Britain's defense review not as bad as you think
The Guardian published a full list of what's on the chopping block. From a companion report:
'Britain's armed forces will no longer be able to mount the kind of operations conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government's strategic defence review made clear today. For at least a decade it will also be impossible to deploy the kind of carrier taskforce which liberated the Falklands 28 years ago.Though defence chiefs said today they will still have significant expeditionary forces, they will not be able to intervene on the scale of recent years. According to new defence planning assumptions, UK forces will be able to carry out one enduring brigade-level operation with up to 6,500 personnel, compared to the 10,000 now in Afghanistan, plus two smaller interventions, at any one time.
Alternatively, they will be able to mount a one-off, time-limited major intervention â?? "with sufficient warning" â?? of up to three brigades with about 30,000 personnel, which is two-thirds of the force deployed to Iraq in 2003.
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This is being greeted with dismay in many corners but I think it's useful to keep in mind that if we accept the fact that waging preventative wars followed by large-scale military occupation is not the proper way to combat terrorism, then fielding a smaller army is not necessarily a major setback to international security. But it is rather absurd to build an aircraft carrier without the attendant aircraft to carry.