“Tomorrow we attack the Germans”

“Let me guess Sir, we climb out of our trenches and do a frontal assault”

“Damn it, Blackadder, that’s supposed to be a secret”

“We’ve tried it 17 times before and always failed”

“Ah, but they will never expect it an 18th time!”

***

Please listen to Winston Marshall’s discussion appended below.

Presently, the UK would have a hard time projecting a brigade size element and support in a Continental expeditionary footprint.

Shocking paragraph in Stringer’s assessment:

“Put in stark terms – and this is largely hidden from the British electorate – not one formation in the British military is currently sustainable in combat as a sovereign entity with the full ORBAT (Order of Battle: the catalogue of trained personnel and materiel allocated to achieve assumed tasks) as required by our published doctrine, for which we are accountable to NATO via our various declarations. As Field Marshal David Richards put it recently, when he commanded an armoured brigade in Germany during the Cold War it had more firepower than the entire current British Army. And that is before you assess the sustaining logistic elements known as Combat Service support, which are even thinner.”

The report: https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/The-Say-Do-Gaps-In-Defence.pdf

The discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyRSBZVy93o