British Military Current Events

[daftandbarmy]

Quite a long way from that it seems...


One of Britain’s leading defense analysts has called for a sweeping reform of the Army Reserve and a substantial increase in the size of the British Army, warning that the current structure leaves the country unprepared for future conflicts.

Writing on his X page, defense commentator Nicholas Drummond argued that the Reserve is being used in ways that undermine its intended role, while the Regular Army remains too small to operate independently.

“Britain’s Army Reserve needs to be reformed. At the moment, the Regular Army is only deployable with Army Reserve personnel backfilling gaps,” Drummond wrote. “But when the Army Reserve is used to make the Regular Army usable, it cannot focus on its proper tasks, which are: to provide a second echelon force, battlefield casualty replacements, specialist personnel, and the capacity to enlarge the Army as a whole quickly in an emergency.”
Drummond’s core argument is that the Army Reserve should not merely act as a stopgap for personnel shortages but function as a cohesive, deployable force in its own right. That means creating units that train and fight together, rather than providing individual soldiers to plug gaps in the Regular Army.

“Army Reserve units also need to be complete entities that train together and fight together. When organised like this they perform much better,” he wrote.

U.K. needs 90,000 regular personnel and 30,000 reservists, analyst warns

One of Britain’s leading defense analysts has called for a sweeping reform of the Army Reserve and a substantial increase in the size of the British Army, warning that the current structure leaves the country unprepared for future conflicts. Writing on his X page, defense commentator Nicholas...

defence-blog.com

 

[daftandbarmy]

They did a study of the physical impacts of the Section Commanders Battle Course (Junior Brecon) and the Platoon Commanders Battle Course (Warminster).

4000 cal/day and only 5 hrs average sleep a night?

Looxury!

 

[AmmoTech90]

Of course the NCOs are beasted more.

 

[dapaterson]

They did a study of the physical impacts of the Section Commanders Battle Course (Junior Brecon) and the Platoon Commanders Battle Course (Warminster).

4000 cal/day and only 5 hrs average sleep a night?

Looxury!

View attachment 96056

I assume that the 5 hours average sleep per day includes the staff

 

[daftandbarmy]

Of course the NCOs are beasted more.

It's a tough course, the Pl Sgt's Battle Course is even harder I would say.

 

[Blackadder1916]

Former Army sergeant major becomes Tower of London Beefeater

Lee Fox, who grew up in Grimsby, served for 23 years before being appointed a Yeoman Warder.

www.bbc.com

A former British Army sergeant major is the first member of the Parachute Regiment to become a Yeoman Warder (YW) at the Tower of London.

Lee Fox, who grew up in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, served for 23 years during which he was deployed on tours to Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .

 

[Rifleman62]

Pl Sgt's Battle Course.

The new Battle Stripes series on YouTube.

 

[daftandbarmy]

If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined

Major military blunder as British Army recruits sent on WRONG training course​

Hundreds of British Army personnel were affected by a major military blunder that saw them sent on the wrong training course.

Junior soldiers, who were three weeks into their basic training at the Army Foundation College near Harrogate in North Yorkshire, were informed of the error earlier this week.

A total of around 210 recruits joining the Parachute Regiment were impacted, with many moving on from the short to the long course.

Major military blunder as British Army recruits sent on WRONG training course

210 junior soldiers at the Army Foundation College near Harrogate were affected by the error

uk.news.yahoo.com

 

[Kirkhill]

3 Scots tests out latest battlefield tech on Exercise Forest Guardian in Latvia

Over 200 members of the battalion deployed to the Baltic State to work alongside Latvian forces as well as soldiers from Canada and Italy

www.forcesnews.com

JEF in Latvia - 3 Scots

 

[daftandbarmy]

Well, well, well....

Spain’s biggest bank hires former head of British Army to help target Europe’s booming arms suppliers​

THE former head of the British Army is set to lead Santander’s bid to bolster its defence lending as the Spanish bank looks to cash in on a sharp uptick in military expenditure fueled by rising geopolitical tensions.

General Sir Patrick Sanders, chief of the general staff in the British Army from 2022 to 2024, will swap his combat boots for Chelsea boots after being hired by the Spanish lender, The Telegraph reported.

Bank executives will hope to lean on the general’s extensive contact book in the defence industry as the war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East and the return of Donald Trump to the White House encourage a worldwide surge in defence spending.

Spain’s biggest bank hires former head of British Army to help target Europe’s booming arms suppliers - Olive Press News Spain

THE former head of the British Army is set to lead Santander’s bid to bolster its defence lending as the Spanish bank looks to cash in on a sharp uptick

www.theolivepress.es

 

[daftandbarmy]

Very good news... like the bad guys got


A judge has finally seen sense over the SAS’s ambush of three IRA men

It didn’t take long for a judge to deliver his withering verdict on a judicial review application into the use of SAS force in an IRA ambush. The legal challenge over the killing of three Provisional IRA (PIRA) men in June 1991 was described as ‘utterly divorced from reality’ by Mr Justice McAlinden. At the High Court in Belfast, McAlinden pulled no punches:

Three PIRA terrorists drove a stolen car from Moneymore, County Londonderry, to Coagh in order to murder a soldier

‘This Court is being asked to slow the passage of time down, to analyse events in freeze-frame and to address the issue of absolute necessity in slow-motion… It is ludicrous to suggest that this court should analyse the events of the day in question in that manner.’

It is a refreshing change to read of a senior judge executing his office with brisk common sense which brooks no mealy-mouthed opposition. It’s also about time: Soldier B, an ex-special forces soldier at the centre of the case, has been through hell, despite having already been cleared of wrongdoing on a previous occasion.

Roisin Nugent sought a re-examination of the killing of her father, Tony Doris, by soldiers of the SAS at Coagh in County Tyrone in June 1991. Concluding that Nugent’s case ‘fails to get off the ground’, the judge refused the application for judicial review. He added, sharply, ‘I cannot conclude this judgment without expressing my surprise that legal aid funding was made available to mount such a challenge’.

The circumstances of that fateful day, thirty years ago, make it clear why this is a case that should never have got as far as it did.

Briefly, what happened that day in Coagh is as follows. Three PIRA terrorists drove a stolen car from Moneymore, County Londonderry, to Coagh in order to murder a part-time soldier of the Ulster Defence Regiment who was a contractor to the security forces in his civilian life. British intelligence was forewarned of the attack and a detachment of the SAS had prepared an ambush, one trooper posing as the intended victim.

When the stolen car came within range, the SAS began sustained automatic fire, immediately hitting Doris, who was driving. The car, out of control, crashed into two others parked nearby and caught fire; the three PIRA men, all shot dead, were badly burned in the blaze. In Republican mythology, these ‘Volunteers’, on ‘active service’, were ‘brutally slain’ while fighting ‘a war of liberation’.

The coroner’s verdict was more prosaic. In relation to Soldier B, one of the SAS personnel involved who fired at Tony Doris, Mr Justice McAlinden recorded that the coroner had found ‘the use of force was reasonable or proportionate in the circumstances’. Moreover, noted the judge, the coroner’s ‘reasoning is clear, comprehensive and flawless. He has not missed out on any piece of relevant evidence.’

This is good news for British heroes who served in Northern Ireland. The joint framework for dealing with the ‘legacy’ of the Troubles, agreed between the British and Irish governments and announced last month, has given rise to considerable anxiety that ex-members of the security forces will be subject to vexatious claims and malign persecution for their actions while doing their job: protecting the public, defending the realm and upholding law and order.

While former soldiers and police officers should never be given carte blanche, there has been a sustained attempt to create a ghastly and pernicious moral equivalence between those maintaining law and order, and those carrying out killings, maimings and intimidation.

Mr Justice McAlinden’s robust judgment is heartening, because it demonstrates that judges are not strait-jacketed by political agreements, compromises and considerations. It is open to them to see objective facts as any rational observer would, and to shut down egregious legal exploits accordingly.

But there is a warning for judges, too. This week’s case in Belfast proves that those who do reach judgements which are muddle-headed, topsy-turvy and founded on fundamentally mistaken priorities do so actively and of their own volition. They are not mere cogs in a machine but independent actors.

Blaming the judiciary is both wrong and simplistic. And, like any concentration on a group rather than its members, it absolves individual judges from responsibility. They are not prisoners of an inescapable machine. They make their own decisions. Mr Justice McAlinden demonstrated this week that those decisions can be clear-eyed and commonsensical. He has done us all a great service.

A judge has finally seen sense over the SAS's ambush of three IRA men

Three PIRA terrorists drove a stolen car from Moneymore, County Londonderry, to Coagh in order to murder a part-time soldier

www.spectator.co.uk

 

[daftandbarmy]

If you can't hack it, become a Jacket

Females welcomed to Commando selection – but standards remain as arduous as ever​

The Royal Marines have released a series of videos outlining their key values of integrity, humility, self-discipline and excellence.

But these values aren't new, so why shout about them now?

I went to the Commando Training Centre to ask whether the timing is related to criticism in the media.

Colonel Innes Catton, the Commandant of CTC Royal Marines, told me: "There has been some assertions made that perhaps we're changing training for the worse, to make it easier, to perhaps get more people through – which we would utterly refute.

"Let me be really clear. No change in the Commando tests.

"And I say that because they are the holy cows. The physical standards here are as arduous as they've ever been.

"Come down here and challenge those standards if anyone's bold enough to do it. We'd welcome it. And I suspect they aren't."

He went on: "We are changing training, though. We are making it better. In Phase One now, the earliest stages of training, every recruit is operating a drone.

"If anything, we're improving the standards."

Royal Marines training is quite rightly among the most demanding in the world

As well as a fear over standards dropping to tick boxes, the colonel also addressed a lack of female faces passing through the Royal Marines Commando course.

With more than 900 applicants to this day, no women have made it through.

Females welcomed to Commando selection – but standards remain as arduous as ever

The Commandant challenges critics who think the course has been made easier to head to Lympstone and try it for themselves

www.forcesnews.com