Category: Military (Page 1 of 2)

Wales are one of rugby union’s greatest sides and will be quietly confident of their chances in this year’s Rugby World Cup. In their opening fixture, Warren Gatland’s men earned a convincing 54-9 victory over Uruguay at the Millennium Stadium but much tougher fixtures lie ahead. Wales will face England at Twickenham tomorrow while they will also face Australia in the group stages too. England are currently heavy favourites to beat the Welsh but many punters wont see it that way, England’s price of 1/3 (with Coral) does seem a little harsh on the Welsh after their domination of Uruguay in the opening game) To advance past the primary stage of the competition, it’s likely that Wales will have to win at least once against either of these teams. Continue reading

Today I received my Veterans Badge reminding me of 18 very happy years service to HM The Queen, The Royal Artillery’s Captain General.

The tone was set by the Americans with videos of missiles in flight to destroy their targets and now the RAF are doing the same. Videos showing the military might of the Western world often against an armed but un-armoured pickup truck are released as part of the media war. Why they are released is not clear, but I suspect someone, somewhere, thought that such images would be a demonstration of how power can be projected on a world stage.

And of course they aren’t particularly unpleasant. Black and white, pretty grainy and always ending in a flash/bang that showed nothing much of any consequence.

But underneath all that, someone is being killed. And when the Islamic State turned this war porn on its head and got up close and personal in their recent videos many of us were very uncomfortable with what we saw. Allegations of savagery, medievalism, brutality were common, but the reality is that the images were IS’s equivalent of the missiles- in-flight films issued by western powers. Continue reading

Someone asked me this morning: "how is it that we can be prepare to use airpower in Iraq but appear to be so reserved about a response to the situation in Ukraine?"That set me thinking: and the answer is, in my opinion, that we face very different situations. In Iraq we will not project our military power on the land, so can only do so from the air. The Islamic State air defence capability is limited, so risks are low.
Historically we might have considered using Armoured power in Europe as our principle weapon, albeit supported from the air.My first regimental posting is within 24 hours drive time to Kiev. But having now removed nearly all our troops from Europe we are unable to project force into the East. Moreover the use of air power in Ukraine will meet effective defensive responses from the separatist and/or Russian forces.
We are therefore "stuck". We don’t have any local or close-by capability available to intervene on the ground and we face a dangerous risk from intervention in the air.
Consequently we are suffering the fate of an alliance that has fought "light wars" for the last decade whilst forgetting that Russia has not reduced its military might and can certainly advance armoured forces from cross proximity.
Developing a suitable response for Ukraine will prove difficult
Dangerous times.