British Military Current Events

[Humphrey Bogart]

That whole thing seems silly to begin with.

"Hey Canada...in a few years time, once we have some ships built & hopefully available, would you maybe wanna cruise some of your ships along ours in the South China Sea?  We're gonna show China who really runs the show!!"

"Oh, your in?  That's great.  The Australians are in too.  Excellent.  BBQ time it is!"

"Oh, no no no...we aren't going for a while.  We're actually in the process of building a new fleet of frigates.  And not the flexible, inexpensive ones we can use for piracy & patrolling & swift ASW, we actually just cancelled those.  We're building the other ones.  And the carrier isn't ready yet anyway.  And we don't have planes for it yet.... we're basically rebuilding our Navy right now.  But yeah, in a few years time, come with us while we show one of the greatest naval powers on earth who really runs the show right off their coast!  Glad you said yes!"


:  Have fun with that Royal Navy.  I'm sure the Chinese are super, super nervous about it...

:rofl: this made me giggle.

Now read that in your best Prince Charles voice.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Sounds familiar....

Britain risks 'open ended' conflict in Mali in bid to protect European security

British helicopters have deployed to Mali in support of a French counter-terrorism operation amid warnings of being dragged into 'open-ended' conflict.

Three RAF Chinook helicopters supported by 90 military personnel have been sent to north-west Africa to assist French forces in their fight against Islamist insurgents.

The British helicopters, from RAF Odiham in Hampshire, will provide logistical and troop movement support. However, experts fear the deployment could mark the start of an open-ended commitment to a new military campaign.

The Telegraph understands the British forces have deployed to Gao, in the north of the country. The town has seen French troops targeted by insurgents in recent months and the helicopters will be used to move soldiers by air, rather than ground, where they are more vulnerable to attack.

Mark Lancaster, the Armed Forces Minister, said: “The UK and France have a unique security and defence relationship that has lasted for more than a century and this deployment demonstrates our shared commitment to tackling terrorism, instability and reducing threats to European security.”

The deployment of British forces comes days after the Defence Secretary warned that the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant insurgent group is not fully eradicated.

Gavin Williamson said their “poisonous ideology” will cause further devastation if the momentum to destroy them in Syria and Iraq falters and they are able to inspire other such groups around the world.

It may have looked like an easy win to the politicians, but it comes with a significant amount of risk
France has about 4,000 troops deployed across West Africa’s Sahel region, fighting Islamist militants as part of Operation Barkhane. French forces moved into Mali in January 2013 to drive out al-Qaeda-linked militants who had attempted to take control of the country.

After initial success, a wave of attacks in recent months has seen the militants reestablish their grip over large swathes of the country. The northern half of Mali is considered largely out of government control. The Presidential election due to take place on July 29, in which the incumbent, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, is seeking a second term, is feared to be at risk from growing insecurity.

Ewan Lawson, a senior research fellow at  the Royal United Services Institute, said the UK government's support for the French operation, announced at Sandhurst in January, may have had an element of gesture politics.
"They may have thought the commitment of a few helicopters meant 'we've done our thing', without realising it was potentially putting our fingers in the mangle," he said.

"It may have looked like an easy win to the politicians, but it comes with a significant amount of risk."

France has historic ties to the region so would view any involvement there as a long-term commitment, according to Mr Lawson. He says it should not be surprising if France asked for the British helicopters, due to return in August 2019, to remain, and maybe also to be backed up by British Apache attack helicopters.
If there are British casualties, or the French lose troops defending British personnel, the pressure to stay and for the mission to be open-ended may prove politically impossible to refuse. "It is an apparently limited commitment," Mr Lawson warns, "but with a potentially large bill in the future". 

The United Nations mission in Mali was established in 2013 and has more than 11,000 troops, but is considered one of the most dangerous peacekeeping operations in the world. The UN says 162 members of the mission have been killed since 2013. Some attacks are conducted by insurgents wearing UN peacekeeping uniforms.
The Armed Forces Minister told the Telegraph: “After months of planning, our helicopters are now operating with our French partners to assist Mali in countering the threats posed by terrorism and extremism and to help promote security and stability in Mali and across the Sahel region.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/20/britain-risks-open-ended-conflict-mali-bid-protect-european/

 

[daftandbarmy]

Awesome on so many levels

The Battle of Portaloo: Army bomb squad Captain who was stripped naked and locked in a toilet by his drunk troops faces huge bill after smashing his way out

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6027169/Bomb-squad-captain-locked-toilet-drunk-troops-faces-huge-bill-smashing-way-out.html

 

[daftandbarmy]

Meet the UK’s New, Very British Fighter Jet

Tally-ho, chocks away, and jolly good show: The UK’s new Tempest fighter jet will be a decidedly British affair. In July, the UK’s Ministry of Defense announced its new jet will be developed almost exclusively on British soil. The Brits hope the airplane will exhibit the country's military prowess even as it exits the European Union, and as its traditional defense partners and longtime allies in the United States back into isolationism.

https://www.wired.com/story/uk-very-british-tempest-fighter-jet/

 

[daftandbarmy]

Oops....

Watchkeeper drone crashes in Ceredigion cost millions

https:/At least four Watchkeeper army drones being tested in Cardigan Bay have been damaged beyond repair, with each one costing almost £6m each.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it is "too early" to say whether a fifth drone, which crashed near a school in Ceredigion last month, is salvageable.

If all five are beyond repair, it brings total losses to almost £30m.

/www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-44907078?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/crr7mlg0gent/british-army&link_location=live-reporting-story

 

[daftandbarmy]

Walting Matilda ...


Tory candidate Matt Lynch suspended over war claims

A Conservative election candidate in Sussex has been suspended over doubts about his claim to be a war veteran.

Matt Lynch is due to stand in the Hastings local election on Thursday.

In his campaigning profile - which has now been removed from the local party website - Mr Lynch claimed he served in the British Army for 14 years.

Members of the local regiment said they do not believe this to be correct. Mr Lynch has not replied to the BBC's requests for an interview.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-43967715

 

[daftandbarmy]

Exercise Cambrian Patrol 2018

Exercise CAMBRIAN PATROL is the premier patrolling event of the British Army which is held in Wales and hosted by 160 Infantry Brigade.

https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/events/2018/events-and-displays/exercise-cambrian-patrol-2018/

 

[daftandbarmy]

What's a 'Head' on a ship again?

Commence jealousy — the Royal Navy just opened a pub on its prized new carrier

The future flagship of the Royal Navy, the 65,000-ton aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, isn’t scheduled to complete its first real deployment until 2021, but that hasn’t kept the Brits from ensuring one morale-boosting element is installed and ready for duty.

A new pub, known as the Queen’s Head, was christened last week aboard the Queen Elizabeth and will be available to officers and senior enlisted during the ship’s maiden transit of the Atlantic, a journey that began Aug. 18 and one that features two embarked U.S. F-35B Lightning II aircraft from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland.

The Wiltshire-based Wadworth brewery, which created an ale specifically for the ship’s December 2017 commissioning — a beverage appropriately named “Carrier Ale” — was instrumental in bringing the pub to life.

“It has been a long time in the planning, well before the carrier was commissioned last year," brewery CEO Chris Welham said in a Wadworth press release. "The Mess looks really great and will provide a relaxing environment along with some fine beer for the team on board when they have some downtime.”



https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2018/08/20/commence-jealousy-the-royal-navy-just-opened-a-pub-on-its-prized-new-carrier/

 

[exspy]

... will be available to officers and senior enlisted during the ship’s maiden transit of the Atlantic ...

So the junior rates get screwed again? Only the Royal Navy would publicize the fact that their sailors are truly lower class members. And they wonder why they can't recruit to strength.

Cheers,
Dan.

 

[CBH99]

I was under the impression the junior's mess is essentially a pub also?

 

[daftandbarmy]

I was under the impression the junior's mess is essentially a pub also?

The whole ship is a floating pub. Having seen the Royal Navy at close quarters, I understand why they needed Royal Marines to keep Jack in line.

 

[daftandbarmy]

The Falklands retold – by my fallen uncle’s paratrooper comrades

Helen Parr’s uncle never returned from the 1982 conflict. She explains why she had to learn exactly how he died from the men who fought alongside him for her book, Our Boys

On the morning of 28 May 1982, Lt Col Herbert “H” Jones was killed leading his men over a ridge in what was to be one of the decisive confrontations of the Falklands war. He was one of 17 British soldiers to lose their lives in the two-day battle of Goose Green, along with about 50 Argentinians, but his was the derring-do that caught the public imagination and would be posthumously rewarded with one of the conflict’s two Victoria Crosses.

Hours earlier, in the freezing darkness, a 19-year-old soldier in Jones’s parachute battalion had a narrow escape when a bullet deflected by his water bottle came to rest in his navel. Badly shocked and bruised, Pte Dave Parr was helicoptered to a field hospital. Usually, a hospital admission would have meant the end of his war, but after it was discovered that the shell hadn’t pierced his skin, he asked to be released back into battle. Just over a fortnight later, he was hit a second time – this time fatally.

Helen Parr was seven years old and ill in bed when the phone rang with news of her uncle Dave’s death. She remembers her mother running up the stairs in tears and her father rushing off to comfort her grandparents. Seven months later, the family gathered for his funeral in the Suffolk village where Dave and his two brothers had grown up. “People were lining the route. We were behind this huge gun carriage and my uncle’s coffin, draped with the union flag. There was this gun salute and men crying as they ceremonially lowered the coffin into the ground,” she recalls. “In a way I always knew I wanted to write something about the Falklands, but I didn’t know what it would be.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/26/falklands-war-retold-helen-parr-our-boys

 

[daftandbarmy]

Army admits: we failed cadets left stranded on mountains

Report says Mourne Mountains expedition in Northern Ireland was a ‘near miss’

Children as young as 12 were marooned on mountains in treacherous conditions with inadequate supervision and clothing after a series of failures by expedition organisers, documents seen by the Observer reveal.

More than 70 children from Cleveland army cadet force, some taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh awards programme, were walking across Northern Ireland’s Mourne Mountains last August when the weather turned, leaving them isolated and exposed to the elements. Eight had to be stretchered off the mountain by the emergency services.

Internal army reports, released under the Freedom of Information Act, note that the incident “could easily have been more serious” and “the conditions for potential and serious failure had existed for some time”.They question the risk assessments carried out before outdoor adventure programmes and raise the need for adequate contingency planning.

One assessment notes that the trip’s exercise director had assumed that the Mourne Mountains were classified as “normal” when they are actually designated as “wild country”, making them unsuitable for the training of certain classes of cadet. It continues: “It is suspected that some of the leaders/supervisors were not sufficiently qualified or experienced to lead expeditions in the Mourne Mountains” and says that two of the cadet teams did not have a dedicated adult instructor.

Normally such trips would have an instructor to student ratio of 1:10. But one team leader was responsible for 19 cadets. The report notes: “On arrival (at the emergency rendezvous) there were only five adult instructors with the 64 cadets remaining on the mountain (a ratio of almost 1:13), which exceeded all of the recommended ratios.”

The youngsters – aged between 12 and 17 – were issued with waterproof clothing but all were “soaked through to the skin within 30 minutes”. Many had gone without breakfast on the morning of the rescue “due to [a] pressure to get moving” which “no doubt contributed to the resilience of cadets in adverse weather conditions”.

The expedition organisers used a weather app to ascertain the conditions, which was unsuitable for establishing the true conditions the cadets would encounter.

The day of the rescue experts said they believed a risk assessment must have been conducted.

Military veteran Doug Beattie told the Belfast Telegraph that “when you take young people to places like the Mourne Mountains, they do a very detailed risk assessment and make sure that they have very detailed plans in operation.”

But one report notes that the reconnaissance of the route had been conducted by a Duke of Edinburgh officer who had been given a risk assessment by an external adventure training provider which, he “believed, removed his planning responsibility, a serious error”.

It emerged that an earlier expedition had been scrapped because of a lack of qualified instructors, on the advice of an army training services adviser. But, the report notes, “the TSA was not shown the instruction for the Mournes expedition”.

It concludes: “What happened on the Mourne Mountains can best be described as a ‘near miss’. The (force) commandant has put into place manpower changes and assurance processes to prevent it happening again.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/22/army-failed-stranded-cadets-mourne-mountains-northern-ireland

 

[daftandbarmy]

Military police are investigating claims that two cadets "waterboarded" a fellow recruit at Sandhurst.

The Sun reported two officer cadets allegedly held down an individual, covered his face with a cloth and poured water over it, creating the sensation of drowning.

The alleged incident is said to have taken place on 7 August.

Deputy Commandant of the Royal Military Academy in Surrey Brig Bill Wright said he was "aware of the allegations".

He said he expected "the highest standards of behaviour at Sandhurst" and had therefore "ordered an investigation by the Royal Military Police".


Anyone found to have "fallen short" of those expectations would be "dealt with robustly" - and could be dismissed, he added.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45229429

 

[daftandbarmy]

British sailors arrested on HMS Queen Elizabeth’s first trip overseas to America

Read more at: https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/our-region/portsmouth/british-sailors-arrested-on-hms-queen-elizabeth-s-first-trip-overseas-to-america-1-8628646

 

[ModlrMike]

I'm shocked! Shocked I say. Who would have thought that sailors would get into trouble in a foreign port?  :

 

[CBH99]

#fakenews

Sailors don't drink, or get into fights in local pubs.  Ever. 

Clearly just American propaganda to build resentment towards those pesky foreign invaders they fought so hard to gain independence from...  :cheers:

 

[FJAG]

Brecon Beacons SAS Selection Deaths: Exercise Went 'Terribly Wrong', Court Martial Told
Two special forces soldiers are facing charges of negligence.

An SAS selection march in the Brecon Beacons that resulted in three deaths went “terribly wrong”, a court martial had been told, with organisers being accused of losing control of the exercise.

Lance Corporal Craig Roberts, 24, Lance Corporal Edward Maher, 31, and Corporal James Dunsby, 31, died as a result of the 16-mile (25km) exercise in temperatures of more than 31C in July 2013. All had suffered from hyperthermia, where the body no longer controls core temperature.

Two special forces soldiers were charged with negligence over the deaths after a coroner ruled in 2015 that the fatalities were caused partly by neglect, and after the victims’ families pushed for justice.

See rest of article here:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brecon-beacons-sas_uk_5b967c09e4b0511db3e490e9?2pb&utm_hp_ref=uk-homepage

:cheers:

 

[daftandbarmy]

Army sexual harassment report and action plan 2018


Document detailing the 2018 survey results and action plan, which sets out the British Army’s commitment to tackle sexual harassment.

Following on from the 2015 sexual harassment survey, the army undertook to repeat the survey in 2018 to assess improvements in army culture and behaviours. The 2018 report reflects an army more alive to and less tolerant of sexualised behaviours but it remains prevalent.

The report indicates a positive perception of the army’s efforts to tackle unacceptable behaviours including enhancements to visible and active leadership. In response to the survey, an action plan to address the recommendations has been developed, informed by an external and independent advisory group.

Both the survey and the action plan show that the British Army is absolutely determined to be open and honest about where it needs to do better. Nobody wants to tackle unacceptable behaviours in the army more than those who serve in it; it’s why respect for others is one of the core values.

Although the results show that there has been an improvement in behaviours since the 2015 survey, it also reports that unwanted sexualised behaviours remain a common experience for many service personnel. This must change, and we are determined to make that change happen. Just one occasion of sexual harassment is one too many.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/army-sexual-harassment-report-and-action-plan-2018

 

[FJAG]

Widow of reservist who was one of three who died on scorching SAS Brecon Beacons march blasts elite unit's 'blatant ignorance' as court martial case against two trainers is thrown out

The widow of a soldier who died on a training exercise in the Brecon Beacons has slammed the Army's safety procedures after a court martial case against two SAS instructors fell apart today.

Lance Corporal Craig Roberts, Lance Corporal Edward Maher and Corporal James Dunsby died after marching through the Welsh hills in high temperatures in July 2013.

Two SAS officers were brought before a court martial this week, charged with 'negligently performing a duty' for failing to take care of those on the march.

But a judge threw out the case today, insisting that the lack of training about heat illnesses in the Armed Forces meant the two men could not be held personally responsible. . . .

See rest of article here:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6180069/Judge-throws-court-martial-case-against-two-SAS-soldiers-Brecon-Beacons-deaths.html

:cheers: