British Regular Land forces Reduction

Darith

The latest from Whitehall is to double the numbers in TA infantry units to cover a reduction in regular Army units for home defense? Sounds like a desperate decision to me to balance the books plus would it mean that any good potential soldiers whom are capable to enlist in the future are to be told, sorry your only option is the TA?! To be fair though my research is not current and i know that alot of regular units cannot fill places so would this policy cover the fact that maybe there will be not enough willing recruits to fill the regular units in the future?

DipStick McSwindler

This post has been deleted.

Morpheus

The British are in the luckier position that should the need arise they could actually afford a massive quick expansion of their full time forces more readily than the likes of ourselves. Its traditional that force sizes grow and shrink based on the operations they find themselves involved in anyway. The'yre the fourth largest spender in the world anyway!

TheLastLazyGun

Darith wrote: »

The latest from Whitehall is to double the numbers in TA infantry units to cover a reduction in regular Army units for home defense? Sounds like a desperate decision to me to balance the books

There is nothing desperate about it.

The full-time army is being fairly slightly reduced and the Territorial Army is being doubled in size to make the ratio of regular and part-time personnel of the British Army in-line with some other Commonwealth countries, like Canada and Australia, and the US.

The plan is also to change the name of the Territorial Army to Army Reserve and make it more "fully integrated" with the Regular Army and "better prepared" for overseas deployments and operations. So the soldiers of what will be the Army Reserve will be more like full-time soldiers than they are now. By 2020, the strength of the British Army, including the Army Reserve, will be around 120,000.

On top of that there is also the Regular Reserves. When a member of the Regular Army leaves the service, he or she remains liable to be recalled in times of need, and this group of ex-Regular personnel is known as the Regular Reserve. So the Regular Reserves, of course, cannot actually be cut. This currently numbers 122,000 and many of these soldiers fought in Iraq.

So, when you include the Regular Reserves, the entire strength of the British Army by 2020 will be around 240,000

This is not bad when you consider that the French Army, including all its reserves, numbers 142,148 and the German Army numbers a measly 74,000.

TheLastLazyGun

Morpheus wrote: »

The British are in the luckier position that should the need arise they could actually afford a massive quick expansion of their full time forces more readily than the likes of ourselves. Its traditional that force sizes grow and shrink based on the operations they find themselves involved in anyway. The'yre the fourth largest spender in the world anyway!

Britain has 12 million men and 11 million women fit for military service.

Should Britain need to suddenly massively increase the size of her armed forces, as she had to do in 1939, all she would have to do is introduce conscription and give herself an armed forces with more people in it than live in Ireland.

Darith

Yes but taking all this into account it still takes one to two years to really train a professional soldier, in fairness the British Public should not in my opinion accept any further reductions in regular forces below 100-103,000. It just seems to me that regular soldiers are been replaced by TA. Of course another discussion is that the number of regular infantry battalions left after the current review.
TA infantry get ten weekends plus probably a week/two weeks in Gatterick or two-three weeks altogether; if they get called up; they are given i think three months training before going manning garrisons etc.
For TA non infantry such as sappers; i think basic could be even less.