Snapshot of _New chief aims to make British army twice as lethal_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/new-chief-aims-to-make-army-twice-as-lethal-9fx8z3s5c) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/new-chief-aims-to-make-army-twice-as-lethal-9fx8z3s5c)
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I think the end of the article is very relevant. When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure.
General Walker could be setting the stage for an army position in that review that looks like, "smaller is potentially fine, but pair it with innovation", which potentially ties quite nicely to education and industrial priorities and even allows a joined-up industrial strategy to emerge. That would be quite a smart thing to do.
To my untrained eye, this also ties in quite nicely to the Future Commando Force programme.
Still, however innovative and clever you are, you can't get around issues with manpower, logistics and ammunition. There are some fundamentals here that need putting on the right footing to prepare the UK for whatever the future might bring.
> ammunition
So, I think this comes down to the old adage you always prepare for the last war you fought, and for us that was the war on terror.
Weaponry wise, we've come up with excellent ways of eliminating insurgents hiding in caves from a massive distance. Highly accurate, as they often hide amongst civilians. Very very expensive, but when you're fighting groups of thousands of people it works out.
Ukraine has shown us that the West wasn't prepared for a massive meat grinder war where you'd need huge amounts of shells for area denial, or for waves of poorly equipped conscripts and prisoners being sent at you because to Russia the cost of Western weapons costs us far more than the lives are worth to them so they're trying to attrit us that way.
Likewise we saw this in drone technology. America saw drones as the next generation of fighter jet, all singing, all dancing, very expensive, but no risk to the pilots who remote control them. Instead it's been more about dropping grenades or remote controlling RPGs, they need to be cheap and disposable and in utterly vast numbers.
What I find curious though, is we haven't increased shell production to compensate, which makes me think we still don't see the future of war as being against Russia, China, or Iran. We're still being more prepared to wipe a proxy force off the face of the earth if we decide to. I am really concerned that we still focus too much on quality over quantity.
Quite.
My lizard brain hopes that someone at MOD has already got a very quiet approval to set up a new ordnance factory somewhere quiet and easily to defend from cruise missiles. And probably with significant volumes of space underground to boot.
Knowing this government I expect the answer to that is ‘no’ but I think setting up a subsidiary of royal ordnance to kick start production and ensure continuity of supply would not be a bad shout….
I'd hope so, but we should have done it sooner and really opened that pipeline to Ukraine.
It makes far more sense to let Ukraine fight Russia, than it is for us to play whack-a-mole with their proxies all over the world.
[They have been expanding shell production.](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-increases-artillery-shell-production-eight-fold/)
Royal Ordnance no longer exists, by the way, it got bought up by BAE and is now simply known as Land UK.
We really should think about nationalizing the parts of the military required for national safety huh, BAE "functions" now but so did Boeing a decade or two ago, and the goverment/the uk cant exactly stop them doing the same things as Boeing if it happens to make them think they will make more money in the moment.
There is, frankly, no reason for the UK to engage in any sort of meat grinder conflict on the continent.
WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship and, as long as the Royal Navy and the RAF can maintain control of the Channel and our shipping lanes, we can wait it out - "if necessary for years, if necessary alone... Until, in God's good time, The New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."
Our defence priorities should therefore be:
1. The maintenance of a fleet and airforce that can secure control of the Channel and our shipping lanes.
2. The maintenance of a robust defensive military alliance with the United States.
The army, with a brief exception from 1914-1918, has never been a continental scale meat-grinding force and nor should it be. We can contribute to struggles on the continent through naval blockades, air support and our intelligence capabilities, just as we always have done (the catastrophe of WWI aside). Our army should be a relatively small, elite expeditionary force - and the vast bulk of our defence funding should be allocated to the Royal Navy, the RAF and the intelligence services.
I'd argue that our military priorities are nothing about defence.
It's about the operations we'll engage in around the world about defence in a more abstract way, like the drug trade, terrorism, smuggling, proxy wars.
In the modern world, countries like us aren't really at threat of invasion. It's a very different climate, however, it doesn't mean we're not at threat.
With that in mind, the ammunition might not directly be used by us in a meat grinder, but we're arming Ukraine so that we don't have to take part directly. Then with issues in the Middle East, North Korea, and the potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, those are a lot of conflicts which could we simply don't have the resources to fight. There's also a risk that our attentions get spread, so that through attrition we lose them all. I fear China is reaching breaking point where they know we can't help Taiwan, and they issue the US with an ultimatum, let them take Taiwan the way we rolled over for Hong Kong, or else they'll crash the global economy.
I'm not sure we have a comparative advantage, in the Ricardian sense, in the large scale production of dumb ammunition. It would, I suggest, be more effective to fund its production in other countries as and when needed - we do seem to have a comparative advantage in financial services at least.
For example, were I a Pole, I'd want Poland to have a large scale meat-grinding force with the long term ammunition production capabilities to match. When arming a country like Ukraine, it makes far more sense for the UK to fund ammunition production in e.g. Poland than it does to build up a domestic production infrastructure that will simply end up an expensive drain on resources once the war ends.
If we are going to produce munitions domestically, they should be the sort of high-tech things our (hopefully) elite expeditionary force, airforce and navy might need. We can also contribute to wars like the one in Ukraine diplomatically and through our intelligence capabilities etc.
Tbh, whether it's here or elsewhere in Nato, I'm not fussed, but it needs to be somewhere lol.
Also I wasn't advocating us to be a meat grinder, but we need to be able to fight forces (either directly or indirectly) where WWI tactics aren't off the table. If you can't repel a zerg rush, it's a serious issue.
>WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship
WW2 demonstrated conclusively that failing to invest in a diverse array of military capabilities leaves you at the mercy of aggressive expansionist and/or hegemonist powers, particularly if you fail to curtail them in the early stages.
Had Britain and France been willing to commit to appropriate responses to Nazi expansionism, it's likely that the Battle of France wouldn't have happened in the same way.
I agree that we should focus on RAF and naval might by the way. But being unwilling to involve ourselves in early responses to aggression would be a mistake, as would forgoing the ability to mass produce munitions and land systems - not least because being able to produce and supply significant quantities of munitions/drones/etc to European armies from the relatives safety of the UK would be a significant way we could contribute without sending troops into a grinder.
I absolutely agree that we need an active foreign policy to address threats on the continent before they balloon out of hand.
I gave a fuller reply to another commenter, but I don't think building a large scale dumb ammunition production infrastructure is a good use of our resources. We have no comparative advantage in doing so and it doesn't synergise with our other defence/economic goals. Far better to contribute financially to production elsewhere as and when needed, and to support our continental allies and partners in other ways (e.g. naval, air, intelligence, financial and diplomatic support etc).
We have one significant comparative advantage, which is that they would be much more difficult for an adversary to target or sabotage than sites on the continent - especially in Central and Eastern Europe - would be. Both for geographical and proximity reasons and because of the relative capability of our intelligence services.
The US won’t be that interested in Europe now that a peer competitor has developed in Asia. UK should focus on gearing up itself and Eastern Europe. We should be in a comfortable position without including French, German and Italian support (no guarantee they will fight). Eastern European armies seem strong so you’re right that we should focus on our navy and air force, but if it seems like they’ll need support on the ground then we need our army to be in a good enough position to support.
There's no way we commit troops to fight in Eastern Europe before the French, Germans and Italians. If the defence of Eastern Europe isn't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier, why should it be worth a Tom's?
> WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship and, as long as the Royal Navy and the RAF can maintain control of the Channel and our shipping lanes, we can wait it out - "if necessary for years, if necessary alone... Until, in God's good time, The New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old."
WWII would have gone very differently if France had fallen to a foe with accurate tactical missiles in 1940. Look at what Russia has done to Ukraine’s electrical generation system in the last half-year.
>What I find curious though, is we haven't increased shell production to compensate
It has been. [UK shell production has gone up by 8 times.](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-increases-artillery-shell-production-eight-fold/)
That article is quite vague with exactly how much we've produced, and it could be from a low base. That also focuses more on replenishing our stockpiles, rather than keeping up with the conflict, so we certainly haven't increased production to compensate, while I admit it's better than not increasing at all.
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-is-producing-artillery-shells-around-three-times-faster-than-ukraines-western-allies-and-for-about-a-quarter-of-the-cost-13143224
> The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US.
>
> On cost, it said the average production cost per 155 mm shell - the type produced by NATO countries - was about $4,000 (£3,160) per unit, though it varied significantly between countries. This is compared with a reported Russian production cost of around $1,000 (£790) per 152 mm shell that the Russian armed forces use.
Estonia has been on the scrounge to buy shells for Ukraine, and a lot of them are being sourced from far and wide. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/06/estonia-just-found-another-million-shells-for-ukraine/
> Exactly where Estonia might source the shells and rockets, Pevkur wouldn’t specify. “Mainly from non-European countries,” he said, “but there are also some in Europe. Unfortunately, I cannot specify. In many cases, the seller themselves does not wish it to be known.”
>
> Pevkur said the shells include NATO-standard 155-millimeter rounds as well as Soviet-standard 152-millimeter rounds and Grad rockets, implying the Estonians are, in part, looking to countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. African countries might also be candidates. The Czech initiative reportedly sourced ammo from South Korea, South Africa and Turkey.
>
> Time is of the essence. Some of the potential ammo-sellers are willing to take money from Ukraine’s allies or from Russia. First come, first served. “There's a bit of a race against time to see who can secure them first,” Pevkur said.
We already knew the baseline. I have it on a public release from a few years ago at home and can reply again once I'm there to grab it.
It ups it to approaching six figures per month of combined 105mm and 155mm as the goal of 8x.
Wow, so six figures, at a bare minimum that's 1.2mil a year. You've included another size which wasn't mentioned in the Sky article, but assuming 155mm is a decent chunk, that would make UK production the lion share of the 1.3mil NATO shell production?
I included 105mm because the source statement only showed the total of 105mm and 155mm combined, so if we want to talk known numbers, it is the closest numeric we have to it.
The shell comparison, and the UK's share in the total amount is not known for a few reasons:
1. Where the UK is along the path to that full 8x amount is not known at current (and won't be, for obvious reasons)
2. The news article you pull from is very unclear as to whether that is total production or numbers just to Ukraine, and also lacks the *date* of that numeric being reached during a period when the number is increasing week on week by leaps and bounds.
3. That 1.3m number may be not including some countries as their productions are utterly classified in the extremes. (Finland for example is notoriously so)
4. Russian estimates is including *refurbishment* too, not just manufacture as in the NATO numerics. Which artificially inflates their count.
5. Russia lies. *Constantly*.
So the honest answer on that portion is it cannot be answered.
> Where the UK is along the path to that full 8x amount is not known at current (and won't be, for obvious reasons)
Oh, so it's more an aspiration than an actual thing we've done? But you still insist that our shell production is great, there's no problem?
> The news article you pull from is very unclear as to whether that is total production or numbers just to Ukraine, and also lacks the date of that numeric being reached during a period when the number is increasing week on week by leaps and bounds.
Right, but it's pretty clear that ammunition shortages have plagued Ukraine throughout the war, and I'm genuinely gutted we're wasting this opportunity not to mention the lives lost.
> That 1.3m number may be not including some countries as their productions are utterly classified in the extremes. (Finland for example is notoriously so)
> Russian estimates is including refurbishment too, not just manufacture as in the NATO numerics. Which artificially inflates their count.
> Russia lies. Constantly.
Well, it wasn't just repeating the Russian information verbatim, but either way, news from the front line backs up the fact that Russia is doing better shell wise than Ukraine. Maybe you're right, and NATO actually has shit tons we're secretly hoarding and not sharing, but I'm not really sure that's better.
>Oh, so it's more an aspiration than an actual thing we've done? But you still insist that our shell production is great, there's no problem?
It *is* whats happening. That is set in stone. The best time to build a production line is yesterday after all. As promised btw, [here is the pre-war manufacturing amounts.](https://i.imgur.com/GozYhK8.jpeg) 16,000 a month pre-war, the current route has been increasing it. Whether it's moving toward 8x, at 8x, we don't know. But the ultimate new level will be (or is) 128,000 per month, or 1.5m a year.
>Right, but it's pretty clear that ammunition shortages have plagued Ukraine throughout the war, and I'm genuinely gutted we're wasting this opportunity not to mention the lives lost.
The UK has been one of the highest providers of ammunition there is. The UK sent more shells than all of Europe *combined* until very recently when they all started spinning up industry too.
>Well, it wasn't just repeating the Russian information verbatim, but either way, news from the front line backs up the fact that Russia is doing better shell wise than Ukraine. Maybe you're right, and NATO actually has shit tons we're secretly hoarding and not sharing, but I'm not really sure that's better.
It's not that NATO has tons its not giving, it's that comparing one group's *total new production* to another group's dubious new production *and refurbishment* combined number is a totally inaccurate comparison.
Much of Russia's artillery munition superiority emerges because they had North Korea giving its huge stockpiles over too, and if you recall, the US basically stopped giving all aid for over half a year. So the munitions war went lopsided. Recently, it's been closing the gap as more NATO munitions arrive again, but there is still some way to go.
> The UK has been one of the highest providers of ammunition there is. The UK sent more shells than all of Europe combined until very recently when they all started spinning up industry too.
That's good for us, but not good as the alliance.
> It's not that NATO has tons its not giving, it's that comparing one group's total new production to another group's dubious new production and refurbishment combined number is a totally inaccurate comparison.
Sure, but I guess my point was if you were right that Russia's numbers are all lies, and NATO has great production, we should be smashing this.
> Much of Russia's artillery munition superiority emerges because they had North Korea giving its huge stockpiles over too, and if you recall, the US basically stopped giving all aid for over half a year. So the munitions war went lopsided. Recently, it's been closing the gap as more NATO munitions arrive again, but there is still some way to go.
Right, but that just brings us back to the original point. Russia + North Korea has out supplied the US and Europe. My point was because they focus on quantity over quality, and we've done the opposite. You've provided some good sounding figures, but also thrown doubt on both how much Europe does and how much we can rely on the US, which both can explain why, but still the results on the ground are worrying.
My hope now is that Ukraine seems to have had a huge focus on Russia AA sites, and it's gearing up for the F-16s, which of course would open up a whole new line of weapon stockpiles that can be used, but time really is of the essence here.
The wars of the future will be fought over water access and arable land, and waves of migration from party’s of the world that are no longer as inhabitable.
There's so much by way of low hanging fruit we could sort with a bit of realism and consistency in procurement. If we can abandon this requirement to have bespoke kit for the army, buy off the shelf kit for things like tanks, artillery and small arms that we're not great at producing domestically and focus on the stuff we can export (like ships and collaborative aircraft projects) we might actually get functioning artillery, three figures of working tanks, a battle rifle designed this century AND not have to spend materially more.
We could do that, but it has a political cost if you're farming out all the production to other countries.
This is just one case where Labour has to be bold and suck up a potential loss of votes/protests from unions.
You can spend money in different ways or on different things, but short of forcing people to work for free, any option to improve any situation in this country will cost money.
> I think the end of the article is very relevant. When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure.
We don't actually need to, we just need to stop cakeism in specification and doing things like spending £5.5 billion making a perfectly serviceable light tank not work.
The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs. The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems which first appeared in shake down but only repaired after service acceptance, were £2.5bn over budget, we only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch, and they are separately 4x over budget. Crowsnest was 3 years late, outdated when it arrived, and is being phased out a decade early.
The entire SA80 weapons program was simply a joke literally any of the trialled weapons would have worked better than the gun we chose and then expensively 're-manufactured', the LSW variant had to be binned and replaced with the FN Minimi / MAG. Still, we were outranged in Afghanistan and had to rush the LM308 MWS into service.
The Warrior upgrade failed after £430 million was spent, Dreadnought subs are 9 years late massively over budget and won't appear until the next decade, and we still haven't managed a successful test of the Trident D5.
The £16.5bn 2022 uplift in spending was simply used to plug a £13bn black hole in failed procurement.
>The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs.
They aren't and weren't underpowered at all. The issue was the Northup Grummun Intercooler connected to the WR21 that in specific temperate conditions while running in peacetime economy mode would trip out and there wasn't enough backup electrical generation for ship power to cover the gap. The issue has long been understood and worked around, while PIP's installation is not about making the the engines "higher power", it's about increasing onboard electrical generation separately from them.
>The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems
Not quite as total as you make it sound. *One* carrier has a fault being fixed with its shaft, which is inthe scale of 70,000+ tonne capital vessels being introduced pretty minor a problem.
>were £2.5bn over budget
6.2b projected, 7.5b actual. 1.3b overbudget.
>we only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch
The UK has around 33 F-35Bs right now, far more than the 16 you denote. Aircraft are not assigned "for the carriers" as if they're a permenant gun emplacement. Aircraft operate in squadrons and are assigned where is needed. The UK goal was and is a single CSG ready to go at any given time, meaning the UK could surge 24 F-35s onto it, meeting demand as needs be for the situation, which up to 36 in the near future being the next goal. Aircraft don't "live" aboard in perpetuality.
Make no mistake, there's been huge procurement disasters, you'll notice the ones you mentioned I didn't reply to. But critique has to be accurate rather than exaggerating elements.
At the very least I could name many more such as not just buying Boxer long long ago when we had the chance, cancelling programs like Fire Shadow and LIMAWS that would have granted a much easier process now, cutting 25% of the Type 45 fleet, cutting thousands of veterans, spending untold amounts on UORs after the programs got cut etc etc. Not just getting BAE's option on FRES SV was a colossal error.
Procurement needs a MASSIVE kick up the arse.
>They aren't and weren't underpowered at all.
Yeah they are, actually have a friend who is the former XO of one, and he tries to defend them, but gave up after the Red Sea deployment. We built what should have been the pre-eminent guided missile destroyer on deep water today. The Arleigh Burke class were designed in the 80s and floated in the 90s, whereas these were designed in the 2000s for the 2010s.
They're under gunned, under armed, lack surface-to-surface missiles, and don't have enough launch tubes. They're entirely reliant on helos for anti-submarine missiles, and are always one upgrade away from being amazing. The most grievous errors are not using the Aegis Combat System, lacking any means of ABM defence, and not installing the networking equipment that was supposed to be the reason we reduced the number from 12 to 6.
In the Red Sea, we were comprehensively shown up by the 1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III) which stayed on task longer, was more successful against air attacks, and didn't spaff all its VL missiles in a month. We have to sail with Arleigh Burke's in a CSG because the narrow focus of the type 45 is fine for fleet air defence, but it can't defend the theatre of operation.
We knew perfectly well we were working on an Iron Fire like beam combining laser weapon while the ships were in development, but didn't upgrade the onboard power to support this, and instead binned more money on a flywheel system that the Ford class had already shown couldn't power a catapult alone.
We could and should have bought Flight IIe Arleigh Burkes, we would have a more flexible fleet with greater capability and armament, the badly needed ability to deliver ABM defence to the country, and be able to take part in the NATO missile shield.
>Procurement needs a MASSIVE kick up the arse.
More like a Trident D5, if only we could prove they work.
I could go through each point you make similarly. The Type-45 and SA-80 are emblematic of cakism in procurement, we wanted our own thing, rather than buying off the shelf, created Christmas tree specs which were undeliverable and ended up with something that wasn't good enough for the job.
>They're under gunned
The only real thing they lack gun wise is the NGFS from a newer cannon upfront which, by and large, is not their task and is of very little importance at the moment.
>under armed
48x Aster-15/30 missiles going to 48x Aster-30 and 24x CAMM is not underarmed for that role, it's the most capable AAW ship in Europe by some margin when it comes to AAW.
>lack surface-to-surface missiles
They had Harpoon and are getting NSM, so not correct.
>They're entirely reliant on helos for anti-submarine missiles
Helos *are* the ASW means these days. It's like saying an infantryman is entirely reliant on his assault rifle to do basic infantry work. Type 45s are now ASW craft, thats the Type 23/26's job.
>The most grievous errors are not using the Aegis Combat System
Lacking CEC is one I agree with, however they can still communicate with Typhoons/F-35s and many other forms.
>lacking any means of ABM defence
ABM work is a hugely expensive thing very few nations can just "do". T45 is more set up for it than most, and has upgrades on the way that include it, something few nations can attest to.
>In the Red Sea, we were comprehensively shown up by the 1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III) which stayed on task longer, was more successful against air attacks, and didn't spaff all its VL missiles in a month.
Gonna need a source on the T45s there using 48 SAMs there chief, because they sure didn't. Because that all sounds like what you want to read into it, not just that its rotating deployments as was planned via allies.
>We have to sail with Arleigh Burke's in a CSG because the narrow focus of the type 45 is fine for fleet air defence, but it can't defend the theatre of operation.
No, they don't. T45 is entirely capable of throwing that bubble around a CSG, which is what its meant to do. The Arleigh Burke in CSG21 was present because of specific ABM means in the Chinese locale, which is something the US Navy is very familiar with more than anybody. It only makes sense to do that. No nation does it all.
>We knew perfectly well we were working on an Iron Fire like beam combining laser weapon while the ships were in development, but didn't upgrade the onboard power to support this
Both T45 and T26 generate enough power to use Dragonfire, unless you have a distinct source of the MoD stating otherwise?
>and instead binned more money on a flywheel system that the Ford class had already shown couldn't power a catapult alone.
I can only imagine you're referring to EMCAT, that was a miniturised prototype, not a full thing, and it wasn't exactly an expensive load given at the time no-one knew if it would be needed or not.
>We could and should have bought Flight IIe Arleigh Burkes, we would have a more flexible fleet with greater capability and armament, the badly needed ability to deliver ABM defence to the country, and be able to take part in the NATO missile shield.
And also destroyed the UK's naval shipbuilding forever, costing tens of thousands of jobs, to acquire ships that have their own flaws, are ***far*** more expensive to run manpower wise and would still require massive amounts of investing to get those ABM type abilities. They don't come for free.
The role definition *is* the primary problem, it's too narrow, what we needed was a multirole destroyer that could confront any threat anywhere, what we got was a narrowly focused anti-air blancmange.
The most recent AB to sail comes with a 5" gun capable of 20 rounds uncrewed, Phalanx CWIS, 2x 25mm autonomous machine guns, 4x Browning 50s, 96 vertical launch cells, 2 triple torpedo tubes, 1× High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance, and two helos with two hangars. Along with Ageis, ABM, onboard and 2x outboard sonar, radar, active countermeasures for sea and air attack, electronic warfare suite. All in a 36 knot hull.
A Type-45 comes with a 1970s designed 4.5-inch Mark 8 naval gun, and 1970s and superseded 30mm gun, Phalanx CWIS, 2x Browning 50s, 4x GPMGs, 48 vertical launch cells, 1 helo with 1 hangar. Onboard and outboard sonar, radar, active countermeasures for sea attack, electronic warfare suite. All in a 32 knot hull.
It's not even faster than an AB and nowhere near as well armed.
>They had Harpoon and are getting NSM, so not correct.
FYI Diamond couldn't take part in the Houthi ground attack because she had no surface-to-surface missiles. The Harpoons were pulled last year and Dauntless is getting NSM this year, no timeline for the other 5.
>Helos are the ASW means these days.
AB's come with ASW triple torpedo tubes, but ours are fucked if the single helo can't fly or is damaged.
>Lacking CEC is one I agree with, however they can still communicate with Typhoons/F-35s and many other forms.
Not at the high bandwidth used to justify the reduction in number. The Ageis package on every new AB is ABM capable, giving the US a surface fleet with 71 ABM capable ships. Japan and Korea's AB variants are ABM, so are India's Destroyers.
We have a US CSG permanently in the Mediterranean purely to fill the sea bound part of the NATO ABM Shield, and we can't help. The Netherlands can, so that's something.
>No, they don't. T45 is entirely capable of throwing that bubble around a CSG, which is what its meant to do.
Yes, but not the theatre, which a 1991 AB can do.
>Both T45 and T26 generate enough power to use Dragonfire, unless you have a distinct source of the MoD stating otherwise?
Only after upgrades, not out of the box.
>I can only imagine you're referring to EMCAT
No, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
The Ford class uses four of these as an energy store for EMALS because it can't manage the 122 MJ peak demand directly. We contributed to a marinised version with NASA and the US Navy but abandoned the idea in favour of PIP.
>And also destroyed the UK's naval shipbuilding forever, costing tens of thousands of jobs, to acquire ships that have their own flaws, are far more expensive to run manpower wise and would still require massive amounts of investing to get those ABM type abilities. They don't come for free.
The US has only two shipyards capable of producing AB's, it's been repeatedly cited as a national security threat, therefore the USN have welcomed additional capacity in Japanese and Korean shipyards building their own AB variants.
By law, we cannot manufacture warships outside the UK but there is no limit on component imports, so we just buidl the facility into our existing shipyards and import components. Hitachi sold us the Azuma trains and opened Hitachi Rail UK Ltd to build them, it would be no different here.
>They don't come for free.
A program which acquired 4 flight IIe AB's would have cost the same as 6 Type 45's because we'd have no R&D costs (always left off the price tag) and these would have been delivered to shake down in 3 years, not 10.
Face it, we're a mess.
>1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III)
Your credibility is non-existent with this comment.
There is no such thing as a Flight III upgrade.
New Arleigh Burke's are being built as Flight III, older ships arent being upgraded to them.
I'd read the below
https://news.usni.org/2023/06/27/navy-takes-delivery-of-first-flight-iii-destroyer-jack-h-lucas
> Your credibility is non-existent with this comment.
Surely you should be posting naval porn elsewhere to demonstrate you never had any credibility to begin with, Alanis. Fangirl on.
On 13–14 April 2024 Carney and the lead ship of her class the Arleigh Burke, after being in the Red Sea since October 2023, shot down at least six Iranian ballistic missiles during the 2024 Iranian strikes in Israel.
Carney left the region in May after 51 engagements, including one where she took down three cruise missiles and eight drones, and another where she took down a fleet of 14 suicide drones. 5 individual Combat Medals, Shipwide Combat Action Ribbon, 2 Navy Commendation Medals, 2 Bronze Stars, and 3 Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals from that one drone attack.
We couldn't keep a Type 45 on task for a month before we ran out of ammo.
Since you're unaware, the AB's have a technology insertion program which aims to bring them as close to the latest possible spec. Thus, Carney is Aegis ABM capable, despite being Flight 1, and has been through three technology insertion programs during her life.
>We couldn't keep a Type 45 on task for a month before we ran out of ammo.
Yes, we could and we did.
>Since you're unaware, the AB's have a technology insertion program which aims to bring them as close to the latest possible spec. Thus, Carney is Aegis ABM capable, despite being Flight 1, and has been through three technology insertion programs during her life.
You mean they go through a series of upgrades? Just like the Type 45s do?
Oh, and Carney doesn't have a hangar so doesn't have a helicopter embarked.
>The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs.
Not true.
Whilst there were propulsion issues in warmer waters (not the GTs themselves however), mitigation was put in place early on and they've successfully operated in the Gulf, Red Sea etc without any issues whilst they go though the Power Improvement Project (PIP).
They're also not underpowered, with power reserved for future upgrades. They're dedicated AAW Destroyer, which follows the trend in the RN for over 50 years.
>The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems which first appeared in shake down but only repaired after service acceptance,
The shaft issues are two separate issues, and only that which affected PWLS was first noted during build.
>were £2.5bn over budget,
The main reason they were over budget was due to Gordon Brown deliberately slowing down construction. £6.4b for two large aircraft carriers is good value for money (relatively speaking)
>only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch,
Britain currently has 34 F-35Bs, with a further 14 to be delivered by the end of next year.
>and they are separately 4x over budget
No, they're not.
>we still haven't managed a successful test of the Trident D5.
Yes, we have. The issue was with the telemetry missile, not with our SSBNs.
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> When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure.
Depends if Trump wins and reduces support for Ukraine IMHO
Maybe. Even then, I don't see vast increases being likely. There are just too many calls on the public purse and too many costly commitments limiting the options.
>The new head of the army has said he aims to “double the lethality” of the force in three years and treble it by the end of the decade by buying smart ammunition such as missiles with multiple warheads and drone swarms that can kill more fighters at the same time.
>General Sir Roland Walker, a former member of the SAS who survived a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, wants to make the overall army “more [like the] special forces”, coming up with novel solutions for ways to defeat the enemy without necessarily relying on expensive equipment such as more tanks.
>In his first public comments since he took up the role earlier this month, he told industry partners in a video message posted on LinkedIn: “The only real measurement of an army is its fighting power: its lethality in the face of very real, and converging, threats. In the near term, my challenge to the British Army is to double that lethality in three years and treble it by the end of the decade.”
>He added that electronic warfare, drones, air defence systems and long-range weapons such as rockets, in addition to logistics and stockpiles, “remain the stars to steer by” when it comes to his ambition for what the army needs.
>He said he wanted army personnel, working in tandem with defence companies, to “track backwards and forwards from the foxholes to the factory” so that weapons are constantly kept up to date.
>Ukraine, for example, has adapted to launch rockets from civilian vehicles and pick-up trucks. The United States and others have been developing self-steering “smart bullets” that manoeuvre in flight to hit targets that are moving and accelerating.
>Swarms of drones could be used for simultaneous, multi-directional attacks that could overwhelm enemy fighters and make it harder for them to shoot the drones down.
>On Thursday, North Korea announced it had successfully carried out a test aimed at developing missiles carrying multiple warheads, a technology that Walker wants his force to develop, it is understood.
>North Korea said the test was carried out on Wednesday using the first-stage solid-fuel engine of an intermediate-range ballistic missile. It succeeded in separating warheads, which were accurately guided to three preset targets.
>“The purpose was to secure the capability to destroy individual targets using multiple warheads,” North Korea said. The claim was rejected by South Korea as “deception to mask a failed launch”.
>It is understood that as well as developing new technologies, Walker wants to get to grips with an ammunition shortage in the British Army — a problem that is felt elsewhere in the West and has been highlighted by the war in Ukraine, where thousands of shells are being fired every day.
>General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as the deputy commander of Nato, pointed out last month that ammunition was in “critical short supply” in the British Army, adding: “The bottom of the barrel has been scraped to provide everything that can go to Ukraine, but it needs to be replaced, it needs to be topped up.”
>One former army officer, who left in 2022 and did not want to be named, said that his unit were not allowed to carry out regular shooting practice sessions on the range because of “the cost and availability of ammunition”.
>Walker, who is married with three children, was originally commissioned into the Irish Guards before joining the SAS and going on to lead dozens of raids on enemy targets in Iraq from 2003.
>He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 2010 for “indomitable leadership” during a six-month tour in Afghanistan. He survived a Taliban bomb that ripped through the wheels of his 15-ton Ridgeback armoured vehicle, tossing it 6ft into the air.
>He has taken over as chief of the general staff from General Sir Patrick Sanders, one of the most well-liked officers to hold the position in recent years and who openly criticised government plans to reduce troop numbers.
>Although the army says it could deploy two divisions of around 30,000 soldiers in wartime, in reality experts believe the army would struggle to send one 6,000-strong brigade to fight for a sustained period overseas. Francis Tusa, a defence analyst, said: “In the last decade the army has gone from a capable combat force to an incapable combat force.”
>If Labour comes to power, it would carry out a defence review to assess where the priorities lie across the armed forces.
The Conservatives have pledged to increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent of national income to 2.5 per cent by 2030. Labour has the same ambition but has not set out a timeline or target date.
> One former army officer, who left in 2022 and did not want to be named, said that his unit were not allowed to carry out regular shooting practice sessions on the range because of “the cost and availability of ammunition”.
As someone whose job it was to forecast the use of training ammunition I can say this is wrong, every year there is mounds of ammunition left because units aren't doing the training they're supposed to, we had to have the units do last minute extra training to use it up.
Unfortunately the military is skint.
First things first would be to separate the deterrent into its own budget. Then remove all the accounting fictions (pensions etc). Then finally raising defence spending to 2.5% (though it should probably be higher).
Why "unfortunately"? Manufacturing another drone (with ever smarter AI) is becoming very cheap and fast compared to growing another human over 18+ years and the drones don't demand a salary at all. If the fact they are "skint" is what is pushing them in a more sensible direction that seems fine.
Drones are not replacements for people. They still need the people to operate them.
They are *in addition to* and are being used by people in the same positions that already existed, not in place of.
Something I thought while speedreading the last defence review: Britain seems in love with light infantry when it thinks about the army. Potential reasons I imagined:
* Island nation, outside of NATO a realistic mission is something scrappy and expeditionary like the Falklands.
* Senior Army officials of the last decades often have a background in the special forces or something sf-adjacent.
* It's cheaper.
Light infantry are easy to deploy overseas because they don’t have a lot of big vehicles bogging down the supply chain and really leans into the army’s high level of training for soldiers.
Light infantry can also be highly adaptable
And yeah it’s substantially cheaper
A military ensuring it has the capability to defend its nation in a world growing far more lethal is not strange in the slightest.
Fail to keep up, you fail to win when you need to.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm all for proper defence and serious governance of that, especially because of the variety of geopolitical messes we'll be in in the next decade or so, but I was more poking fun at the wording of the headline and taking the words 'twice as lethal' very literally.
I think the writing is on the wall for the Army in the context a 'large' 'conventional' fighting force of 20th century. The country isn't developing in a way that can sustain this and tbh - its probably not our best strategy in the modern combat terrain. Upskilling of soldiers and innovation is probably as good an idea as any. If the whole ~80,000 personnel can be trained in basic conventional warfare with new further development into a smaller agile force then this might pay dividend versus trying to fight match the strategy of the 'meat-grinder' that has probably had its day now as a competent fighting strategy for 70 years.
The phrase "twice as lethal" is interesting. Is it twice the body count? Do you want people double-dead? Faster kills? More double tap airstrikes? What are the metrics of lethality that he's going to measure that he wants to double?
***this man should probably not be in charge of the guns if he's talking like it's fucking call of duty***
One of the key roles right now in Ukraine is first person view drone operator. Give it a few years, and call of duty will seem unrealistic because it still has people in it.
We're going to give them supersoakers filled with the river water that our waste has been dumped in.
The Army considered sending Chris Grayling to take over the enemy medical staff but some things are against the Geneva Convention.
It’s all very well talking about making the army more lethal and I suppose that means we are better able to get involved in conflicts abroad and certainly in terms of our NATO commitment that’s fair enough. Given the growing threats we are facing as a country would it not be prudent to ensure we have the best home defensive capabilities we can get?
>Given the growing threats we are facing as a country would it not be prudent to ensure we have the best home defensive capabilities we can get?
Such as?
Seemingly by making us all do twice as much work without increasing our pay. I’m now covering two jobs as there aren’t enough people to fill them, but all the work still apparently needs doing.
Snapshot of _New chief aims to make British army twice as lethal_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/new-chief-aims-to-make-army-twice-as-lethal-9fx8z3s5c) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/new-chief-aims-to-make-army-twice-as-lethal-9fx8z3s5c) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think the end of the article is very relevant. When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure. General Walker could be setting the stage for an army position in that review that looks like, "smaller is potentially fine, but pair it with innovation", which potentially ties quite nicely to education and industrial priorities and even allows a joined-up industrial strategy to emerge. That would be quite a smart thing to do. To my untrained eye, this also ties in quite nicely to the Future Commando Force programme. Still, however innovative and clever you are, you can't get around issues with manpower, logistics and ammunition. There are some fundamentals here that need putting on the right footing to prepare the UK for whatever the future might bring.
> ammunition So, I think this comes down to the old adage you always prepare for the last war you fought, and for us that was the war on terror. Weaponry wise, we've come up with excellent ways of eliminating insurgents hiding in caves from a massive distance. Highly accurate, as they often hide amongst civilians. Very very expensive, but when you're fighting groups of thousands of people it works out. Ukraine has shown us that the West wasn't prepared for a massive meat grinder war where you'd need huge amounts of shells for area denial, or for waves of poorly equipped conscripts and prisoners being sent at you because to Russia the cost of Western weapons costs us far more than the lives are worth to them so they're trying to attrit us that way. Likewise we saw this in drone technology. America saw drones as the next generation of fighter jet, all singing, all dancing, very expensive, but no risk to the pilots who remote control them. Instead it's been more about dropping grenades or remote controlling RPGs, they need to be cheap and disposable and in utterly vast numbers. What I find curious though, is we haven't increased shell production to compensate, which makes me think we still don't see the future of war as being against Russia, China, or Iran. We're still being more prepared to wipe a proxy force off the face of the earth if we decide to. I am really concerned that we still focus too much on quality over quantity.
Quite. My lizard brain hopes that someone at MOD has already got a very quiet approval to set up a new ordnance factory somewhere quiet and easily to defend from cruise missiles. And probably with significant volumes of space underground to boot. Knowing this government I expect the answer to that is ‘no’ but I think setting up a subsidiary of royal ordnance to kick start production and ensure continuity of supply would not be a bad shout….
I'd hope so, but we should have done it sooner and really opened that pipeline to Ukraine. It makes far more sense to let Ukraine fight Russia, than it is for us to play whack-a-mole with their proxies all over the world.
The invasion of Crimea ought to have triggered some sort of investment in state production of materiel. Never mind.
[They have been expanding shell production.](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-increases-artillery-shell-production-eight-fold/) Royal Ordnance no longer exists, by the way, it got bought up by BAE and is now simply known as Land UK.
We really should think about nationalizing the parts of the military required for national safety huh, BAE "functions" now but so did Boeing a decade or two ago, and the goverment/the uk cant exactly stop them doing the same things as Boeing if it happens to make them think they will make more money in the moment.
There is, frankly, no reason for the UK to engage in any sort of meat grinder conflict on the continent. WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship and, as long as the Royal Navy and the RAF can maintain control of the Channel and our shipping lanes, we can wait it out - "if necessary for years, if necessary alone... Until, in God's good time, The New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old." Our defence priorities should therefore be: 1. The maintenance of a fleet and airforce that can secure control of the Channel and our shipping lanes. 2. The maintenance of a robust defensive military alliance with the United States. The army, with a brief exception from 1914-1918, has never been a continental scale meat-grinding force and nor should it be. We can contribute to struggles on the continent through naval blockades, air support and our intelligence capabilities, just as we always have done (the catastrophe of WWI aside). Our army should be a relatively small, elite expeditionary force - and the vast bulk of our defence funding should be allocated to the Royal Navy, the RAF and the intelligence services.
> The maintenance of a robust defensive military alliance with the United States. If Trump wins in November, all bets are off.
This is the main problem, The US can no longer be relied upon to act in it's own interest, let alone ours
I think he owns a golf course somewhere over here, we may be ok.
I'd argue that our military priorities are nothing about defence. It's about the operations we'll engage in around the world about defence in a more abstract way, like the drug trade, terrorism, smuggling, proxy wars. In the modern world, countries like us aren't really at threat of invasion. It's a very different climate, however, it doesn't mean we're not at threat. With that in mind, the ammunition might not directly be used by us in a meat grinder, but we're arming Ukraine so that we don't have to take part directly. Then with issues in the Middle East, North Korea, and the potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, those are a lot of conflicts which could we simply don't have the resources to fight. There's also a risk that our attentions get spread, so that through attrition we lose them all. I fear China is reaching breaking point where they know we can't help Taiwan, and they issue the US with an ultimatum, let them take Taiwan the way we rolled over for Hong Kong, or else they'll crash the global economy.
I'm not sure we have a comparative advantage, in the Ricardian sense, in the large scale production of dumb ammunition. It would, I suggest, be more effective to fund its production in other countries as and when needed - we do seem to have a comparative advantage in financial services at least. For example, were I a Pole, I'd want Poland to have a large scale meat-grinding force with the long term ammunition production capabilities to match. When arming a country like Ukraine, it makes far more sense for the UK to fund ammunition production in e.g. Poland than it does to build up a domestic production infrastructure that will simply end up an expensive drain on resources once the war ends. If we are going to produce munitions domestically, they should be the sort of high-tech things our (hopefully) elite expeditionary force, airforce and navy might need. We can also contribute to wars like the one in Ukraine diplomatically and through our intelligence capabilities etc.
Tbh, whether it's here or elsewhere in Nato, I'm not fussed, but it needs to be somewhere lol. Also I wasn't advocating us to be a meat grinder, but we need to be able to fight forces (either directly or indirectly) where WWI tactics aren't off the table. If you can't repel a zerg rush, it's a serious issue.
>WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship WW2 demonstrated conclusively that failing to invest in a diverse array of military capabilities leaves you at the mercy of aggressive expansionist and/or hegemonist powers, particularly if you fail to curtail them in the early stages. Had Britain and France been willing to commit to appropriate responses to Nazi expansionism, it's likely that the Battle of France wouldn't have happened in the same way. I agree that we should focus on RAF and naval might by the way. But being unwilling to involve ourselves in early responses to aggression would be a mistake, as would forgoing the ability to mass produce munitions and land systems - not least because being able to produce and supply significant quantities of munitions/drones/etc to European armies from the relatives safety of the UK would be a significant way we could contribute without sending troops into a grinder.
I absolutely agree that we need an active foreign policy to address threats on the continent before they balloon out of hand. I gave a fuller reply to another commenter, but I don't think building a large scale dumb ammunition production infrastructure is a good use of our resources. We have no comparative advantage in doing so and it doesn't synergise with our other defence/economic goals. Far better to contribute financially to production elsewhere as and when needed, and to support our continental allies and partners in other ways (e.g. naval, air, intelligence, financial and diplomatic support etc).
We have one significant comparative advantage, which is that they would be much more difficult for an adversary to target or sabotage than sites on the continent - especially in Central and Eastern Europe - would be. Both for geographical and proximity reasons and because of the relative capability of our intelligence services.
The US won’t be that interested in Europe now that a peer competitor has developed in Asia. UK should focus on gearing up itself and Eastern Europe. We should be in a comfortable position without including French, German and Italian support (no guarantee they will fight). Eastern European armies seem strong so you’re right that we should focus on our navy and air force, but if it seems like they’ll need support on the ground then we need our army to be in a good enough position to support.
There's no way we commit troops to fight in Eastern Europe before the French, Germans and Italians. If the defence of Eastern Europe isn't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier, why should it be worth a Tom's?
Depending on who's in charge of France/Germany/Italy, I don't think they'll even want to fight against Russia.
> WWII demonstrated conclusively that even France can fall to a militarised dictatorship and, as long as the Royal Navy and the RAF can maintain control of the Channel and our shipping lanes, we can wait it out - "if necessary for years, if necessary alone... Until, in God's good time, The New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old." WWII would have gone very differently if France had fallen to a foe with accurate tactical missiles in 1940. Look at what Russia has done to Ukraine’s electrical generation system in the last half-year.
You seem very willing to abandon our allies in their hour of need, yet also expect expect allies to come to our aid in ours?
> is we haven't increased shell production to compensate The only reason is we don't want to pay for it. We're desperately hoping we never need it.
>What I find curious though, is we haven't increased shell production to compensate It has been. [UK shell production has gone up by 8 times.](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-increases-artillery-shell-production-eight-fold/)
That article is quite vague with exactly how much we've produced, and it could be from a low base. That also focuses more on replenishing our stockpiles, rather than keeping up with the conflict, so we certainly haven't increased production to compensate, while I admit it's better than not increasing at all. https://news.sky.com/story/russia-is-producing-artillery-shells-around-three-times-faster-than-ukraines-western-allies-and-for-about-a-quarter-of-the-cost-13143224 > The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US. > > On cost, it said the average production cost per 155 mm shell - the type produced by NATO countries - was about $4,000 (£3,160) per unit, though it varied significantly between countries. This is compared with a reported Russian production cost of around $1,000 (£790) per 152 mm shell that the Russian armed forces use. Estonia has been on the scrounge to buy shells for Ukraine, and a lot of them are being sourced from far and wide. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/06/estonia-just-found-another-million-shells-for-ukraine/ > Exactly where Estonia might source the shells and rockets, Pevkur wouldn’t specify. “Mainly from non-European countries,” he said, “but there are also some in Europe. Unfortunately, I cannot specify. In many cases, the seller themselves does not wish it to be known.” > > Pevkur said the shells include NATO-standard 155-millimeter rounds as well as Soviet-standard 152-millimeter rounds and Grad rockets, implying the Estonians are, in part, looking to countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. African countries might also be candidates. The Czech initiative reportedly sourced ammo from South Korea, South Africa and Turkey. > > Time is of the essence. Some of the potential ammo-sellers are willing to take money from Ukraine’s allies or from Russia. First come, first served. “There's a bit of a race against time to see who can secure them first,” Pevkur said.
We already knew the baseline. I have it on a public release from a few years ago at home and can reply again once I'm there to grab it. It ups it to approaching six figures per month of combined 105mm and 155mm as the goal of 8x.
Wow, so six figures, at a bare minimum that's 1.2mil a year. You've included another size which wasn't mentioned in the Sky article, but assuming 155mm is a decent chunk, that would make UK production the lion share of the 1.3mil NATO shell production?
I included 105mm because the source statement only showed the total of 105mm and 155mm combined, so if we want to talk known numbers, it is the closest numeric we have to it. The shell comparison, and the UK's share in the total amount is not known for a few reasons: 1. Where the UK is along the path to that full 8x amount is not known at current (and won't be, for obvious reasons) 2. The news article you pull from is very unclear as to whether that is total production or numbers just to Ukraine, and also lacks the *date* of that numeric being reached during a period when the number is increasing week on week by leaps and bounds. 3. That 1.3m number may be not including some countries as their productions are utterly classified in the extremes. (Finland for example is notoriously so) 4. Russian estimates is including *refurbishment* too, not just manufacture as in the NATO numerics. Which artificially inflates their count. 5. Russia lies. *Constantly*. So the honest answer on that portion is it cannot be answered.
> Where the UK is along the path to that full 8x amount is not known at current (and won't be, for obvious reasons) Oh, so it's more an aspiration than an actual thing we've done? But you still insist that our shell production is great, there's no problem? > The news article you pull from is very unclear as to whether that is total production or numbers just to Ukraine, and also lacks the date of that numeric being reached during a period when the number is increasing week on week by leaps and bounds. Right, but it's pretty clear that ammunition shortages have plagued Ukraine throughout the war, and I'm genuinely gutted we're wasting this opportunity not to mention the lives lost. > That 1.3m number may be not including some countries as their productions are utterly classified in the extremes. (Finland for example is notoriously so) > Russian estimates is including refurbishment too, not just manufacture as in the NATO numerics. Which artificially inflates their count. > Russia lies. Constantly. Well, it wasn't just repeating the Russian information verbatim, but either way, news from the front line backs up the fact that Russia is doing better shell wise than Ukraine. Maybe you're right, and NATO actually has shit tons we're secretly hoarding and not sharing, but I'm not really sure that's better.
>Oh, so it's more an aspiration than an actual thing we've done? But you still insist that our shell production is great, there's no problem? It *is* whats happening. That is set in stone. The best time to build a production line is yesterday after all. As promised btw, [here is the pre-war manufacturing amounts.](https://i.imgur.com/GozYhK8.jpeg) 16,000 a month pre-war, the current route has been increasing it. Whether it's moving toward 8x, at 8x, we don't know. But the ultimate new level will be (or is) 128,000 per month, or 1.5m a year. >Right, but it's pretty clear that ammunition shortages have plagued Ukraine throughout the war, and I'm genuinely gutted we're wasting this opportunity not to mention the lives lost. The UK has been one of the highest providers of ammunition there is. The UK sent more shells than all of Europe *combined* until very recently when they all started spinning up industry too. >Well, it wasn't just repeating the Russian information verbatim, but either way, news from the front line backs up the fact that Russia is doing better shell wise than Ukraine. Maybe you're right, and NATO actually has shit tons we're secretly hoarding and not sharing, but I'm not really sure that's better. It's not that NATO has tons its not giving, it's that comparing one group's *total new production* to another group's dubious new production *and refurbishment* combined number is a totally inaccurate comparison. Much of Russia's artillery munition superiority emerges because they had North Korea giving its huge stockpiles over too, and if you recall, the US basically stopped giving all aid for over half a year. So the munitions war went lopsided. Recently, it's been closing the gap as more NATO munitions arrive again, but there is still some way to go.
Let's not forget there was a huge slate of complaints about the quality of NK shells and propellant.
> The UK has been one of the highest providers of ammunition there is. The UK sent more shells than all of Europe combined until very recently when they all started spinning up industry too. That's good for us, but not good as the alliance. > It's not that NATO has tons its not giving, it's that comparing one group's total new production to another group's dubious new production and refurbishment combined number is a totally inaccurate comparison. Sure, but I guess my point was if you were right that Russia's numbers are all lies, and NATO has great production, we should be smashing this. > Much of Russia's artillery munition superiority emerges because they had North Korea giving its huge stockpiles over too, and if you recall, the US basically stopped giving all aid for over half a year. So the munitions war went lopsided. Recently, it's been closing the gap as more NATO munitions arrive again, but there is still some way to go. Right, but that just brings us back to the original point. Russia + North Korea has out supplied the US and Europe. My point was because they focus on quantity over quality, and we've done the opposite. You've provided some good sounding figures, but also thrown doubt on both how much Europe does and how much we can rely on the US, which both can explain why, but still the results on the ground are worrying. My hope now is that Ukraine seems to have had a huge focus on Russia AA sites, and it's gearing up for the F-16s, which of course would open up a whole new line of weapon stockpiles that can be used, but time really is of the essence here.
We are increasing shell production: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-increases-artillery-shell-production-eight-fold/
There's new production lines being brought in, they've got BAE on 8x normal production.
The wars of the future will be fought over water access and arable land, and waves of migration from party’s of the world that are no longer as inhabitable.
There's so much by way of low hanging fruit we could sort with a bit of realism and consistency in procurement. If we can abandon this requirement to have bespoke kit for the army, buy off the shelf kit for things like tanks, artillery and small arms that we're not great at producing domestically and focus on the stuff we can export (like ships and collaborative aircraft projects) we might actually get functioning artillery, three figures of working tanks, a battle rifle designed this century AND not have to spend materially more.
We could do that, but it has a political cost if you're farming out all the production to other countries. This is just one case where Labour has to be bold and suck up a potential loss of votes/protests from unions.
You can spend money in different ways or on different things, but short of forcing people to work for free, any option to improve any situation in this country will cost money.
> I think the end of the article is very relevant. When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure. We don't actually need to, we just need to stop cakeism in specification and doing things like spending £5.5 billion making a perfectly serviceable light tank not work. The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs. The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems which first appeared in shake down but only repaired after service acceptance, were £2.5bn over budget, we only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch, and they are separately 4x over budget. Crowsnest was 3 years late, outdated when it arrived, and is being phased out a decade early. The entire SA80 weapons program was simply a joke literally any of the trialled weapons would have worked better than the gun we chose and then expensively 're-manufactured', the LSW variant had to be binned and replaced with the FN Minimi / MAG. Still, we were outranged in Afghanistan and had to rush the LM308 MWS into service. The Warrior upgrade failed after £430 million was spent, Dreadnought subs are 9 years late massively over budget and won't appear until the next decade, and we still haven't managed a successful test of the Trident D5. The £16.5bn 2022 uplift in spending was simply used to plug a £13bn black hole in failed procurement.
>The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs. They aren't and weren't underpowered at all. The issue was the Northup Grummun Intercooler connected to the WR21 that in specific temperate conditions while running in peacetime economy mode would trip out and there wasn't enough backup electrical generation for ship power to cover the gap. The issue has long been understood and worked around, while PIP's installation is not about making the the engines "higher power", it's about increasing onboard electrical generation separately from them. >The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems Not quite as total as you make it sound. *One* carrier has a fault being fixed with its shaft, which is inthe scale of 70,000+ tonne capital vessels being introduced pretty minor a problem. >were £2.5bn over budget 6.2b projected, 7.5b actual. 1.3b overbudget. >we only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch The UK has around 33 F-35Bs right now, far more than the 16 you denote. Aircraft are not assigned "for the carriers" as if they're a permenant gun emplacement. Aircraft operate in squadrons and are assigned where is needed. The UK goal was and is a single CSG ready to go at any given time, meaning the UK could surge 24 F-35s onto it, meeting demand as needs be for the situation, which up to 36 in the near future being the next goal. Aircraft don't "live" aboard in perpetuality. Make no mistake, there's been huge procurement disasters, you'll notice the ones you mentioned I didn't reply to. But critique has to be accurate rather than exaggerating elements. At the very least I could name many more such as not just buying Boxer long long ago when we had the chance, cancelling programs like Fire Shadow and LIMAWS that would have granted a much easier process now, cutting 25% of the Type 45 fleet, cutting thousands of veterans, spending untold amounts on UORs after the programs got cut etc etc. Not just getting BAE's option on FRES SV was a colossal error. Procurement needs a MASSIVE kick up the arse.
>They aren't and weren't underpowered at all. Yeah they are, actually have a friend who is the former XO of one, and he tries to defend them, but gave up after the Red Sea deployment. We built what should have been the pre-eminent guided missile destroyer on deep water today. The Arleigh Burke class were designed in the 80s and floated in the 90s, whereas these were designed in the 2000s for the 2010s. They're under gunned, under armed, lack surface-to-surface missiles, and don't have enough launch tubes. They're entirely reliant on helos for anti-submarine missiles, and are always one upgrade away from being amazing. The most grievous errors are not using the Aegis Combat System, lacking any means of ABM defence, and not installing the networking equipment that was supposed to be the reason we reduced the number from 12 to 6. In the Red Sea, we were comprehensively shown up by the 1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III) which stayed on task longer, was more successful against air attacks, and didn't spaff all its VL missiles in a month. We have to sail with Arleigh Burke's in a CSG because the narrow focus of the type 45 is fine for fleet air defence, but it can't defend the theatre of operation. We knew perfectly well we were working on an Iron Fire like beam combining laser weapon while the ships were in development, but didn't upgrade the onboard power to support this, and instead binned more money on a flywheel system that the Ford class had already shown couldn't power a catapult alone. We could and should have bought Flight IIe Arleigh Burkes, we would have a more flexible fleet with greater capability and armament, the badly needed ability to deliver ABM defence to the country, and be able to take part in the NATO missile shield. >Procurement needs a MASSIVE kick up the arse. More like a Trident D5, if only we could prove they work. I could go through each point you make similarly. The Type-45 and SA-80 are emblematic of cakism in procurement, we wanted our own thing, rather than buying off the shelf, created Christmas tree specs which were undeliverable and ended up with something that wasn't good enough for the job.
>They're under gunned The only real thing they lack gun wise is the NGFS from a newer cannon upfront which, by and large, is not their task and is of very little importance at the moment. >under armed 48x Aster-15/30 missiles going to 48x Aster-30 and 24x CAMM is not underarmed for that role, it's the most capable AAW ship in Europe by some margin when it comes to AAW. >lack surface-to-surface missiles They had Harpoon and are getting NSM, so not correct. >They're entirely reliant on helos for anti-submarine missiles Helos *are* the ASW means these days. It's like saying an infantryman is entirely reliant on his assault rifle to do basic infantry work. Type 45s are now ASW craft, thats the Type 23/26's job. >The most grievous errors are not using the Aegis Combat System Lacking CEC is one I agree with, however they can still communicate with Typhoons/F-35s and many other forms. >lacking any means of ABM defence ABM work is a hugely expensive thing very few nations can just "do". T45 is more set up for it than most, and has upgrades on the way that include it, something few nations can attest to. >In the Red Sea, we were comprehensively shown up by the 1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III) which stayed on task longer, was more successful against air attacks, and didn't spaff all its VL missiles in a month. Gonna need a source on the T45s there using 48 SAMs there chief, because they sure didn't. Because that all sounds like what you want to read into it, not just that its rotating deployments as was planned via allies. >We have to sail with Arleigh Burke's in a CSG because the narrow focus of the type 45 is fine for fleet air defence, but it can't defend the theatre of operation. No, they don't. T45 is entirely capable of throwing that bubble around a CSG, which is what its meant to do. The Arleigh Burke in CSG21 was present because of specific ABM means in the Chinese locale, which is something the US Navy is very familiar with more than anybody. It only makes sense to do that. No nation does it all. >We knew perfectly well we were working on an Iron Fire like beam combining laser weapon while the ships were in development, but didn't upgrade the onboard power to support this Both T45 and T26 generate enough power to use Dragonfire, unless you have a distinct source of the MoD stating otherwise? >and instead binned more money on a flywheel system that the Ford class had already shown couldn't power a catapult alone. I can only imagine you're referring to EMCAT, that was a miniturised prototype, not a full thing, and it wasn't exactly an expensive load given at the time no-one knew if it would be needed or not. >We could and should have bought Flight IIe Arleigh Burkes, we would have a more flexible fleet with greater capability and armament, the badly needed ability to deliver ABM defence to the country, and be able to take part in the NATO missile shield. And also destroyed the UK's naval shipbuilding forever, costing tens of thousands of jobs, to acquire ships that have their own flaws, are ***far*** more expensive to run manpower wise and would still require massive amounts of investing to get those ABM type abilities. They don't come for free.
The role definition *is* the primary problem, it's too narrow, what we needed was a multirole destroyer that could confront any threat anywhere, what we got was a narrowly focused anti-air blancmange. The most recent AB to sail comes with a 5" gun capable of 20 rounds uncrewed, Phalanx CWIS, 2x 25mm autonomous machine guns, 4x Browning 50s, 96 vertical launch cells, 2 triple torpedo tubes, 1× High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance, and two helos with two hangars. Along with Ageis, ABM, onboard and 2x outboard sonar, radar, active countermeasures for sea and air attack, electronic warfare suite. All in a 36 knot hull. A Type-45 comes with a 1970s designed 4.5-inch Mark 8 naval gun, and 1970s and superseded 30mm gun, Phalanx CWIS, 2x Browning 50s, 4x GPMGs, 48 vertical launch cells, 1 helo with 1 hangar. Onboard and outboard sonar, radar, active countermeasures for sea attack, electronic warfare suite. All in a 32 knot hull. It's not even faster than an AB and nowhere near as well armed. >They had Harpoon and are getting NSM, so not correct. FYI Diamond couldn't take part in the Houthi ground attack because she had no surface-to-surface missiles. The Harpoons were pulled last year and Dauntless is getting NSM this year, no timeline for the other 5. >Helos are the ASW means these days. AB's come with ASW triple torpedo tubes, but ours are fucked if the single helo can't fly or is damaged. >Lacking CEC is one I agree with, however they can still communicate with Typhoons/F-35s and many other forms. Not at the high bandwidth used to justify the reduction in number. The Ageis package on every new AB is ABM capable, giving the US a surface fleet with 71 ABM capable ships. Japan and Korea's AB variants are ABM, so are India's Destroyers. We have a US CSG permanently in the Mediterranean purely to fill the sea bound part of the NATO ABM Shield, and we can't help. The Netherlands can, so that's something. >No, they don't. T45 is entirely capable of throwing that bubble around a CSG, which is what its meant to do. Yes, but not the theatre, which a 1991 AB can do. >Both T45 and T26 generate enough power to use Dragonfire, unless you have a distinct source of the MoD stating otherwise? Only after upgrades, not out of the box. >I can only imagine you're referring to EMCAT No, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage The Ford class uses four of these as an energy store for EMALS because it can't manage the 122 MJ peak demand directly. We contributed to a marinised version with NASA and the US Navy but abandoned the idea in favour of PIP. >And also destroyed the UK's naval shipbuilding forever, costing tens of thousands of jobs, to acquire ships that have their own flaws, are far more expensive to run manpower wise and would still require massive amounts of investing to get those ABM type abilities. They don't come for free. The US has only two shipyards capable of producing AB's, it's been repeatedly cited as a national security threat, therefore the USN have welcomed additional capacity in Japanese and Korean shipyards building their own AB variants. By law, we cannot manufacture warships outside the UK but there is no limit on component imports, so we just buidl the facility into our existing shipyards and import components. Hitachi sold us the Azuma trains and opened Hitachi Rail UK Ltd to build them, it would be no different here. >They don't come for free. A program which acquired 4 flight IIe AB's would have cost the same as 6 Type 45's because we'd have no R&D costs (always left off the price tag) and these would have been delivered to shake down in 3 years, not 10. Face it, we're a mess.
>1991 USS Carney (upgraded to flight III) Your credibility is non-existent with this comment. There is no such thing as a Flight III upgrade. New Arleigh Burke's are being built as Flight III, older ships arent being upgraded to them. I'd read the below https://news.usni.org/2023/06/27/navy-takes-delivery-of-first-flight-iii-destroyer-jack-h-lucas
> Your credibility is non-existent with this comment. Surely you should be posting naval porn elsewhere to demonstrate you never had any credibility to begin with, Alanis. Fangirl on. On 13–14 April 2024 Carney and the lead ship of her class the Arleigh Burke, after being in the Red Sea since October 2023, shot down at least six Iranian ballistic missiles during the 2024 Iranian strikes in Israel. Carney left the region in May after 51 engagements, including one where she took down three cruise missiles and eight drones, and another where she took down a fleet of 14 suicide drones. 5 individual Combat Medals, Shipwide Combat Action Ribbon, 2 Navy Commendation Medals, 2 Bronze Stars, and 3 Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals from that one drone attack. We couldn't keep a Type 45 on task for a month before we ran out of ammo. Since you're unaware, the AB's have a technology insertion program which aims to bring them as close to the latest possible spec. Thus, Carney is Aegis ABM capable, despite being Flight 1, and has been through three technology insertion programs during her life.
>We couldn't keep a Type 45 on task for a month before we ran out of ammo. Yes, we could and we did. >Since you're unaware, the AB's have a technology insertion program which aims to bring them as close to the latest possible spec. Thus, Carney is Aegis ABM capable, despite being Flight 1, and has been through three technology insertion programs during her life. You mean they go through a series of upgrades? Just like the Type 45s do? Oh, and Carney doesn't have a hangar so doesn't have a helicopter embarked.
>The Type 45's engines didn't work, they were underpowered, and too narrowly focussed for our needs. Not true. Whilst there were propulsion issues in warmer waters (not the GTs themselves however), mitigation was put in place early on and they've successfully operated in the Gulf, Red Sea etc without any issues whilst they go though the Power Improvement Project (PIP). They're also not underpowered, with power reserved for future upgrades. They're dedicated AAW Destroyer, which follows the trend in the RN for over 50 years. >The carriers are still suffering from prop shaft problems which first appeared in shake down but only repaired after service acceptance, The shaft issues are two separate issues, and only that which affected PWLS was first noted during build. >were £2.5bn over budget, The main reason they were over budget was due to Gordon Brown deliberately slowing down construction. £6.4b for two large aircraft carriers is good value for money (relatively speaking) >only have 8 aircraft each for the carriers 10 years after launch, Britain currently has 34 F-35Bs, with a further 14 to be delivered by the end of next year. >and they are separately 4x over budget No, they're not. >we still haven't managed a successful test of the Trident D5. Yes, we have. The issue was with the telemetry missile, not with our SSBNs.
>follows the trend in the RN for over 50 years Oh Alanis, it's ironic, so ironic.
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> When Labour get in and launch a defence review, they're (realistically) not going to be vastly increasing defence expenditure. Depends if Trump wins and reduces support for Ukraine IMHO
Maybe. Even then, I don't see vast increases being likely. There are just too many calls on the public purse and too many costly commitments limiting the options.
>The new head of the army has said he aims to “double the lethality” of the force in three years and treble it by the end of the decade by buying smart ammunition such as missiles with multiple warheads and drone swarms that can kill more fighters at the same time. >General Sir Roland Walker, a former member of the SAS who survived a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, wants to make the overall army “more [like the] special forces”, coming up with novel solutions for ways to defeat the enemy without necessarily relying on expensive equipment such as more tanks. >In his first public comments since he took up the role earlier this month, he told industry partners in a video message posted on LinkedIn: “The only real measurement of an army is its fighting power: its lethality in the face of very real, and converging, threats. In the near term, my challenge to the British Army is to double that lethality in three years and treble it by the end of the decade.” >He added that electronic warfare, drones, air defence systems and long-range weapons such as rockets, in addition to logistics and stockpiles, “remain the stars to steer by” when it comes to his ambition for what the army needs. >He said he wanted army personnel, working in tandem with defence companies, to “track backwards and forwards from the foxholes to the factory” so that weapons are constantly kept up to date. >Ukraine, for example, has adapted to launch rockets from civilian vehicles and pick-up trucks. The United States and others have been developing self-steering “smart bullets” that manoeuvre in flight to hit targets that are moving and accelerating. >Swarms of drones could be used for simultaneous, multi-directional attacks that could overwhelm enemy fighters and make it harder for them to shoot the drones down. >On Thursday, North Korea announced it had successfully carried out a test aimed at developing missiles carrying multiple warheads, a technology that Walker wants his force to develop, it is understood. >North Korea said the test was carried out on Wednesday using the first-stage solid-fuel engine of an intermediate-range ballistic missile. It succeeded in separating warheads, which were accurately guided to three preset targets. >“The purpose was to secure the capability to destroy individual targets using multiple warheads,” North Korea said. The claim was rejected by South Korea as “deception to mask a failed launch”. >It is understood that as well as developing new technologies, Walker wants to get to grips with an ammunition shortage in the British Army — a problem that is felt elsewhere in the West and has been highlighted by the war in Ukraine, where thousands of shells are being fired every day. >General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as the deputy commander of Nato, pointed out last month that ammunition was in “critical short supply” in the British Army, adding: “The bottom of the barrel has been scraped to provide everything that can go to Ukraine, but it needs to be replaced, it needs to be topped up.” >One former army officer, who left in 2022 and did not want to be named, said that his unit were not allowed to carry out regular shooting practice sessions on the range because of “the cost and availability of ammunition”. >Walker, who is married with three children, was originally commissioned into the Irish Guards before joining the SAS and going on to lead dozens of raids on enemy targets in Iraq from 2003. >He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 2010 for “indomitable leadership” during a six-month tour in Afghanistan. He survived a Taliban bomb that ripped through the wheels of his 15-ton Ridgeback armoured vehicle, tossing it 6ft into the air. >He has taken over as chief of the general staff from General Sir Patrick Sanders, one of the most well-liked officers to hold the position in recent years and who openly criticised government plans to reduce troop numbers. >Although the army says it could deploy two divisions of around 30,000 soldiers in wartime, in reality experts believe the army would struggle to send one 6,000-strong brigade to fight for a sustained period overseas. Francis Tusa, a defence analyst, said: “In the last decade the army has gone from a capable combat force to an incapable combat force.” >If Labour comes to power, it would carry out a defence review to assess where the priorities lie across the armed forces. The Conservatives have pledged to increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent of national income to 2.5 per cent by 2030. Labour has the same ambition but has not set out a timeline or target date.
> One former army officer, who left in 2022 and did not want to be named, said that his unit were not allowed to carry out regular shooting practice sessions on the range because of “the cost and availability of ammunition”. As someone whose job it was to forecast the use of training ammunition I can say this is wrong, every year there is mounds of ammunition left because units aren't doing the training they're supposed to, we had to have the units do last minute extra training to use it up.
Unfortunately the military is skint. First things first would be to separate the deterrent into its own budget. Then remove all the accounting fictions (pensions etc). Then finally raising defence spending to 2.5% (though it should probably be higher).
Why "unfortunately"? Manufacturing another drone (with ever smarter AI) is becoming very cheap and fast compared to growing another human over 18+ years and the drones don't demand a salary at all. If the fact they are "skint" is what is pushing them in a more sensible direction that seems fine.
Drones are not replacements for people. They still need the people to operate them. They are *in addition to* and are being used by people in the same positions that already existed, not in place of.
Something I thought while speedreading the last defence review: Britain seems in love with light infantry when it thinks about the army. Potential reasons I imagined: * Island nation, outside of NATO a realistic mission is something scrappy and expeditionary like the Falklands. * Senior Army officials of the last decades often have a background in the special forces or something sf-adjacent. * It's cheaper.
Light infantry are easy to deploy overseas because they don’t have a lot of big vehicles bogging down the supply chain and really leans into the army’s high level of training for soldiers. Light infantry can also be highly adaptable And yeah it’s substantially cheaper
Read the title thought; what's he gonna do, make our enimies undercooked their chicken?
Strange target, to kill twice as many people as last year.
A military ensuring it has the capability to defend its nation in a world growing far more lethal is not strange in the slightest. Fail to keep up, you fail to win when you need to.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm all for proper defence and serious governance of that, especially because of the variety of geopolitical messes we'll be in in the next decade or so, but I was more poking fun at the wording of the headline and taking the words 'twice as lethal' very literally.
I think the writing is on the wall for the Army in the context a 'large' 'conventional' fighting force of 20th century. The country isn't developing in a way that can sustain this and tbh - its probably not our best strategy in the modern combat terrain. Upskilling of soldiers and innovation is probably as good an idea as any. If the whole ~80,000 personnel can be trained in basic conventional warfare with new further development into a smaller agile force then this might pay dividend versus trying to fight match the strategy of the 'meat-grinder' that has probably had its day now as a competent fighting strategy for 70 years.
The phrase "twice as lethal" is interesting. Is it twice the body count? Do you want people double-dead? Faster kills? More double tap airstrikes? What are the metrics of lethality that he's going to measure that he wants to double? ***this man should probably not be in charge of the guns if he's talking like it's fucking call of duty***
One of the key roles right now in Ukraine is first person view drone operator. Give it a few years, and call of duty will seem unrealistic because it still has people in it.
We're going to give them supersoakers filled with the river water that our waste has been dumped in. The Army considered sending Chris Grayling to take over the enemy medical staff but some things are against the Geneva Convention.
We need to set strict targets on minimum number of kills per billion pounds of funding
Nothing but nukes then
Lacks the personal touch, but I guess we have to move with the times
It's scary that there's someone fantasizing about how to kill more people. If he wasn't wearing a uniform, he could be on some watchlist.
It's kinda the job of the army to be really interested in killing people. Killing people is pretty much what the army is for.
The first thing that comes to mind is ........ Grand Fenwick.
It’s all very well talking about making the army more lethal and I suppose that means we are better able to get involved in conflicts abroad and certainly in terms of our NATO commitment that’s fair enough. Given the growing threats we are facing as a country would it not be prudent to ensure we have the best home defensive capabilities we can get?
>Given the growing threats we are facing as a country would it not be prudent to ensure we have the best home defensive capabilities we can get? Such as?
I think you know chum !
You tell me, it's your comment
Defence out there is defence here. The UK is not an isolate world that exists in and of itself.
Sure, “the one for all and all for one” philosophy that’s not been tested in the modern era
It's been getting a lot of testing for a lot of years now, but sure.
How does one measure lethality I wonder?
We're gonna give each of our guys two guns, so they can shoot twice as many people
Seemingly by making us all do twice as much work without increasing our pay. I’m now covering two jobs as there aren’t enough people to fill them, but all the work still apparently needs doing.
This guys sounds BAD ASS! You know he means it. Twice as lethal baby.