Britain’s military – defeated by top brass’s incompetence and greed?

I wanted to write about something else today. But as Dave tries to start a war with Russia while handing over our country to *sl*m, a reader sent me this comparison which I thought people might find interesting:

“With reference to your article today, viewing the Russian female figure skaters competing a few weeks ago – and then compare them with the burkha-clad, benefits-dependent baby-machines infesting our towns and cities, I know who I would want to go the war against.”

“But the point I want to make is when I see the comparisons published regarding the respective military strengths between Britain and Russia, one finds: tanks – Britain 407, Russia 15,000; fighter aircraft 89 to 769; artillery 138 to 4,600; submarines 10 to 63; corvettes 0 to 74; and so on.”

“The figures in some of the comparisons are marginally different, but all show an overwhelming difference between us. What baffles me is how on earth did the Russian pull that rabbit out of the hat?”

“Military spending was the last priority in a bankrupt Russia in 1991 with what wealth remained being stolen by the oligarchs. In the period 1990 to 1999, the total sum that Russia could spare for their defence commitments was only $89.8 billion, compared to the $367.8 billion spent by the UK. Incidentally, at that time also, the notion that the drunken, ragged, and demoralized army of Boris Yeltsin’s starving, depopulating Russia might still threaten Western Europe was plainly absurd – and so the military anti-Soviet NATO’s reason for existence should have melted away. But instead, as you point out, NATO set about enlarging itself, gobbling up the previous Warsaw Pact countries, and expanding aggressively right up to the borders of Russia.”

“Even then Russian defence spending in the years 2000 to 2010 was still only $312.5 billion, compared to the UK’s $513.8 billion. It was only after 2010 that Russia began to catch up with the UK in defence spending, the four following years, they spent $321.8 billion, compared to our $236.8 billion.”

“This year, the Russians are spending a reputed (changing to pounds) £54 billion on defence, compared to our £36.4 billion. So how on earth did they get so much military material for so comparatively few roubles? Or maybe, how come we get so little from our defence budget?”

“Considering have been successfully invaded every day for years by hundreds of thousands, millions of the world’s riff/raff, there seems little point in maintaining an army-navy-air force anyway. Come to think of it, the threat that we faced across the Channel in 1940, pales to the nightmare future that we now unavoidably face. This country will resemble Syria as it is right now in about 50 years time.”

“Cheers”

There is a comparison here http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison-detail.asp?form=form&country1=united-kingdom&country2=russia&Submit=COMPARE

There are various answers to this reader’s comments. In my book PLUNDERING THE PUBLIC SECTOR, I did a chapter on how the utterly incompetent MoD had wasted over £100m on management consultants to improve it’s buying opf military equipment and how the annual Public Accounts Committee review of MoD effectiveness showed the MoD’s performance was getting worse every year. In SQUANDERED I exposed massive waste and incompetence throughout our military with tens of billions flushed down the toilet by our military masters’ bungling.

I suspect that if one of Mr Putin’s top military commanders wasted say £10bn, he wouldn’t be allowed to retire with honours and a massive pension?

In an earlier blog, I wrote about the ludicrous number of senior military officers in our armed forces:

The Navy has 421 officers for less than 40 fighting ships and submarines. The RAF has 26 Air Vice Marshalls, 90 Air Commodores and 330 Group Captains for around 820 aircraft including just 89 fighters (most of the rest are small trainers and helicopters). As for the Army – there are so many officers and so few regiments, we would put the Italian army to shame. One could wonder what most of these officers do all day.

And I also highlighted the lives of luxury our military bosses lead at our expense – while ordinary troops risk their lives before coming home to collect their P45s and head off into a life of poverty, their officers are laughing all the way to the bank. The top 32 military bosses get over £156,000 a year each in taxfree housing allowances. A further 390 officers receive over £87,000 a year each.

As for pensions, most squaddies will get a pittance, particularly if military chiefs manage to give enough of them their P45s just before they accrue sufficient years service for a full pension. But their bosses can look forward to living the rest of their days as multimillionaires. Most top military will retire with pension pots in the £2m to £3m range, giving pensions of £70,000 to £100,000 a year. In addition, they get a taxfree lump sum of 3 years’ pension – so, well over £200,000 cash in hand. Plus they can make hundreds of thousands of pounds a year more by whoring themselves out to arms suppliers.

We used to have ‘lions led by donkeys’. Now we have ‘lions led by extremely greedy donkeys’ all seemingly more concerned with their knighthoods, peerages and lucrative jobs with defence companies than they are for the welfare and equipment of their troops.