1y ago

Former armed forces minister James Heappey says UK must prepare for war despite being 'long way behind'

news.sky.com

On the bunker drill, the former minister said that all secretaries of state - not just defence - have a desk and a bed ready for them in a bunker.

This is not so they are able to survive a nuclear attack "for re-populating our islands after the apocalypse" but "because their departments are as integral to the war effort as the MoD".

Because it's precisely these politicians who should be repopulating after a potential apocalypse /s

Alternate title: "Former military guy can only think about conflict and makes war mongering comments to scare politicians and population"

34 comments

If you desire peace, prepare for war.
The US has recently proven itself an unreliable ally and can no longer be depended upon. I don't want any armed conflict but now is the time to at least make sure you have the plans and resources in place to prepare for future conflicts. Hopefully they will not eventuate but it seems unwise to bet too much on that.
- If you desire peace, prepare for war.
  This is propaganda twisted logic at its finest. If you want peace you prepare peace you do not fucking prepare war!
  
  What do you do when you have prepared for nothing but peace and someone else brings war? That's what the idiom means: you don't prepare for war because you want it, you prepare for war because war literally never happens when you would like except when you are the one invading. If you want peace, you have to be prepared to defend yourself against people who do not desire or understand peace.
  
  Well, it's been a quote for about 1500 years and I think the point still stands today.
It would be nice if politicians could understand the cost of war at a soldier's level. Politicians should feel a war; not just sit in their protected and lavish war room barking orders and treating lives as meaningless numbers.
- Exactly, those who make the decisions to send soldiers to war should be sent to fight themselves, if not gun in hand at least as front line commanders or something so they feel the same danger and see the same horrors as the human fodder they so happily throw at their "enemies"
- U need to stop thinking of politicians as people its better to think of them as representatives for a specific interest group (ur vote, everyone else's vote, and corruption) they make no decisions they simply choose which decision makes the majority of who they represent the happiest.
  
  So you are saying we should have a people's representation lobby group and bribe them to do our interests. It does make sense in a negotiation sense, even though it sounds very annoying.
- I mean true enough but that has nothing to do with preparing for war. To put it simply there's a reason, say, Japan has an army despite their constitution denouncing war.
- It would be better if soldiers could recognize when they're being used as pawns vs. actually fighting for what they believe in.
  Ukraine never had a chance without foreign troops on the ground.
  
  a soldier is a pawn by definition
Budget season again I see
OP comments are on point.
Russia is breaking things out of storage for their widespread conscripted force usage. They were getting their ass handed to them with NATOs leftovers, and somehow we’re supposed to believe NATO is in danger? The first gulf war demonstrated how Russian tech stacks up against trillions in military expenditure.
- Europe's military production is severely degraded. Russia looks like a paper tiger now, but they can still pump out ammunition for troops and artillery at a rate Europe can't.
  
  This exactly, if you believe that the enemy is completely incompetent, you will get stung by that. Look at the reality of war, lack of ammunition means all those high end toys are stuck doing nothing. Look in which direction yhe front is going.
  NATO is left buying ammunition from non eu countries for Ukraine when they need it 6 months ago, would that be happening if we had stockpiles of the stuff for ourselves? Just how much is left for NATO to use for self defense?
  
  Artillery has been the focus of headlines because the military doctrine of Russia and Ukraine relies heavily upon its use. While conventional stockpiles of shells are depleted, it’s production will increase over time and will occur independent of additional military preparation. This is not the ammunition for the bulk of NATO forces.
  NATO has an entire modern arsenal of weaponry that is incompatible with Ukraine’s weapons, waiting within arms reach. They’re in talks to acquire F-16s, which are considerably dated compared to the modern stealth fighters, not to mention the stocks of munitions. Ukraine received 31 Abrams tanks. The US alone has thousands, with large numbers considered for retirement due to their age. Not to mention the numbers of infantry fighting vehicles and crews that have trained on all of these systems for years, unlike the rushed training afforded by Ukrainian troops.
  They’re already relying on mass conscription to fill their ranks, rapidly approaching the bottom of the barrel.
- China
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a sign of how alien the idea of armed conflict has become to most officials in Whitehall, James Heappey said many departments had declined the chance to take part in a "whole of government" exercise to practice evacuating to a bunker in the event of war.
It was a drill former defence secretary Ben Wallace had pushed for "to get people down to the bunker so they could see what their working environment in war would be", Mr Heappey wrote in an article for the Sunday Telegraph.
His damning intervention came after Sky News this week revealed that the government has no national plan for the defence of the UK or the mobilisation of its people and industry in a war despite renewed threats of conflict.
But any shift back to a Cold War-style, ready-for-war footing would require political leaders to make defence a genuinely national effort once again, sources told Sky News.
Piling pressure on Rishi Sunak, he wrote: "Only a foolish PM wouldn't see that the long-term trend is towards global instability that could easily lead to a new cold war and perhaps something even hotter.
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The original article contains 683 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

34 comments