Indeed, Civil Defence staff (better known as ARP) were predominantly working men and women who volunteered to serve part time in addition to their day job, 7,000 of whom were killed in action.
I started a self study course on conversational hypnosis that a mentor I am working with gave me, which included the speaker giving demonstartions.
Kind of smacks of a similar attitide to when people who were suffering from shell shock were condemned as cowards.
Kind of reminds me of the "war is peace" on the Ministry of Peace sign in G. Orwells 1984.
Completley agree.
Who is talking about "policing the world"? Or is the suggestion that we can just ignore what happens beyond the edge of the Channel?
Not entirely - but should we have become militarily involved in the Middle East, - Iraq (Blair's big mistake ?), Yemen, etc. ??
In what way are we no longer a World Power? Just because some of the power has shifted away from the West, I would still place the UK as one of the global powers, and see no reason for us to give up this place to a different country - especially considering our place on the world stage would likely be taken by Russia, China or Iran. I'm not suggesting that we start or support myriad wars across the middle east for no reason, as seen in the last 20 years, but by neglecting to protect our interests globally - "policing" - we risk the danger of hostile nations gaining too much global power and shifting the power balance in the world.
Not to speak negatively about my own country, but in what way would you say that we're still a world power?
We're probably the only power outside to the US that can engage in relatively consistent global naval power projection.
Ten or fifteen years ago I would have agreed. But the RN is in quite the parlous state of late.
We're definitely not the world power we were 100, 50 or even 15 years ago - but I would say we still hold much more global power than most other countries. For example, the Royal Navy is one of the only counties to have ships around the world and a permanent nuclear deterrent, and the RAF has bases in the South Atlantic, Middle East and Cyprus. While this is much less than we have had in the past, in terms of a globally distributed military I would probably say we are in second or third place, clearly behind the US but roughly equal to France. Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia may have regional power but don't have the same global reach. I do think that the state of our armed forces is dire and hopefully the events of the last few years will encourage the government to properly invest in a military which can not only protect our country itself but also our allies across the world.
Because I would much rather they listened to us than to Russia or China.
Whether it is our duty to police the world is probably a debatable point, but I for one firmly believe that we should, as an approach of "minding our own business" and leaving hostile countries to consolidate power has proven, time and time again, to simply delay war and result in far greater consequences down the line.
As would I. But if, say, China was to sidle up to an African nation and offer them billions of dollars to let them build a military base and vote certain ways in the UN, what are we going to counter with?
Realistically, probably a bunch of economic sanctions and a few stern words but not much more. France's ongoing campaign to intervene in their former African colonies hasn't exactly been a resounding success so far...
Recruitment is an issue, but also I think such pain is to be expected shortly after the introduction of the carriers
That's about the level of availability that can be expected of Naval Assets.
Indeed, personally I'd be keen to see if we could look at replacing some of our Amphibious assault ships with a few Landing Helicopter Docks, (i.e small aircraft carriers with dock facilities on the back) to give more consistent fixed-wing coverage. Something like the Italian Trieste class would be excellent.
No longer a superpower, no.
It's worth mentioning here that no one other than the US navy currently has more than 2 fixed wing aircraft carriers, although China will have 3 soon, they currently have 2 operational carriers with a third due to enter service this year.
Indeed. Though, had the QE class been built as CATOBAR - which I believe they still have passive provision built in so that (in theory) they can be converted in later life - we'd effectively have three given that the distance between Portsmouth and Tulon isn't that great in the grand scheme of things.
Which is something that we should be proud of, but it doesn't in itself make up for the state of the surface fleet. The problem with submarines is that they're the silent service for a reason, you aren't supposed to know where they are. Saying "We might have a submarine off your coast" doesn't have quite the same diplomatic effect as parking an aircraft carrier and a few destroyers a few miles outside territorial waters does. (Especially since carriers don't often travel without said submarine being somewhere nearby).
They have. Rafales have had a nice few days out.
I’d certainly agree, but can you imagine the daily mail headlines if we had more ships sitting in ordinary “the billion pound warships that ever go to sea”
Not all F-35s can do STOVL. The US Marines fly the F-35B and so can (and have) use our carriers. The F-35C as used by the USN cannot.
The F35's used on the America class Assault ships can cross-operate with the QE's, though I don't think it has been done in practice yet.
Yeah those are the US Marine Corps F-35Bs and they certainly have deployed on the carriers!
www.royalnavy.mod.uk
