfare

The future of warfare may well be cheaper in manpower terms, as budget cuts bite, but it will probably be smarter and more hi-tech ....

 US Army Video Of Laser Tests

Where We Are In The World

With all this discussion of NATO expenditure and the Russians sabre rattling, it suggests that we may all have to spend more on the defence of Europe .... So if military might is still the big stick that places a country in the world, then this picture illustrates whose got the biggest Cojones at the big table ....

Hey Big Spender .....

What's interesting is that even in these straightened times, the USA still spends what the next 12 nations  officially spend on defence. I say 'officially', as many suspect that China, and maybe Russia as well, spend more than they officially admit to, but those estimates are in this graphic.

Of course its what 'bang you get for your buck' that counts, so for instance Chinas dollar equivalent buys a lot more domestically, so they get a lot for arithmetically less, while the UK, with its plane-less aircraft carriers, gets comparatively less for more. It will be interesting to see these figures in ten years time, when, if all the economic projections are true, China will be the big boy on the block ....

Certainly, Japan is worrying, because its announced annual increases in military spending for both the last, and next few years, and will overtake France in a few years time.

UK Self Defence Force

The world must be a safer place than ever before, and the UK safer than at any time since Wellington was supreme commander. That's the only conclusion one can draw from the fact that every UK 'defence review' (usually at the behest of the 'Chancellor of the Exchequer') in the last 60 years has concluded that the British Armed forces would somehow be better for being pruned, and would always result in a "forward-looking, modern fighting machine", or words to that affect.

The Army has been cut decade after decade.

We now have been left with a 'self defence force' rather than an army .... as its been cut to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars, with most analysts considering that at least 100,000 men is the minimum size for a national army.

The shame is great, and to think it was a Conservative government that dealt the British Army the mortal  blow that Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin couldn't.

The Cruelest Cut Of All

There are credible reports coming out today, that the number of defence cuts in the British Armed forces will actually be 25% higher than has previously been admitted ... a national newspaper has seen a memo suggesting that instead of the announced 12,500 cut in size, the figure will actually be 16,500.

The UK Has Four Civil Servants For Every Soldier

And in a further cruel twist of the knife, many of these additional cuts will fall on those soldiers who have been wounded in action in Afghanistan or Iraq and been able to remain in the forces ..... it seems that what the German Army couldn't do in two World Wars, the Conservative Party is doing with a few bits of paper.