The UK Register analyzes a MoD restructuring which sends the service chiefs to Coventry:
In outline, the three single services – and their chiefs – will lose massively in power and influence: and there will be an attempt to create a Joint Forces Command which will be the first step towards a future in which the services actually expect to work together as routine, rather than only when forced to or when there’s a war on.
The Levene report says that the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff – heads of the navy, army and air force respectively – should be booted out of MoD Main Building on Whitehall and made to go and sit in their service headquarters outside London. They will be allowed to leave behind only a small number of staff types to fight their Service’s corner in the corridors of power, and these rump contingents will be headed by mere two-star officers: a rear-admiral, a major-general and an air vice-marshal. If they commanded combat formations, such officers would be important indeed – the entire British Army can put into the field only one or two formations worthy of being commanded by a major-general – but among the mandarins of Whitehall, many of whom are equivalent to three-, four- and even five-star military officers, they will be insignificant small fry.
The article concludes that defense restructuring is in fact necessary, but that Liam Fox may not be the best candidate to do so.
It was in the cards — when you have few indians, you don’t need many chiefs.
Also, it’s not like there is much of a direct military threat to Great Britain. Still, it sounds to me like a once great nation going down the drain.
Paul
The scariest thing is Great Britain is our most competent ally in NATO. We really are all that’s left when it comes to defense of western civilization.
Jeff, we still have a military that can defend Western Civilization. We lack clear-sighted leadership and the will to defend ourselves. While we were making our military the best in the world, we overwhelmingly lost the cultural battle. Now, we all face an uphill struggle to revitalize old truths and follow our Constitution. That’s the next and most immediate battleground — the Enemedia, Hollywood, Teacher Unions and the rest of the Left. JMHO.
BTW, the UK is a dystopian vision of what we face. Here’s a UK example that could never happen in Texas. Farmer jailed for defending his home.
In the defense of Western Civilization the homefront is becoming a bigger and bigger theater IMHO too. Great civilizations fall from the inside.
Well if you boot the First Lord down to the local rowboat rental facility where he can tend what’s left of the British Navy, and you send the Chief of the General Staff down to Sandhurst and the Chief of the Air Staff down to the musuem at Biggin Hill—then who’s left at the Ministry of Defense? Why the heck do those civilian types need a whole big Whitehall with a buncha empty rooms to rattle around in? Of course the extra rooms can get filled up with white papers written by the civilian staff about military adventures and plans that aren’t ever going to happen, but it’s hard to explain this precipitous need for real estate.
While, as one wag put it, history does not repeat, but does rhyme, we are seeing a repeat of the 30s. We have an unstable political situation in the world, and western countries are disarming for much the same reason as they did in the 30s. I don’t see a Hitler or Stalin out there, but I don’t know that anyone did in 1932 either. Stalin was pretty quiet and kept to his knitting while preparing for the show trials and purges, and Hitler was still the Austro-Bavarian version of a redneck without power.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t trouble makers. We have Kim and Mad Dinner Jacket about, but none are like Hitler. All I see is the Levant and the Arab revanchists with visions of Saladin dancing in their heads. Bible prophecy says the next thing on the prophetic agenda is an attack on Israel, but I can’t tell you much of anything else.
QM, you might say that Putin is keeping to his knitting too.
Ahhhh….must be time to break out those purple uniforms that were bandied about as replacements for the individual service uniforms a couple of decades ago, when last we talked about all of this ‘one service’ bullshit.
Give us time, Zipper. Canada here we come!!
If The WON has his way, of course. Defenseless Canada is the Obamassiah’s wet dream of a nation that knows its “proper” place in international polite society.
Those of us who have been around here a while are keenly/embarrassingly aware that some commentators here get all lachrymose when discussing/contemplating the continuing implosion of the armed forces of the so-called “Mother Country”…their mother country that is…certainly not mine…
…as I’ve said before we’ve been carrying their water since VE Day…and will continue to do so…nothings changed.
…finally color me a hopelessly superficial Gomer…I plead guity…but just one quick gander at the Brit Service Chiefs says it all…one a 22 year old Sea Cadet in his Dad’s ill fitting uniform…the other an old Dog with at least 20 years on me (thats flippen old)…would you share a foxhole with that gentleman?…and the last… a blue suited, gold braided popinjay with a broom up his a**…as Lex might say ” tis to weep”…weep indeed. Best
“…a blue-suited, gold braided popinjay with a broom up his a**..”
Isn’t that your snake-in-the-grass worm’s-eye view and/or description of ALL zoomies, Snake?
Not all but some Zoomies…but if the shoe fits and all that… Best