As far as I understood the Economist’s (well, I do not see any names pointing to a living person) point of view, the UK, after the cuts of their defense budget, now has no capability to evacuate citizens out of Libya.
I was a bit surprised - does it take all the king’s horses to do this mission? What is this “no-fly zone” idea about - did they absolutely need it?
I bet they won’t have enough to rescue that poor doggy on Salisbury Plain either.
Britain has got air bases in Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus. They need an aircraft carrier for the Mediterranean too?
The obsession with the aircraft carrier and military spending is one of the only things I can’t stand about UKIP.
I would say it depends on the number of citizans they are evacuating. If the number is very large, I can see them having limited ammount of vessels capable of nabbing a larger figure. Most of their combat strength lies is ships that are anything but ‘cruise’ ship vacancy. So, without a larger verssel it might just be a matter of space more than military capabalities. Or it could be auxilary forces that is lacking. Inteligence or air-ground support, maybe special forces just are not there any longer.
Many of you are far too young to remember but back in the early '60s Britain had a Minister of Defense called Duncan Sandys (pronunced Sands) who proclaimed manned aircrafts to be obsolete. The future belonged to missile, hence every single possible aircraft program was scrapped. The most famous victim was the much lamented TSR2 strike aircraft. Two huge problems surfaced though. First the British industry proved incapable to come up with the promised “magical” missiles. Not only that but when their governments decided to “buy American” to “keep costs low” they seemed supernaturally endowed as to pick the worst possible programs (Skybolt missile) or to change ideas on a seemingly weekly basis (TFX/F111). The second problem was the Vietnam War which proved the missiles were nowhere near as “whizzy” as promised, forcing a major rethinking in doctrines and weapon acquisition programs.
Sandys is only an example of mediocre bureaucrats living in a parallel universe who seem to find a particularly suitable environment in the British MoD. They are not good at butchering people efficiently. They are not good at playing being a superpower. They are not even good at leeching wealth efficiently. What do the Brits need them for? A monkey hitting a keyboard at random would be much better.
A monkey hitting a keyboard at random would be much better.
Better at butchering people? No, thanks, let’s keep the bureaucrats.
Fred Reed, if my memory serves, had a cool piece on the Libyan no-fly zone on LRC. He rightly pointed out that to impose a no-fly zone, one needs to bomb Libyan airfields and SAM sites, which by any sensible human would be considered outright war and aggression. After doing that there is no way one can stop short of a full invasion, hence the whole idea is just mean as a slippery slope to invasion.
But thanks gad the position in which put itself, militarily, is vanishing. Other countries are investing in area denials weaponry, subs and supersonic anti-ship missiles stand out, which would make future no-fly zones, embargoes or amphibious landings suicidal. Technologically, we’re getting back to a WW1-esque state where defense is way more effective than offense. Hopefully, one can have some peace even for non-nuclear antions is such a future world.
“Better at butchering people? No, thanks, let’s keep the bureaucrats.”
Huh? I believe his point was the effectiveness on a country’s ability to produce, provide, and practise self defence capabilities and operations. In this case a bit of the UK. Seems someone needs to re visit common sense land again. - “those without swords can still die upon them”
It was a pun at the old saying that if you have a room full of monkeys hitting keyboards at random they’ll come up with something good through sheer luck. Guess I am too big of a pointdexter and need to get out more.