Saturday, September 17, 2016

UK armed forces 'could not withstand attack by major power like Russia'

 The UK’s armed forces would not be able to protect the country from a full-scale attack by Russia or another major military power, the recently retired commander of joint forces command has said.

Gen Sir Richard Barrons, who stepped down in April, delivered a scathing assessment of the UK military in a 10-page private memorandum to the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon.

It comes despite the government’s decision to increase defence spending by nearly £5bn by 2020/21 and to meet Nato’s target of 2% of GDP for the rest of the decade.

In his memo, Barrons said: “Capability that is foundational to all major armed forces has been withered by design.

“There is a sense that modern conflict is ordained to be only as small and as short term as we want to afford, and that is absurd.

“The failure to come to terms with this will not matter at all if we are lucky in the way the world happens to turn out, but it could matter a very great deal if even a few of the risks now at large conspire against the UK.”

Read the rest here.

I have posted on this before, but it's worth repeating. Britain has effectively joined most of the rest of Western Europe in becoming a military protectorate of the United States.

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