What are your thoughts on Army 2020?

The British army is set for major change over the next few years following a restructuring review known as Army 2020.

You can find out more information on this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18710936 which is basically a Q&A on Army 2020 reorganisation.

Here is the latest news link on the army restructuring review:

http://news.sky.com/story/956309/army-loses-17-major-units-in-defence-cuts

What are your thoughts on this?

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Reply 1

Miza

Would make more sense posting this in 'Current Affairs' section of this forum.

My thoughts is that Britain is making a mistake, meantime Russia will double their defence budget by 2020 and USA, by 2020, will be soo much in debt that chances are a new oil war will arise.

Reply 2

Wild Horses

I Guess we'll all see in the end :bumps:

Reply 3

Cannotbelieveit

It signals the beginning of even more decline of the UK on the World Stage, we won't be able to fight on two fronts like we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However should still be capable enough of fighting in a major war.

Reply 4

Snagprophet

Tbh I think we should have a smaller army and a bigger navy because of how our borders are sea borders.

Reply 5

patrickinator

I don't think this is necessarily the destruction or decline of the British army it is just that we are losing our competitiveness with the rest of the world and we are becoming more insignificant as a country.
That said we still spend a huge amount on defence - 4th in the world and yet we have limited capabilities which just shouldn't be the case.

Quite frankly, we should not go on trusting politicians to come up with the right decisions because they wont. they will look for short term solutions to serve their own careers or parties.

CANT WAIT TO FIND OUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE!

Reply 6

jumpingjesusholycow

Whilst many equate a smaller army to a worse army than we currently have (and that's probably fair), though do we even need as many as we currently do? I know someone's innevitably going to quote me and make a long tedious list of all the foreign commitments we have to crown protectorates and all that, but let's face it; we're largely at peace with almost all of the world except Argentina and have only been getting into tedious wars alongside the United States with our efforts being a fart in the wind in comparison to the size of the US's military power anyway.

Realistically, our military interests are represented by the United States in terms of any stand off between China, Russia or India (all of whom already have larger armies than we do anyway). We will remain a powerful unit with a very strong grasp of highly skilled, technological warfare. Let the Americans bankrupt themselves trying to foot the bill so we can get on with trying be prosperous like Norway.

Reply 7

BristolStudent96

If having a smaller army mean's we are less likely to go and invade other people's countries and kill many civilian's then I am for it.

If it means Britain cannot defend it's sovereignty as well than I am against it.

But that is all irrelevant this country is out of cash, savings need to be made - the military is the obvious place to start assuming the country is not in direct danger.

Reply 8

Locke54

It's a ridiculous concept, they're trying to make out that the Army is being reduced as part of a strategic rethink and making it more flexible to meet future needs. The reality is that the Army was going to be reduced anyways and they've just worked the strategic review to justify that reduction, rather than the reduction coming from the review.

It's also incredibly shortsighted. We need to reduce our deficit but you can't quickly reduce and increase the Army's size based upon current financial strength. Things like overseas aid you can quickly increase and reduce to meet the financial times, the Army's size you can't, it's much more 'sticky' to use an economic term. If you get rid of 20,000 soldiers now, then all the infrastructure, logistics and training goes with them aswell. If in five years time our financial situation is much stronger and we can afford an Army of the pre '2020' size, it'll takes years to restore those 20,000 people with all the logistics and support networks that'll have to be built up again.

Essentially this a permanent downsizing of the Army based upon short term financial restraint and is another sign of us scaling back our role in world politics. Say what you like about Blair but he would never have let something this ridiculous to happen and to think this is coming from the Conservatives, supposedly the traditional party of a strong armed forces.

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 9

Wild Horses

Original post by ajp100688

Can't agree with you more. That's roughly the same thing i have been thinking!

Original post by Cannotbelieveit

You're right but then again, being still capable enough to fight in a major war but to what extent?

(edited 11 years ago)

Reply 10

Drewski

Original post by Cannotbelieveit

However should still be capable enough of fighting in a major war.

Once.

We'll have the assets and the ability to fight a large campaign. Once. It'll use up so many resources that it would take 10-15yrs to replace everything and rebuild.

Reply 11

Wild Horses

Original post by Drewski

Once.

We'll have the assets and the ability to fight a large campaign. Once. It'll use up so many resources that it would take 10-15yrs to replace everything and rebuild.

true stories, the world is getting crazier and yet we're reducing our armed forces hmm, interesting :hmmmm2:

Reply 12

Drewski

Original post by Wild Horses

true stories, the world is getting crazier and yet we're reducing our armed forces hmm, interesting :hmmmm2:

It's thought of as expensive and no Government ever lost votes by cutting Defence spending. And it's an easy target. The Tories are no longer the party of former Colonels, Generals and Admirals.

Reply 13

MancStudent098

Does it matter? We're part of a military alliance that comprises something like 70% of the world's military power. The only nation which looks capable of building serious overseas power projection in the next 50 years is China and it's on quite literally the other side of the world. We are also one of the very few nations in the world to have an effective, modern arsenal of nuclear weapons. Is cutting the size of the Army going to make any practical difference to how secure the UK is?

Reply 14

Wild Horses

Original post by Drewski

It's thought of as expensive and no Government ever lost votes by cutting Defence spending. And it's an easy target. The Tories are no longer the party of former Colonels, Generals and Admirals.

what a shame really :frown:

Reply 15

Drewski

Original post by MancStudent098

Security. No.

But ability to take part in things that matter? Yes. The issue at hand is that the British Armed Forces have an across the board abaility. We have the infantry units that are good, but we also have the logistic units that makes those tick and the engineering units that keep them working and then we have the experience of using these units in every arena of the earth. Other countries don't have those. Sure, we're part of NATO and other countries have Armys and have Navys. But they're not complimenting one another. Everyone has infantry. But very very few people have deep line maintenance units capable of operating in the field. Very few have as experience medical sections. The NATO theory would work fine if, say, France only focused on one area of the Army and Germany did the Air Force and Lithuania provided hospital staff and the Danes the catering.. etc... But that's not how it works. Everyone has their own small force. Because noone can agree on what they want to do or can guarantee they'll all be there in 25 yrs time.
By cutting the Armed Forces as much as we are doing we're losing the strength in depth. To use a football analogy, our first XI are pretty good, we can compete for the trophy. But as soon as we're bringing on our subs or get injuries, we'll turn into a 2nd division also-ran.

Reply 16

FrescoDiMorte

I guess the army could do with a bit of trimming for economic reasons, and for those talking about defence it all equates to the same thing. The government currently seems to be sending our troops abroad to keep order in other countries, rather than defending ours.

Reply 17

MancStudent098

Original post by Drewski

Security. No.

But ability to take part in things that matter? Yes. The issue at hand is that the British Armed Forces have an across the board abaility.

For the sake of our armed forces' stomachs I sincerely hope that the Danes never get sole control of NATO catering.

Anyway, on the serious side, your point above about how we interlock into NATO seems to be more relevant to defence than power projection or influence, but as you seem to agree there aren't any serious threats to our actual security I'm not sure how this matters?

As to influence and power projection there's a number of things - I'm not sure our military power has asserted any serious diplomatic influence since the 2nd world war, or maybe at a stretch the 1960s, I'm not sure we actually want/need it anyway and I don't think we could regain it even if we spent far more on our military, let alone just leave spending at a static level.

Reply 18

jtnf

Original post by Wild Horses

Not quite sure how much sense it makes to reduce our armed forces so drastically. Wouldn't it have been better to reduce the Navy rather than the Army considering Afghanistan (and other such countries) are hot, dry, and land locked? Although I admit I don't know exactly what the Navy's role in Afghanistan is, apart from that of the Royal Marines.

Philip Hammond seems to be a penny pinching politician who knows absolutely nothing about military matters. I would take him about 67x more seriously if he had actually been in the forces and therefore had first hand experience of the people/equipment he is in charge of. If there was a major threat to the UK in the next 5-10 years, what exactly would HM Government do? I'm sure the remaining 82,000 people in the Army wouldn't all be infantry and wouldn't all be able to deploy at the same time. I guess we'll have to go running to America or (urgh) Europe depending on where the threat comes from.

I understand that cuts have to be made in order for us as a country to be living within our means but I seriously doubt whether the cuts to the armed forces have actually been properly thought out or whether several high powered people have simply sat in a Whitehall office with a dartboard and a few darts.

Not 100% why the Scottish regiments seem to have got off so lightly without being cut. Why didn't the Army just take people who volunteered for redundancy up on the offer rather than making people I know redundant when they didn't want to be? The whole thing seems to be a bit of a mess to me.

I'm hoping to join in a few years, so for now I'm crossing my fingers that they leave the AMS well alone.