"Brits "analyse" problems with independent Scottish force" Topic

An interesting read from UK MoD regarding a potential Scottish defence force if Scotland becomes independent:

link

It's quite daft and somehow assumes Scotland would want to maintain same level of international commitment as Britain does now.

It talks about Hawks lacking offensive capability – by the looks of it SNP wants them retained purely for defensive air policing (most NATO airforces have this level of air force).

Or it mentions Slovakia lacking "strategic airlift" – again nearly all NATO countries lack this (C-130/-160 is a tactical airlifter and many NATO/European countries don't even have these and rely on much smaller C295 and An-26).

Strategic airlift is for overseas deployments

The underlying problem seems to problems for rump United Kingdom which would lose nuclear sub bases, industrial infrastructure and economies of scale.

And without Scottish oil revenue, British economy takes a big hit.

Basically without Scotland, current UK armed forces are unsustainable and I think that's the underlying theme.

Though to be fair current British armed forces are unsustainable, hence the massive cutbacks (e.g. now a mere 19 frigates/destroyers and fighter fleet could be as low as 150 by 2020).

And what will they do with all those leftover kilts?

Pretty well every Jock I have spoken too will take the option to stay with the British Army rather than a Scottish home defence force,

Tally Ho!

Scotland needs to be able to project power, but I imagine that could be accomplished with some pickup trucks and bottles of whiskey.

The Scots make fine troops, as long as they're led by white officers.

And without Scottish oil revenue, British economy takes a big hit.

All the studies I have seen suggest tetting Scotland go would be a huge boost to the English economy. The cost of paying Scots NEET and single mums far outstrips the oil revenue, and has done since the mid '80s.

And its unlikely that the French would want to exploit an independent Scotland to invade England – the original underlying reason for Union.

Let them go, I say – so long as they understand theres no way back….

OK
Takes deep breath before posting……………………..
So the only sensible comment on a post about Scottish Nationalism, started by an Australian, comes from an Englishman.

Sparker with all due respect to your service to the UK those sort of remarks do little except stir up stupid racist stereotypes. All grist to the mill for the Nationalists. While Scotland, which I love, would lose if we vote yes for Independence, MY country, Great Britain will lose much more.

Neil "Fatman" McDougall
Scotsman/Britain/Unionist

Oh and making these comments from the UK were he is still a resident and will be until Auld Nick drags him of by his Toes.

PS The highest proportion of single mums on benefits in the UK is in London, which has a bigger population than Scotland. And if London wants to declare UDI the rest of the UK will agree as long as they keep the politicians.

And without Scottish oil revenue, British economy takes a big hit.

I was under the impression that the North Sea oil revenues were, should some form of disunion occur, still subject to a three way split wherein the remaining UK would get at least 50% of the current UK share of the revenue stream and Norway's portion would obviously remain unchanged.

Sparker with all due respect to your service to the UK those sort of remarks do little except stir up stupid racist stereotypes.

Only if you take them seriously :-)

Some of the finest men and women I've had the pleasure to serve with have come from north of the border. And so has the resulting banter!

Scotland will be saddled with a Proportion of the UK National Debt… Good luck with that.

Oh and you can take your Bank of Clydesdale bank notes back up north, it's not Legal Tender – It's Acceptable Tender as is. In future who knows.

If you aren't part of the EU – You need to go through the Outside EU Passport control.

Military? What is a Scottish Army for? With the progressive leftish tendencies it would never be used.

BBC? Well you need your own broadcaster now as your TV Won't be subsidised by the UK Tax payer. DVLA, Post office, Highways Agency, UN Representatives, Tax collection service, everything from MOT's to vehicle Duty. Enjoy wearing all the expenses of a fully independent state.

Genuine Good luck to you Scotland, if you want to go, go but know that you will be alot worse off – As a Welshman I think you are bonkers if you cannot see through this smoke screen – They don't want independence they want DEVO-MAX – Tax raising powers et al – This is their power play, start at Independence and then Compromise with More powers of Devolution.

An Independant Scotland would be good for Wales, I think alot of Companies will relocate south of the border, in England or in Wales. London and the South is where most of the Wealth is centred. You can argue in the face of the facts, but Scotland would end up like Benelux and about as relevant. Unless of course they become a Tax haven / secrecy jurisdiction.

An Indepedent Scotland would only be one "GRANGEMOUTH" away from Fiscal Disaster – Oh and the Oil is running out – So Scotland would be another Sickman of Europe like Greece or Spain.

Well Sparker, you might want to take a look at the actual government figures and not the ones reported (made up) by the Daily Mail. The subsidy, even excluding oil revenue is from Scotland to England, not the other way round.

Not to mention that a lot of Scottish exports don't appear as Scottish in the figures, as they have to go through English ports and airports, so are reported as 'English'-based exports (for example the whisky industry exported 1.19 billion bottles in 2012, (excise on each bottle if consumed domestically would have been almost 9 billion pounds alone). But most of this is not attributed to Scotland, the same as the airport taxes when international travellers are required to travel through Heathrow etc rather than being abole to fly direct to Scottish airports.

The Scottish defence budget proposed by the current Scottish Govt. actually provides for a stronger Scottish military presence in Scotland than is currently provided for by the UK forces, for example, no surface vessels currently based there.

The projected savings from not subsidising 9.3% the proposed 100 billion Trident replacement will be more than enough to actually increase the defence spend IN Scotland.

So regardless – there is no doubt that an independent Soland could easily sustain a suitable defence force. Now whether current squaddies would want to transfer to a SDF would be an entirely different question. I suspect at first there would be a lot of reluctance, but I suspect over time, given the swinging cuts in the UK (or rUK) forces, many of them might change their minds. One very interesting question is what the rUK Government might do with the current 'Scottish' Regiment.

I'm still reeling from the comment that the RAF will only have 150 fighters by 2020.
Whats NEET?

I wish people would not use TMP for this debate – it always gets very political

I have strong views on the subject but TMP is really not the place

@Khusrau your facts on the surface vessels in scotland are well off.

MCM1 Squadron is based in Faslane naval base, that's 8 Surface Vessels for a start, equally FOST-NORTH is based there and does all the PATROL VESSELS. On top of that the largest European Exercise is held twice a year up in Joint Warrior and over 20+ Surface Vessels end up in Faslane Twice a year.

Not to mention the T45's built on the Clyde and the Rosyth, which go for Sea Trials off Scotland.

So yeah – No Surface Vessels in Scottish Naval bases….

"The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't
have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on
the front line of the British army for the last 300 years." – John Cleese

NEET – Not in Employment, Education or Training – basically the young unemployed.

If or when this happens I wonder will the Scots keep the SA80 rifle or go with something better?

Yeah can we please Blue Fez this it hasn't got and never had anything to do with wargaming..

Sparker OK sorry about that buty as has been pointed out before Irony is hard to spot in print, add a smiley face mate.

Fatman

I'm still reeling from the comment that the RAF will only have 150 fighters by 2020

Currently there's only about 220 split roughly equal between Tornado and Typhoon.

2015 – Britain firms up orders for 48 F-35s. More may come along later but none are committed and nothing will be known until SDSR2015 (by which time Scotland may be well on its way to independence).

2019 – Tornado retires. 53 Eurofighter T1 retires.

2020 – RAF = 48 F-35B + 107 Eurofighter = 151 a/c.

Originally 150 F-35s were planned and since then the figure has been revised to 138.

However only 48 have been made "definite" and only 70-odd serials have been assigned to F-35s.

There's also been some comments that F-35 may replace Eurofighter. Whether this is retired T1 jets or overall fleet is anyone's guess.

Ladies and gentlemen should Scotland leave the UK both states would undoubtedly negotiate any possible split on any possible matter. Other than that, most surely Scotland will have to start up its army/navy/air force from scratch, as UK's would still be the UK army/navy/air force. And of course Scotland shouldn't keep any fraction of UK's national debt which should be in its entirety a responsibility for the UK. That's my personal opinion on both matters, based on logics alone. New state, new armed forces, new national debt. If the UK want to keep bases, negotiation should ensue but everything built in Scottish soil should be Scottish, while everything bought by the UK and able to be transported to the UK (by own or else's means) should remain in UK's hands…

I think we would be talking about successor states to the United Kingdom here so no doubt any negotiation would fall under international law.

I would love to see the Scots get to keep their nuke subs ;-)

Trident would make the best Independence Day firework show of all time!

Divide hardware roughly proportionally by population, like the breakup of Czechoslovakia.

Of course, with only five million Scots, that leaves 'em with around a squadron of frontline jets (Lossiemouth) and miscellaneous support birds. Sounds decent enough- maybe a squadron of Eurofighters and one of Hawks.

And maybe the Scots can fix those blasted gun laws…that's one way to rapidly gain a defense force ;)

There's no indication the Scots want to leave the UK given the state of the polls.

Whereas Scotland is economically viable, 75% of its exports go to the rUK so there's not much reason to leave.

Militarily they oculd afford a defence force…. though the SNP always bang on about matching Norway with eve rmentioning the required conscription.

And of course Scotland shouldn't keep any fraction of UK's national debt which should be in its entirety a responsibility for the UK.

How is this logic. As part of the UK when that debt was created surely Scotland must be liable for part of it.
As others have indicated there is precedents for this sort of thing. Czechoslovakia, Sudan, Yugoslavia (though I don't think that model is to be advised).
I also agree the Modern Wargaming Board of TMP may not be the place for this political and emotionally charged subject. However, I don't think moving it to the Blue Fez is the correct remedy.

IIRC the SNP have said they'd take on 8% of the debt. Without doing so they'd not be entitled to a share of the national assets like defence equipment.

Only 8%? I'd divvy that up by proportional use. Those areas using the most tax dollars (whether military spending or social programs) get stuck with the greatest % of debt.

And you will have to forgive this Yank, he thought that most of Scotland (at least the mining and industrial parts) were horribly unemployed, with something like 75% of the population on welfare because there are simply NO jobs after the mines/mills/industries shut down.

Lion,

According to scottisheconomywatch.com, measured unemployment in Scotland is 7.4% and "real" unemployment is 8.5%.

Jurgen

Yes, no matter where, the "real" Unemployment always exceeds the "reported" figures … It does not take in to account those who quit looking for work, dropped off the social services records, as well as those under employed … Normally it is reported by certain media in the US as real verses reported and sometimes they add under employed. So usually the number is always more they the stats reported.

@Flecktarn: Those numbers surprise the hell out of me, since one of my friends enlisted in the US Army to escape the lack of jobs in the Scottish economy!

Lion,

I can claim neither expertise nor knowledge in this field, merely an ability to use Google: ) . Their figures do come from a UK government source and, based on that source ( PDF link ) , the employment rate in Scotland is 72.4%, compared with the UK national rate of 71.6%.

Jurgen

Jurgen's figures are right, as much as you can expect from Government stats anyhow, the Scottish economy, excluding oil is doing a bit better than the rest of the UK excluding London.

Sound about right … Jurgen, I've got two business degrees and 1/2 the time I can't figure out the who, why, when, what of the current business/political situations world wide … short of it being a bit of a mess across the board. And of course from a gaming standpoint it could make interesting fodder of some scenarios … Starving masses force local gov'ts to attack a neighbor for food and water. As as opposed to agressors being islamists or pirates …

UK would be a difficult term. The United Kingdom is the product of the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. If the Treaty is dissolved (and whatever they say that's what the nats actually want in practice) then there would be no UK, there would be England (of which Wales is a principality) and Scotland. Regardless of what both sides say there is no guarantee that either party would be entitled to membership of NATO or the EU, however since neither has a mechanism for ejecting member territory, either both parties would continue as members of else all of the existing members would have to agree in a new mechanism. In the case of the EU that would have to be unanimous, so good luck with that – and if Scotland (for example) was to be excluded there would be some bad feeling in thise states that want access to Scottish fishing fields – such Spain, France, Holland, Poland, Portugal.
As far as the national debt goes, there's more than one way of looking at it. If Scotland were to be considered a 'new' state then it would indeed be outside NATO/EU/Mouseketeeers etc, however it would also be free of debt and the residual part of the former UK would be saddled with the whole lot. Rationally the two government would in fact agree on a division of assets and liabilities, but there is very little in the UK arsenal that the larger potion could afford to lose and very little that would be of any use to the smaller portion.
Echoco…I'd imagine that they would replace SA 80 with…pretty well anything really. Personally I don't know what was wrong with SLRs in the first place