topman wrote: ↑17 Jun 2023, 13:16
I think people find manning issues boring or difficult to understand (or both) in comparison to equipment.
topman wrote: ↑17 Jun 2023, 18:36
Repulse wrote: ↑17 Jun 2023, 18:04
They could crew one (at least until all three FSS arrive) by giving Proteus and Stirling Castle to the RN where they belong.
The navy probably can't crew those anyway. Its 6 or two threes.
The problem is that manning, along with training, stockpiles and logistics are much more difficult to see and measure independently. It was something that the UK used to take more seriously, not necessarily got always right, but differentiated it from other “all fur and no knickers” countries.
I think it started to go wrong in the early 2000’s and took a turn for the worse from 2010. Going to war in Iraq and Iran, without raising the defence budget, distorted the armed forces driving a culture of short term cash savings to try and keep capital programmes going. 2010 when the wheels came off led to a incoherent review that left the services fighting each other over the scraps. Recent times have led to some hope to correcting some of these, but this potential feast (especially with inflation) is false - what’s worse because the public understands fur more than substance, the expectation has been equipment over the getting firm foundations in place. Others will strongly disagree, but opening a 2nd frigate factory rather than fixing and maximising the one we had is a good example of this.
What can be done - my view let’s start with the following:
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clarity of and focused alignment to strategy: the days of allowing multiple and often competing strategies to operate within the forces must end. For example the UK cannot afford to be a global land and sea power (air power IMO supports one of these) - outside of the US and China no-one can.
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honesty and education: the public needs to understand that to meet this strategy it’s more than kit. Wall charts of kit are nice, but as the Ukrainian war has reminded us logistics, stockpiles and moral are equally if not more important.
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evolution not revolution: there are times when new capabilities make current ones irrelevant. Very rarely however these do not come overnight, the forces should be more focused on continuous incremental change over big announcements of big programs. This means use and evolve what we have, with a view to new programs, but remove the jam tomorrow mindset.
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kill the sacred cows: Why do we split everything in terms of each service rather than aligning structures to objectives - for example, why not a single global expeditionary structure under one command. We should also remove the obsession with unaffordable luxuries such as frigate numbers, cap badges, tank numbers, and aircraft squadrons - if it doesn’t contribute to the objective it’s not important.