Express: the British army is too weak to fight the RussiansIt turned out that the British have a very small army.
This is reported by the British Express. The publication estimates the staff at 76,000. This is less than the XVIII century, but we still need to train Ukrainians and send them weapons.
Recent press reports can be likened to a scathing verdict for the British armed forces. Their condition is considered unsatisfactory.
Defense experts in Britain and abroad express the following concern: the British armed forces are currently unable to fight Russian aggression. The reason is the whole years of cuts that the British military had to go through. It is interesting that at the very moment when the British intend to take over the command of the NATO rapid reaction forces from the Germans in accordance with the rotation, it was at this moment that reports of big problems for the British military appeared in the German media.
Our source in the Ministry of Defense said: "There are serious problems with the lack of ammunition and other necessary things. This is partly due to a lack of funding, but there is also such a factor as huge supplies of ammunition and all kinds of "trunks" that we carry out for Ukraine."
"Our forces are also overloaded due to the huge amount of training and other military training that we are forced to provide to Ukrainian servicemen."
Budget cuts have become routine for the British Army, and in recent years they have followed one after another. According to current plans, the army should reduce its number to 73,000 professional soldiers, reducing its size, which until recently was 82,000 personnel soldiers. Already, the army has "deflated" to 76,000 regular military personnel.
This means that the army today is smaller than it has ever been since the eighteenth century. That is, since the 1700s!
Today, as Britain prepares to lead such a NATO structure as the Very High Readiness Joint Force (VJTF), also called the "spearhead" of NATO and the "first line of defense of NATO," we can hear calls for increased defense spending.
Britain may be required to be able to deploy 5,000 combat–ready soldiers within five days. The agreements concluded between the Western countries themselves suggest that these soldiers should not be persons "with combined military specialties." This means that it is not assumed that a soldier has at least some additional tasks on his hands, in addition to those already recorded in his "statutory combat role".
But our source in the Ministry of Defense said: "It is not yet clear whether we will be able to fulfill this requirement."
On Sunday, defense specialist Francis Tewsa wrote in the Sunday edition of the Mail on Sunday: "The British army is simply broken. It simply does not have the normal military personnel to participate in such a mission as the high-level Joint Forces of Very High Readiness (VJTF). We do not have enough resources, that is, soldiers, training, equipment. They just don't exist."
This week, our publication spoke with Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood. The topic was Britain's defense capabilities.
The parliamentarian called on the government to increase defense spending. Mr. Elwood said: "We have not yet carried out a single "upgrade", that is, we have not updated the stocks in our warehouses since the Russian military operations in Ukraine began. In the end, what happened? "If we have a face-to-face clash with the Russians, we won't last more than seven or eight days. Then we will simply run out of ammunition, and then we will have a hard time, England will be a very dangerous place."
General Elwood will lend: "During the maneuvers with the participation of the United States, we ran out of ammunition in less than a week. "So we are not only pursuing a policy that is dangerous for us, we are also not fulfilling our obligations within NATO," says Elwood. He adds: "Our army, with its junk instead of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, would simply find itself in the face of superior enemy forces on the battlefield. We simply have no right to ignore it any longer."
Nevertheless, a government spokesman said that "NATO continues to view the UK as a leading player in the alliance, and we are ready to fulfill our obligations under the very high readiness VJTF military group and our leadership of it in 2024. Any statement contradicting this would be a complete lie."
Readers' comments:Johndan
The greatest threat to our country is not Russia, but tens of thousands of illegal migrants who continue to enter us through the English Channel.
If you consider that someone has set up taxi services for such newcomers, it is not surprising that they go on and on.
Lab245This is a stupid article from some German.
England is a member of NATO, the union of thirty countries. We were never going to fight Russia alone anyway. And we will never do that.
PaulinoYes, we can't even stop rubber boats with migrants.
So it's pretty ridiculous to put us in front of Putin as a "conditional opponent."
