I Have A Cunning Plan: First Sea Lord

Your weekly dose of defence news, biased opinions and poorly curated content. You’re welcome.

The First Sea Lord has revealed what keeps him up at night: it’s Russians in the pond. Or under the pond, to be precise.

Speaking at a conference in London, Royal Marine Sir Gwyn outlined Britain’s proposed countermeasure to Russia’s subsurface antics - Atlantic Bastion. It’s an “emerging concept” built around high-tech underwater warfare using AI and autonomous vessels.

Time will tell whether we can out-tech the baddies…because we certainly aren’t out-spending them.

We’re broke and the government hates making savings, so guess what? It’s your fault - and overseas training is getting dialled back massively from January. That operationally questionable exercise in Cyprus, followed by beers in ’Napa? Forget it.

The Navy and Army are in the crosshairs, but somehow the RAF are still cracking on abroad. We’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry.

The friends of the nation at the RMT and Nautilus unions are once again weighing up options on how best to hold the Royal Navy to ransom, with a fresh vote on strike action. Hats off to RFA - they’ve managed to complete nearly a year of work after retuning from their last round of strikes in January.

For those unfamiliar, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is made up of civilian-crewed support vessels that handle a huge chunk of the Navy’s logistics. The crucial word here is “civilian” - these aren’t serving personnel and they’re fully unionised under the RMT. How we got into a situation where the Navy is so dependent on unionised workers is beyond me…but here we are.

We’ll always back fair treatment of workers, but using national security as a bargaining chip is shameful.

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

On 7th December 1941, Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour tore through the U.S. Pacific Fleet and shattered the idea that America could stay out of the war. Battleships burned in their berths, aircraft were wiped out on the ground and more than 2,400 Americans lost their lives.

It instantly became the pivotal moment of the conflict. The next day, the U.S. declared war - shifting overnight from reluctant bystander to the industrial powerhouse that would help decide the outcome of WWII. Four years later, Japan surrendered and America emerged as the dominant global superpower.

Changing things up? This is where we briefly look at career options from across the civvy world - everything goes here so expect some absolute drivel. Sometimes Forces Assist can help place you, sometimes we can’t. Either way we can offer advice.

Popular route for veterans - they’re not all that bad.

We talk about this more on our insta:

Over at Forces Assist we’re always looking for qualled up drivers nationally. If you have driving qualifications and are looking for work then head to forcesassist.com to start conversations.

Cheers,

Team Forces Assist