"How bad are British armed forces??" Topic

I tend to view the whole thing as the Iranian President wanting to create an external diversion to cover up his horrible internal economic performance and miscalculating the impact, badly. The Brits kept their cool, nothing really happened other than Iranian leadership further alienating the rest of the civilized world and in the end, the UK looks calm, patient and successful and Iran goes down one more notch with the West. Yesterdays announcement that Iran is now capable of industrial production of nuclear fuel is an attempt to pander to Iranian nationalism to cover the black eye they received in the hostage situation and once again distract from an economy that should be booming under the oil price run up yet continues to stagnate.

Some explaination of the British ROE link sure makes it look like the ship commander was following the ROE set by his chain of command by recalling the boarding crew. Probably not quickly enough, but that is a matter for the RN to decide.

For my part I can't separate turning a third party ship into the site of a battle. I tend to think that the US ROE for boarding operations in the straits are pretty good and do allow for self defense of the borading force, but I suspect it would have been done with ship board assets as the boarding party watched from the deck of the merchant.

For my view of where we in the US are as a society relative to women in combat
picture & link

Certainly put the British Matelot in the shade doesnt it Oldgamer :0). Now dont get me started on Women in the forces I already have a stifle from this thread as it is…lol

Lowtardog wrote:
<<<Ooh we are short of those too, look at the shortage in Helicopters in Afghanistan recenly

or the whole Landrover/APC debate>>>

Right, but you *have* them, they just aren't deployed. That isn't a procurement issue, it's an operational one.

Look, I'm all for increased military spending, and I'm all for equipping the heck out of friendly soldiers. I'd be happy to pay ten or twenty bucks a week as a war tax, to pay our operations budget w/o taking from development/procurement/training. Heck, I could go thirty, and that'd be about 9% of my net. If all the taxpayers in the US did that, we'd have plenty of military funding cash, and could reduce the deficit at the same time.

However, this idea is acceptable to me and maybe 1% of the US population. I don't know what it's like in Britain, but I bet it's a similar situation.

You have to work with what you have, not pie-in-the-sky. AFAICT, for what they spend, and how big a military they have, and in comparison to other world militaries, the UK armed forces are pretty well equipped.
-Kle.