Crawford’s International Defence Review w/c 22nd August 2022

Nuclear Scaremongering

  • “should  Britain prepare for a nuclear war”.
  • There’s a difference between strategic nuclear weapons and tactical ones.
    • Strategic nukes have a huge explosive potential, many times that of those dropped by the US on Japan at the end of the Second World War.
    • Tactical nukes have a much lower yield, although still powerful, and are designed to have effect on the battlefield when conventional weaponry has not achieved the desired results.
  • Any use of nuclear weapons would lead to NATO’s intervention, confrontation between USA & Russia – Russia would lose and lose badly.
  • Putin might authorise the use of nukes in the face of an existential threat to the very existence of Russia. There is no current existential threat to the Russian state at he moment
  • I think it unlikely Putin will employ tactical nuclear weapons and those predicting it are scaremongering and need to stop.

Iran

  • Salman Rushdie’s stabbing has been condemned as an attack on freedom of speech except in Iran have suggested that Rushdie brought it on himself.
  • Once again Iran finds itself at odds with the rest of the world & vying for most toxic pariah state with North Korea and Syria.
  • Let’s rememeber the size of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to give it its proper title
    • it comprises 1,648,195 square kilometres, so is the 2nd largest country in the Middle East behind Saudi Arabia.
    • A population of approximately 85 million, which makes it the 17th most populated country in the world.
    • It has a large armed force, comprising Iranian regular armed forces & the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
    • Iranian military supports various allies and groups in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, and has developed its own indigenous weapons industry.
    • Iran has entered an agreement with Russia to supply drones for use in the Ukraine War.
  • Iran is the sworn enemy of the USA & Israel, and has called for the destruction of Israel.
  • Watch this space – at some point the USA will have to take the Iranian regime on militarily if it wishes to secure peace in the region.

Diversity in the UK Armed Forces

  • The Royal Air Force (RAF) has halted recruitment of white applicants in an attempt to meet their diversity targets.
  • The RAF has long been at the forefront of the woke, right-on policies to the embarrassment of some of its members- a major promoter of Gay Pride, quick to accede to personnel sporting beards & now it’s espousing positive discrimination
  • Years ago I was at the University of Glasgow on a Ministry of Defence (MOD) sponsored research fellowship researching race relations within the British army. My report found the army to be institutionally racist & my report to the MoD was duly buried.,
  • I have long been an advocate of equality of opportunity within Britain’s armed services, & 25 years ago I wrote an article where I saw no good reason why females could not be part of my tank crew.
  • The editor phoned me up to say that he couldn’t possibly publish as “the idea was preposterous”.
  • I’m reminded of what Canadian psychologist Prof. Jordan Peterson called the “Scandinavian paradox” – equality of opportunity does not necessarily equate to equality of outcome.
  • Our armed services exist to protect the state and it doesn’t matter a jot whether our servicemen and women are white, black, green, red, religious, atheists, gay, straight or elsewhere on the LGBT spectrum. All that matters is that they’re up to doing the job.

The SNP and Trident

  • SNP for an independent Scotland to join NATO,
  • But SNP is also pledged to rid Scotland of nuclear weapons
  • So the Trident D5 missile carried on the UK’s four nuclear-armed submarines is now in question.

Those of you who, like me, keep a weather eye on Scottish politics will know that the Scottish National Party (SNP, no “ist”) has begun preparing for what it hopes will be a second referendum on Scottish independence from the rest of the UK, to be held apparently on 19 October 2023. Leave aside for the moment that there’s virtually no chance of that actually happening in the face of Westminster opposition and/or the eagerly anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the legality or otherwise of the Scottish Parliament holding such a referendum.

Anyway, as part of the build up to this mooted event the SNP plans a series of papers to prepare the way, under the overall title of Building a New Scotland. The first couple have been published, but the one I’m really waiting for, and looking forward to commenting on, is the paper on defence. This particular topic has long been seen as the SNP’s Achilles Heel and it’ll be interesting to see if they can present a more credible proposal this time around.

Key to the whole subject matter, of course, is the presence of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent at Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde, usually referred to as Faslane. Here the SNP have difficulty reconciling two policies; their wish for an independent Scotland to join NATO, and their wish to rid Scotland of nuclear weapons, in this case the Trident D5 missile carried on the UK’s four nuclear-armed submarines.

The US has made it quite clear that any attempt to remove the nukes from the Clyde will be met by fierce resistance, up to including blocking Scotland’s access to NATO. Against that background, there has been a notable softening in the SNP position on the independent deterrent, to the point where my long time assertion that Faslane is Scotland’s biggest bargaining chip in independence negotiations and that renting the base to the UK post-independence might bring in some much needed revenue to the fledging state.

 

We’ll see how they deal with this in their defence paper, presumably to be published before the end of the year.

 

British Army Has More Horses Than Tanks

  • Is Britain capable of defending itself?
  • British army numbers drop to 72,500 by 2025
  • And British Army has more horses than tanks  – 485 versus 227

If there’s one thing that the Russo-Ukraine war has taught us, and which I’ve been banging on about to anyone that will listen, is that numbers matter. Whether it be aircraft, missiles, tanks, ammunition, or indeed infantrymen, conventional modern warfare demands them all in spade loads. Recent peacetime predictions of consumption levels of them all have proved woefully inadequate, and militaries around the world are revising their estimates upwards.

Just look at the attrition rates in Ukraine. Although it’s always difficult to get hold of accurate figures, the first casualty of war being truth and all that, it’s estimated that the Russians have to date lost over 4,000 armoured fighting vehicles possibly as many as 80,000 personnel killed, wounded, missing, and captured. The losses suffered by the Ukrainians are a bit more difficult to gauge, but it seems likely that they have suffered proportionally along similar lines.

Both sides, however, have been able to continue the conflict, albeit at a reduced intensity, because they have numbers in reserve which allow them to continue fighting. Contrast this with the UK, where the army in particular has been reduced to its lowest strength since Napoleonic times. On current plans, the British army will have only 72,500 personnel by 2025.

Perhaps more worrying is that the UK fields only 227 main battle tanks, and this will reduce to a mere 148 when Challenger 3, the newest tank, comes into service in 2030. If we’re lucky we might, and I say again might, be able to put two regiments of fifty tanks apiece into the field, and at Ukraine rates of attrition they might last a week or so. There are no reserves to speak of and no backup, so they are essentially fire and forget weapons. They won’t be coming back.

It’s interesting to note that the British army has more horses than tanks, 485 versus 227. This is a false equivalence, of course, because nobody sensible is going to argue that one horse is equal to one tank. But it does perhaps illustrate where British army priorities are at the moment. The Russo-Ukraine war is a wake up call and proper funding for Britain’s armed forces now needs to be a government priority.

Ukraine Update

 

  • Russia transferring troops to the south and the Kherson regions
  • Or is the Ukraine’s plan to attack elsewhere?
  • And is it the American long-range HIMARS or tanks and infantry that will win the war?

On the face of it there hasn’t been that much happening in the Russo-Ukraine war over the past few weeks. Not unless you’re caught up in the thick of it, of course. The attritional grind in the Donbas region continues with neither side making any notable gains. Here it is mainly an artillery battle, fought at long range and involving the expenditure of vast amounts of ammunition.

Meanwhile, attention has shifted to the south and the Kherson oblast, where the Ukrainians have been telegraphing their intention to mount a counter-offensive for some weeks (and which I predicted as far back as early March). This has resulted in Russia transferring troops there in significant numbers to meet the expected onslaught, weakening their efforts in the Donbas.

I don’t think the Ukrainians are at a stage in terms of equipment or training where a properly coordinated all-arms strategic counter-offensive is feasible, not yet anyway. There is always the possibility, of course, that this is a Ukrainian feint, and that they intend eventually to strike elsewhere. They may be applying the Russian practice of maskirovka, roughly translated as deception and/or camouflage, thereby turning the tables on their adversaries.

Finally, there has been much hoo-hah about the impact of the American long-range HIMARS system on the battlefield. Although only sixteen systems have been delivered to Ukraine so far, there’s no doubt it has gone some way to redress the artillery balance. Its ability to strike some seventy kilometres plus in to the Russian forces’ rear areas has resulted in significant damage to the invaders. Britain and Germany have also weighed in with some of the tracked equivalent, the MRLS system, which fires the same ammunition.

However, the impact of such a wunderwaffe (wonder weapon) should not be overemphasised. Wars, and battles, are generally won by land forces occupying ground and winkling out the enemy from their positions. Lobbing a few missiles or guided shells at the bad guys can prepare the ground, but in the end it’s the tanks and infantry and their supporting arms who usually settle the score.