A military expert on a recent podcast said the UK only has enough ammunition for about 3 days of real fighting.
We went on a 10 day exercise and ran out of ammunition after 6 or 7 days IIRC.
We definitely need 'someone' to look after us, as the British Army has shrivelled.
It doesn't help that we've given pretty much all of our ammunition reserves to Ukraine which they chewed through in a few months. And this is the thing. Starmer and Macron met the other day to pledge unwavering support for Ukraine in the event of a withdrawal of US support.
These are empty words from two politicians that particularly specialise in empty words:
Does Starmer's unwavering support include any of the following:
- putting the UK's defence manufacturing and procurement on a war footing to make or procure the level of arms ans munitions necessary to a) make a blind bit of difference to Ukraine b) replenish our own military emptier stockpiles? NO.
- Committing to increase long-term defence spending to 2.5% of GDP within this Parliamebt or even at any confirmed date (2.5% is actually the minimum membership requirement for NATO membership which we haven't met for years)? NO.
It goes back to my original post about Russia on here. I'm sorry but I'm totally with Farage and Trump on this: it's not being a Putin apologist to acknowledge the following facts:
- We poked the bear. The talks around Ukraine joining NATO were provocative. There is no way we would accept Ireland joining a treaty that had been established to fight the UK, nor would any other country tolerate a similar event. It's why Finland and Sweden committed to neutrality for decades, to preserve peace. When Putin amassed 200,000 troops on the border we had the opportunity to de-escalate and provide firm commitments to retaining Ukraine's neutrality. We decided to call Putin's bluff instead.
- Many global south and east countries are not on the west's side on Russia for that reason: they saw the western overtures to Ukraine as typical western imperialist overreach. So countries like India have continued to trade with Russia and even conducted joint military exercises with them. If the west had made the de-escalative commitments noted above and Putin still invaded I doubt this would have happened to the same extent.
- For the same reason we saying we can't afford Ukraine to lose, China can't afford Russia to lose. If Russia loses in Ukraine and is humiliated, it will likely lead to a collapse in Putin's authoritarian communist influenced regime, it will possibly end in opponents taking over that favour a western outlook, maybe even harbouring ambitions to join the EU, which would isolate China geopolitically and create a significant military and economic threat right on her doorstep. China has ramped up its military industrial Base to supply Russia with almost endless supplies. Chins is also engaging in hybrid economic warfare to destabilise European economies.
- Meanwhile we are not willing to do what it takes to defeat Russia in Ukraine, despite the rhetoric coming from Biden, Macron and various British PMs around the need to do so.
- We are only willing to finance and supply enough to stop a rapid Ukrainian collapse and rapid surrender. What we are seeing is a slow but continuous and recently accelerating Russian advance. Meanwhile Russia's allies have started ramping up support to ensure the deal is sealed with Iran supplying its stocks of medium range cruise missiles and North Korea going so far as to deploy troops on the ground - something only Macron and Johnson have discussed doing and only in the context of a front line Ukrainian collapse leading to a rapid Russian advance towards Kyiv. Johnson's intervention on that front occurred this week and that's because some military analysts are saying such a collapse is potentially on the verge of happening regardless of what Trump does.
- As discussed, because we've been supplying Ukraine without increasing our own defence spending and industrial base to match demand we now don't have any ammunition ourselves and have left ourselves incapable of providing a meaningful intervention without US support and left ourselves vulnerable into the bargain.
- Given we were seemingly never willing to do what it would take to defeat Russia, but have nevertheless pushed Ukraine to continue the fight and given it just enough to stay in there, rocking against the ropes but getting up everything their knocked down, commenting on how brave they are as they stagger about the ring slowly getting punched into early onset dementia. I'll tell you now, we are complicit in all the death and destruction going on there with no real end game or actual plan outside measly words. The whole thing is a total disgrace.
www.independent.co.uk
