Britain becomes laughing stock

No laughs this week - the once unbeatable British military is becoming an international laughing stock and it pains me and (I assume) most of you.

The shocking state of British military capability was laid bare this week when France and Greece had to step in to defend British assets in Cyprus. Two Iranian drones hit their targets at RAF Akrotiri - landing just a few hundred metres from accommodation. Our allies immediately committed resources to help defend the region, with France sending their mammoth aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, and Greece dispatching an anti-drone frigate, Psara.

The British government twiddled its thumbs before finally agreeing to send a destroyer… at some point… hopefully. At the time of writing, HMS Dragon was not due to set sail until “next week”.

So pathetic is our ability to defend ourselves that there is even talk the French may take over British installations in the region.

It doesn’t get any better this week, I’m afraid. The lack of any layered air defence capability (i.e. no capable ships in the Med or Middle East) has meant the UK is committing some of its most expensive assets to taking out rock-bottom-priced drones coming out of Iran.

The MOD proudly shared footage of their F-35 strike on a drone, but when you think for a split second about what you’re watching, you realise that air-to-air missiles costing up to £2 million a pop have just been deployed against a drone that costs less than a second-hand Fiesta.

William Alberque, quoted in The Times, summed it up quite nicely:

“I can’t blame a pilot for engaging a target and shooting it down, but if you see a drone, and there’s nothing else in your airspace, and your first choice is a missile? Come on.”

I agree, it’s not really the pilot - he’s making a split-second decision - but our inability to offer any alternative other than a flipping air-to-air missile shows how few lessons we’re learning from Ukraine.

Aaaaand the final bit of news to cheer you up: there are major doubts over whether Trident could actually hit a target like Moscow.

The Royal United Services Institute announced last week that Russia’s ground-based anti-ballistic system, the A-235, combined with its intercontinental ballistic missile shield, the S-500, gives it a layered defence against British nukes. Without the scale of US forces, the UK is unlikely to be able to launch the multi-layered attack required to overwhelm these air defence systems.

Britain has announced a £400m investment into hypersonic systems - but is it too little, too late?

Big events from the past, covered in brief and probably inaccurately.

On 7 March 1936, Hitler ordered German troops into the demilitarised Rhineland, directly violating the Treaty of Versailles.

France and Britain chose not to respond militarily - a decision widely seen as one of the key moments that emboldened Nazi Germany before the outbreak of World War II.

Pertinent much?

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Team Forces Assist

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