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purplefood wrote:It's hard to win a a war with just a Navy and an Airforce.
You can do some significant things but it's easier to win a war if you have an army as well...

Royal Marines as well? IIRC historically Britains's army was the size of our Corps. As its effectively an attack organization (unless the mole people rise up as I have long predicted) it seems it would be better envisioned in a " marine" context no?

dæl wrote:

Lux_Lucis wrote:

dæl wrote:So what happens if we only have air and sea stuff, but the enemy uses EMP? We'd be stuffed without electronics if we didn't have an actual army to fall back on.

Well to do that in a large enough area to actually be useful in a large war you're talking about using a nuke. Which is a whole other ball game.
Also there are various ways to protect against EMP.

A nuke in the upper atmosphere, but surely that wouldn't be lethal to the populous. You could shield against it, but are all our electronics shielded?

Firing a nuke anywhere that isn't your own territory in a declared nuclear test is going to make you very unpopular.
As for the kit it depends how old it is. Older stuff tends to be better shielded since it was a greater threat in the Cold War. But the main thing is throwing nukes around is a Bad Thing (notice capitals)

Frazzled wrote:

purplefood wrote:It's hard to win a a war with just a Navy and an Airforce.
You can do some significant things but it's easier to win a war if you have an army as well...

Royal Marines as well? IIRC historically Britains's army was the size of our Corps. As its effectively an attack organization (unless the mole people rise up as I have long predicted) it seems it would be better envisioned in a " marine" context no?

The USMC is an odd beast to be honest. Biggest example of mission creep in the universe for a start
Anyway, booties are different from USMC despite the name. RM are commandos and the USMC is more standard infantry with an amphibious bent.
The British military has largely relied on training, since we were generally outnumbered. RN in the Age of Sail into the 19th Century is pretty much the only force we've had that outnumbered our enemy (one of the core tenets being that we should have a navy as big as the next two largest combined).
Thing with having a force as an expeditionary one like the USMC is that you need the kit to get them there and deploy them, and that's expensive. Instead we rely on having a a brigade sized formation (16 Air Assault, 8,000 men), compared to your Marine Expeditionary Units (2,200 men), but you have more of them (seven) and they all have the ability to be deployed rapidly. I think that's right anyway, I'm not an expert.

dæl wrote:

Lux_Lucis wrote:

dæl wrote:So what happens if we only have air and sea stuff, but the enemy uses EMP? We'd be stuffed without electronics if we didn't have an actual army to fall back on.

Well to do that in a large enough area to actually be useful in a large war you're talking about using a nuke. Which is a whole other ball game.
Also there are various ways to protect against EMP.

A nuke in the upper atmosphere, but surely that wouldn't be lethal to the populous. You could shield against it, but are all our electronics shielded?

The military equipment which initiates the Nuclear retaliation would be shielded, so you might shut down their planes but you're going to have ICBMs flying towards you instead.

Using a nuclear weapon in any offensive capacity will be met with instant retaliation. Bear in mind that they will know that nuke is coming before it detonates and the choice to retaliate will occur before it detonates. The nukes coming at you aren't going to bother doing some fancy explode in the upper atmosphere trick, they're going to land on your major cities, military bases, power stations and any other target designated as strategically important.

Nukes are a no-win scenario.

LordofHats wrote:
Force projection is a pointless endeavor when gunboat diplomacy is the only recourse available. You can't defeat an enemy by loading up your navy and saying "I have more boats than you." If that were true we'd have never needed the USSR to pumble Germany into submission or the Marine Corp and the Army to island hope across the pacific.

Go back a step and ask why Britain was still around in 1942. It was because of the dominance of the Royal Navy and the RAF. Britain's relative naval power has decreased marketly since, with more resources going into land, army campaigns.

LordofHats wrote:
In World War 1 the Germans lost because they have no where near the resources to win a long term war. It's more complicated than starving them. They also ran out of young men to send to the front line.

Not really. Manpower in a war is a balance between uniform and industry. There are always more men available, but often at the expense of vital war production.
Germany collapsed to revolution because of terrible conditions bought on by the allied blockade.

LordofHats wrote:

Is that a serious question? They've got the world's largest population, near endless natural resources, and you want to argue we can outlast them? Oh sure they'll hurt, but not as much as the rest of us. War of attrition is a very simple thing. Whoever has more wins, and in China vs just about anyone else, China wins that battle.

They really do not have endless natural resources. As well as being grossly over-dependant on exporting to the west, they import a huge amount of resources and high-tech goods. It was simply one example of a country that's very vulnerable to a naval blockade.

LordofHats wrote:
Its best not to over-estimate control of the waterways too.

Well Britain could either continue to struggle to keep up with America, or recognise our place as an Island nation and move to the seas. If we had hundreds of millions and trillions of dollars to spend then sure, roll on the tanks. But we don't, so we have to revert to the historic trend rather than sticking in the Cold War rut.


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Frazzled wrote:

purplefood wrote:It's hard to win a a war with just a Navy and an Airforce.
You can do some significant things but it's easier to win a war if you have an army as well...

Royal Marines as well? IIRC historically Britains's army was the size of our Corps. As its effectively an attack organization (unless the mole people rise up as I have long predicted) it seems it would be better envisioned in a " marine" context no?

If you control the coastland of a nation you can use minimal amount of troops to tie down many times their number. Napoleon is said to have said "The Royal Navy with 10,000 men can tie down 100,000 men in France"

Joey wrote:

LordofHats wrote:
Force projection is a pointless endeavor when gunboat diplomacy is the only recourse available. You can't defeat an enemy by loading up your navy and saying "I have more boats than you." If that were true we'd have never needed the USSR to pumble Germany into submission or the Marine Corp and the Army to island hope across the pacific.

Go back a step and ask why Britain was still around in 1942. It was because of the dominance of the Royal Navy and the RAF. Britain's relative naval power has decreased marketly since, with more resources going into land, army campaigns.

LordofHats wrote:
In World War 1 the Germans lost because they have no where near the resources to win a long term war. It's more complicated than starving them. They also ran out of young men to send to the front line.

Not really. Manpower in a war is a balance between uniform and industry. There are always more men available, but often at the expense of vital war production.
Germany collapsed to revolution because of terrible conditions bought on by the allied blockade.

LordofHats wrote:

Is that a serious question? They've got the world's largest population, near endless natural resources, and you want to argue we can outlast them? Oh sure they'll hurt, but not as much as the rest of us. War of attrition is a very simple thing. Whoever has more wins, and in China vs just about anyone else, China wins that battle.

They really do not have endless natural resources. As well as being grossly over-dependant on exporting to the west, they import a huge amount of resources and high-tech goods. It was simply one example of a country that's very vulnerable to a naval blockade.

LordofHats wrote:
Its best not to over-estimate control of the waterways too.

Well Britain could either continue to struggle to keep up with America, or recognise our place as an Island nation and move to the seas. If we had hundreds of millions and trillions of dollars to spend then sure, roll on the tanks. But we don't, so we have to revert to the historic trend rather than sticking in the Cold War rut.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:

purplefood wrote:It's hard to win a a war with just a Navy and an Airforce.
You can do some significant things but it's easier to win a war if you have an army as well...

Royal Marines as well? IIRC historically Britains's army was the size of our Corps. As its effectively an attack organization (unless the mole people rise up as I have long predicted) it seems it would be better envisioned in a " marine" context no?

If you control the coastland of a nation you can use minimal amount of troops to tie down many times their number. Napoleon is said to have said "The Royal Navy with 10,000 men can tie down 100,000 men in France"

You're applying 19th Century strategy to 20th (and 21st) Century technologies. That did not go so well last time it was tried Link

Even if we got rid of the Army, we could not afford to keep up with somewhere like China. But even if we could, the realities of modern warfare are somewhat different now. We (as in the world) have submarines that do not need to surface and tend to make nasty messes of ships Link

You need to be able to take out enemy command and control, airbases, ports etc. C&C tends to be hardened (and no, bunker busters will not go through anything), airbase denial munitions (if you can even get near enemy airbases, through all of THEIR defences, and you ignore the cluster bomb treaty we've signed) are not permanent fixes - the enemy will maintain their own ways to fix airbases etc, and, while ports are arguably more vulnerable, you've still got enemy submarines to deal with. Plus littoral craft can do a lot of damage, if you ask the crew of the USS Cole they'll tell you.
Taking and holding ground has always been the key to warfare. Always will be. All the new weapons, tanks, planes, submarines, every time they've been invented somebody has said they're the end of the common squaddy. And yet... Here we are.
Countries don't maintain expensive armies for the funzies.

Lux_Lucis wrote:
You're applying 19th Century strategy to 20th (and 21st) Century technologies. That did not go so well last time it was tried Link

Even if we got rid of the Army, we could not afford to keep up with somewhere like China. But even if we could, the realities of modern warfare are somewhat different now. We (as in the world) have submarines that do not need to surface and tend to make nasty messes of ships Link

You need to be able to take out enemy command and control, airbases, ports etc. C&C tends to be hardened (and no, bunker busters will not go through anything), airbase denial munitions (if you can even get near enemy airbases, through all of THEIR defences, and you ignore the cluster bomb treaty we've signed) are not permanent fixes - the enemy will maintain their own ways to fix airbases etc, and, while ports are arguably more vulnerable, you've still got enemy submarines to deal with. Plus littoral craft can do a lot of damage, if you ask the crew of the USS Cole they'll tell you.
Taking and holding ground has always been the key to warfare. Always will be. All the new weapons, tanks, planes, submarines, every time they've been invented somebody has said they're the end of the common squaddy. And yet... Here we are.
Countries don't maintain expensive armies for the funzies.

None of that addresses my point.
In the future, will the UK need a large conventional military? Will it need to organise a large front against another land army?
Almost definitely not. A war in Europe is near-impossible. Russia is a fraction as powerful as it was at its height as the USSR, add in that they now only have Belyrus (and the Ukraine, maybe) to count on, and the chance of them doing anything is laughable.
However, will we need a powerful navy? Almost definitely yes. The most obvious threat at the moment is Argentina, and a large and efficient navy would a)deter other south american states , b)keep the Argie fleet in port, c)provide air support in the South Atlantic and secure existing air bases.

A standing army is an insurance policy. It seems expensive, pointless and wasteful when you don't need it, but it's incredibly expensive and very wasteful to start from scratch when you do need it. Starting with nothing also means you have to relearn the lessons that Armies have known for years. That experience is almost invaluable. Ask the Soviets circa 1941 what Stalins purges of his Army did to fighting efficiency.

With regards to the OP, not the ensuing discussion on British Grand Strategy as felt by the Dakkaites, ask any serving Canadian soldier/sailor/airman why any sort of 'unification' of the branches is a bad idea.

The long and short of it is that Canada went through a period where the entire military was all one unified force, and it didn't work well.

As long as it is necessary to occupy enemy territory there will be a need for infantry, which in turn creates a demand for the various support elements that enable them to fight. If you wanted to go around nuking your enemies you could probably get away with just an Air Force, but that's not really feasible.

Joey wrote:Notice that lovely blue sea that surrounds us. A strong navy/airforce would leave us impenetrable and able to project force pretty much anywhere on earth.

You might have missed my earlier response, but I already explained the problem with your argument;

"If one presumes the only requirement of your armed forces is to prevent an invasion by another nation. Which simply isn't true. In fact, the primary requirement of your armed forces is to engage in the protection of your economic interests overseas, and that means putting troops on the ground around the world."

It's what British policy was pretty much up to the second world war, and it works damn well.

Well that's just complete tosh. The British had troops deployed in Palestine, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, South Africa and several other positions, in order to maintain the Empire.


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LordofHats wrote:In World War 1 the Germans lost because they have no where near the resources to win a long term war. It's more complicated than starving them. They also ran out of young men to send to the front line.

Yeah, it wasn't the loss of trade, but the loss of life and material from fighting a multiple years war against Britain, France and Russia. Its actually quite remarkable that Germany managed to fight as long as they did, and as successfully.


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Joey wrote:Go back a step and ask why Britain was still around in 1942. It was because of the dominance of the Royal Navy and the RAF. Britain's relative naval power has decreased marketly since, with more resources going into land, army campaigns.

Declined relative to who? To the US? Well yeah, but then everyone's navy had declined relative to the US, and trying to maintain parity would be the fastest possible route to bankruptcy?

Or relative to the aixs powers, Germany and Japan? Then no, the UK maintains a dominant naval power over each of it's two old enemies.

Or relative to possible enemy combatants today, like Argentina or some of the Middle Eastern powers? Well then the Royal Navy maintains absolute dominance in power over them vastly beyond its dominance over the enemies it had in 1942.

Meanwhile, more resources have gone into land forces because those land forces are what is needed to deliver the military outcomes that the UK actually has today. You need to stop talking about defending the isle, beacuse no-one is going to invade you, and actually look at what the UK has military forces for.

Not really. Manpower in a war is a balance between uniform and industry. There are always more men available, but often at the expense of vital war production.

You need to do some reading on the scope of wartime casualties in WWI.

Or WWII for that matter. They were fielding kids as young as 12 and men as old as 70 in 1945.

Israeli Military has been operating this way since 1948. Our Navy uses Army ranks (no Admirals), and there's only 1 Command Staff (the General Staff Directorate). I've found in my time in conscription it works out well enough, it was very easy to coordinate close air support when they all answer to the same guy and there was no red tape to get through.

That being said, we have 4 separate regional commands (North, Central, South, Home Front) which all act with huge autonomy, have ground/air/sea forces assigned to each, and are de facto independent branches by this point. The rivalry you see in Western militaries between Army/Navy/whatever is reflected here, especially with Northern Command vs Southern Command.