Quote:
Originally Posted by Suhiir
One nice thing about Russia and China ... they keep the defense industry employed and force politicians to pay at least some attention to their military capability.
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Indeed. The British Government has said it aims to be able to maintain a 'divisional sized force' overseas in a "sustained operation". Although the British Army, then with more men than it has now, actually struggled to maintain a Brigade sized force, in the Afghan war (In contrast to the Royal Marines who maintained an almost continuous battalion battle group from a brigade of just three major units).
It is worth bearing in mind, when you see very senior military commanders talking about maintaining the ability to expand and grow current forces, if needed, that while you can get men and turn them into soldiers easily enough, given time. UK, for example, has no real ability to produce MBT's any more (the next British MBT -post 2025 at the earliest- will be American or, just possibly, German)or even small arms (the next British Service rifle will not be made in the UK) because the Royal Small Arms factory no longer exists.
All of which, to me at any rate, makes a total nonsense of talk of confronting a major land power like Russia (with large reserves of manpower and relatively huge reserves of older tanks and AFV's, etc) anywhere, at all close to Russia. Will not happen and certainly should not happen.