Fury as famous regiments go into Hoon's melting pot

[fantassin]

Fury as famous regiments go into Hoon's melting pot

By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent

(Filed: 16/07/2004)


The Army is to undergo its most radical reform since the 1870s with all 19 famous-name infantry units amalgamated into multi-battalion regional regiments, it was disclosed yesterday.

The move is likely to cause outrage among supporters of the single-battalion regiments, in particular those such as the Green Howards, the Highlanders and the Black Watch, which face the axe.

Many believe that the generals have caved in to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, who has advocated similar plans since shortly after his appointment.

But Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, is championing the reforms and is determined to get rid of the historical single-battalion regiments with the Scots first in line.

There are eight multi-battalion regiments, the results of previous widespread amalgamations. Only 19 famous names, most of them also heavily merged, survive.

They claim that their names and traditions inspire more espirit de corps than in the big multi-battalion regiments and assist in recruitment.

But Gen Jackson, who is from the Parachute Regiment, one of the multi-battalion regiments, regards such suggestions as nonsense and points to the recruitment difficulties of the famous Scottish names.

The general will outline his plans next Wednesday with the six Scottish line infantry regiments expected to amalgamate into two regiments, a Lowland and a Highland, each with two battalions.

That means the almost certain loss of two of the four highland regiments, with the Highlanders and the Black Watch regarded as the most likely victims.

Four of the so-called famous names are likely to disappear altogether but the remaining regiments will keep their names while becoming subordinate battalions of a larger regiment.

Some Army commanders have expressed confidence that they have kept any losses in the forthcoming defence cuts, the first of which will be announced next week, to one or two battalions at most.

Senior officers realise that the plans will provoke widespread hostility. But they say that multi-battalion regiments are the only way forward. "We have been revisiting what have previously been regarded as sacred cows," said one. "It will make a massive row but the present system is hugely wasteful."

Gen Jackson sees the reforms as the climax of his Army career and wants them replicated across the country with the 19 single-battalion regiments merged into seven regiments of two or three-battalions.

That would give the Army a total of 15 multi-battalion regiments, a move that senior commanders believe will make it far more efficient and improve recruitment.

(From the daily Telegraph)

Macho Jacko is not going to be popular in Scotland....

[fantassin]

According to the Telegraph, here is the new deal.

Quote:

"Gen Jackson sees the reforms as the climax of his Army career and wants them replicated across the country with the 19 single-battalion regiments merged into seven regiments of two or three-battalions".


Yorkshire
-GH
-DWR
-PWO

Lowland
-RS
-KOSB

Highland
-BW
-A and SH
-RHF
-HLDRS

Welsh
-RRW
-RWF

Mercia
-CHESHIRE
-WFR
-STAFFORDS

Lancs and Border
-KINGS
-QLR
-KOBR

Wessex
-D and D
-RGBW

[fantassin]

This is not to flame the Brits, we have exactly the same problem in France; plus, if the Brits cut down, the French treasury will say "hey, look, the Brits can do it with 34,000 less troops than us, so let's scale down too and save money"....


MoD funds an army of pen-pushers (from The Scotsman)

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN
DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT


AS THE army braces itself for some of the most savage cuts in years, figures obtained by The Scotsman reveal that the Ministry of Defence now employs more civil servants than soldiers.

With all army recruitment frozen until October, the army currently has no more than 102,000 soldiers on its books, while the MoD employs 102,600 civil servants.

The MoD has been warned by the Treasury that it must find savings of up to £2 billion from its budget. When Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, announces the cuts next week, he is expected to say that at least four army battalions will be disbanded, including at least one - and possibly two - from Scottish regiments. The axe is also expected to fall on thousands of naval and air force personnel.

The Commons defence committee has already warned that the government’s policy of reducing manpower, ships, aircraft and tanks because of an "obsession" with a new generation of hi-tech warfare systems is "potentially dangerous".

Senior army officers have privately expressed grave concern, warning that cuts could lead to the disappearance of all of Scotland’s historic regiments in a massive shake-up of the army which would leave Scotland with just one "super regiment".

The MoD hopes to save £70.4 million a year by cutting four army battalions - a fraction of the amount it needs to find in savings to meet the demands of the Treasury.

But opponents say that even if the government accepts that savings must be made to balance the books, there are many other areas of expenditure that could be slashed without weakening Britain’s armed forces.

Yesterday, Keith Simpson, the shadow armed forces minister, said: "The public will find it incongruous, to say the least, if the government was to cut front-line troops rather than the growing army of civil servants."

Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, yesterday highlighted a number of areas in which he accused the government of wasting public money on administration.

The figures show that the increase in the government’s advertising budget alone since 1997 would cover the cost of running the threatened regiments for another year and a half. In 1997, the advertising budget was £60 million; last year it stood at £161 million.

The government spent £21.3 billion on Whitehall bureaucracy last year, a figure equivalent to £850 for every household in the UK every year.

According to Mr Letwin, Gordon Brown planned to spend £17.2 billion on administering central government last year, but over-ran his budget by £4 billion - twice the amount that he is now seeking to claw back from the armed forces.

In both of the previous two years, spending on administration exceeded the budget by £2.5 billion and in 2000-1 by £1 billion.

"It is not too far off the truth to say that the culture of big government has created exponential increases in overspending on administration," Mr Letwin said.

He also pointed to the increasing cost of regulatory bodies, such as the Audit Commission. Its budget had risen from £111 million in 1997 to £217 million in 2003. Council inspections cost local government an estimated £1 billion a year, he said - £600 million in direct costs and another £400 million in indirect costs.

Mr Letwin also questioned the costs incurred by the Scottish Parliament, pointing out that it now cost £100 million a year more to run Scotland’s administration than it did in 1997, an amount which would cover the £17.6 million annual running costs for one Scottish regiment for five and a half years.

Last night, the MoD defended the number of civil servants it employed and promised that staffing levels among the bureaucrats would also be taken into consideration when decisions were taken on where the axe should fall.

"We are looking at absolutely everything and we will be looking at civil service numbers," said a spokeswoman.

"We don’t employ civil servants for our own amusement. I know it always looks as if the front line suffers first, but we are hammering down civil service numbers."

Meanwhile, army sources revealed that they were losing potential recruits because the MoD had imposed a freeze on recruitment to avoid having to make soldiers redundant after the cuts are announced.

Approximately 2,350 soldiers will be affected by the loss of four battalions, with 550 expected to be placed in other infantry regiments and 1,800 transferred to the engineers and logistics.

In the meantime, the MoD has stopped all recruitment until October, effectively cutting troop numbers by not replacing soldiers who are leaving the army.

Regiments say that some potential recruits have not been prepared to wait, and one army source revealed that 1,000 fewer recruits were expected to pass through the training centre at Catterick this year compared with last.

An MoD spokeswoman denied that the freeze had been instituted to provide a more palatable way of cutting army numbers.

She said: "We are trying to achieve a balance."

Politicians have promised to keep up the pressure on the government until the decision is announced next week

[kris777]

With all army recruitment frozen until October, the army currently has no more than 102,000 soldiers on its books, while the MoD employs 102,600 civil servants.


"We are looking at absolutely everything and we will be looking at civil service numbers," said a spokeswoman.

"We don’t employ civil servants for our own amusement. I know it always looks as if the front line suffers first, but we are hammering down civil service numbers."



So just slightly more than one civil servant to each soldier, buearaucracy anyone ?
:(

[2RHPZ]

Collateral damage: Hoon's targets facing death by a thousand cuts

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=836502004

[WolverineBlue]

Please don't **** with the Black Watch, oh please oh please oh please

[cut]

Manpower cuts:

Army: from 103,770 to 102,000 (1,770 jobs)
RAF: from 48,500 to 41,000 (7,500 jobs)
Royal Navy: from 37,500 to 36,000 (1,500 jobs)
civilians: 10,000 jobs to go from 109,050

total: 19,500 obviously mostly civilians

[2RHPZ]

Soldiers … who needs them?

The British armed forces will see their numbers cut by 20,000, yet more and more is expected of them. Diplomatic Editor Trevor Royle finds that the sums don’t add up

Hollow laughter reverberated through the ranks of the country’s armed forces after General Sir Michael Jackson, the chief of the general staff, made the enterprising suggestion that Britain would be able to send a brigade-sized force of 5000 soldiers to help ease the suffering in the war-torn province of Darfur in Sudan.

Leaving aside the fact that the country is 10 times the size of the UK and that most military experts are agreed that any intervention would require a field force of at least 150,000 troops, the question has to be asked: can the overstretched British Army take on any more commitments in pursuit of the country’s increasingly interventionist foreign policy?

Last week saw the three armed forces being cut to the bone as far as personnel are concerned. The Royal Navy has been reduced to 36,000, the army to 102,000 and the Royal Air Force to 41,000, a grand total of 179,000 men and women who have to meet commitments all over the globe. These are not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in longer standing deployments in Cyprus, the Falklands Islands, Germany and Northern Ireland, as well as unexpected hotspots such as the recent interventions in Sierra Leone, Rwanda and East Timor. If Sudan is added to the list it could be a deployment too far.

At the end of a week which has forced the army to contemplate the most radical shake-up of its infantry regiments since the introduction of linked battalions under the Cardwell reforms of 1881, senior officers have been taking stock and considering how the new order can meet the demands of the country’s defence and foreign policy requirements.

A senior soldier with experience of Northern Ireland, the Gulf and the Balkans under his belt is adamant that little thought has been given to balancing commitments with resources. He spoke on condition of anonymity as the Ministry of Defence has ordered service personnel not to discuss the implications of the review: “To a great extent we’ve been a victim of our own success – the government tells us to do something, and generally we do it bloody well. But it’s a two-way process. Frequent overseas deployments play havoc with the lives of those undertaking them and it’s not really an ideal way to plan careers or use limited resources.

“There comes a point when we have to ask: is the government giving us enough in the way of kit and personnel to get the job done properly? Is defence policy derived from foreign policy, or the other way round?”

On the evidence of Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon’s ****ouncement, there is no correct answer to either question. Most forward-looking members of the defence community recognise the need for reform, to develop network-enabled capabilities and to embrace technology in the war against terrorism. That means ditching cold war era warplanes such as the Jaguar strike aircraft, which will leave RAF service by 2007, and mothballing seven squadrons of Challenger 2 main battle tanks.

At the same time, the navy will lose six anti-submarine warfare frigates and destroyers as well as a number of minor war vessels. In their place will come new gizmos such as the Watchkeeper unmanned vehicle to locate enemy targets and there will be a renewed emphasis on rapid reaction forces and smart weapons. As Hoon put it in management jargon, his review will “see a shift away from emphasis on numbers and platforms and of people, to a new emphasis on effects and outcomes”.

It sounds good, and Hoon backed his hunches with some convincing figures. Artillery regiments will be equipped with new light, mobile weapons, new missiles such as the Brimstone air-to-ground weapon are coming on stream, digital communications systems will soon be the norm to replace outdated networks, the Apache attack helicopter comes into service next year and the SAS regiment will be increased in size. All these innovations, claimed Hoon, “will help to ensure that our armed forces can continue to respond effectively to the global challenges they are likely to face”. He also made it clear that the changes have the absolute support of his chiefs of staff, the senior officers responsible for evolving and implementing policy.

Indeed, chief of the defence staff General Sir Michael Walker followed up the defence secretary’s announcement with a personal message to service personnel which underlined the positive aspects of the changes and reminded them that they lived in a real world in which there was very little room for manoeuvre: “The whole approach can be summed up in one word: transformation. Many nations aim for it but find the path very hard going with tough choices. We are committed to it.”

It is on this point – transformation – that senior officers are voicing their concerns about the scope of the review. This is particularly true in the army, which is still in the process of realigning its internal organisation under the Future Army Structure. This will see the army change from a cold war posture with the balance of its tactical capability based in Germany, to take on the expeditionary role which lies at the heart of the government’s defence policy. As General Sir Michael Jackson stated in a bullish message to soldiers, he is conscious that while the change is unsettling, it could not be avoided: “This is a very busy and demanding time for the army and many of you will have had repeated operational tours in recent years as well as other duties that have taken you away from your homes and families. We are an army for use and it is right that we should be engaged.”

However, many soldiers fear that the new structures will not go far enough to meet the basic problem facing the army – too few soldiers to do too many tasks. Some of the changes have been welcomed. There will be an expansion of brigade capability to give greater flexibility in all arms and the infantry regiment structure will change.

But the most controversial changes will see four battalions axed. The infantry arms plot, the rotation system by which single regiments are assigned duties for three-year periods, is being phased out. The remaining 15 single battalion regiments will disappear by being amalgamated into larger regional regiments or regimental groupings with two or more service battalions. In the long term, these changes will remove the names of time-honoured regiments from the army’s order of battle, but it has been accepted by the Army Board, which deals with the routine management of the army.

With only 36 infantry formations left, the old single battalion regiments are no longer viable and although the army will try to preserve names and cap badges, the watchword is that efficiency and flexibility have to take precedence over sentimentality and traditions.

Within the army there is a realisation that there has to be change if they want the best elements to survive and that there comes a time when structures have to change for the greater good. However, there is concern that the personnel levels are too tight to meet the demands placed on the army by the government’s interventionist foreign policy.

In Iraq, Britain has leadership of the Multi-National Division (Southeast) which demands the presence of a divisional headquarters, a mechanised brigade and ancillary units. This creates a strain on the 10,000 troops involved and on those due to replace them . The 1st Royal Scots are on standby to return to Iraq later this year, their second operational tour in as many years.

That is what irritates many soldiers. While they are resigned to being stretched as part of their contract, all too often they are now being over-stretched. As the Sunday Herald’s army source points out, it has been difficult to achieve stability: “At the very time that operational commitments are increasing, the number of boots on the ground has been steadily decreasing. For some specialist troops, where numbers are smaller, the situation is even worse; intervals between tours of duty are steadily shrinking. And to make matters more difficult, there is not very much slack in the system.”

Before leaving his post as chief of the defence staff in 2002, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce predicted that the armed forces would be hard put to take part in further major operations after their involvement in coalition operations in Iraq, as it would take time for them to regroup and resupply their resources.

If anything, the situation will deteriorate before it gets better as the army copes with restructuring. In recent years it has had to deal with unforeseen crises such as the foot-and-mouth outbreak and irregular problems such as providing cover for striking firefighters as part of the forces’ obligations to provide aid to the civil community in national emergencies. Then there is the great unspoken fear which underpins the present defence review: the threat of terrorism. Speak to any senior officer in the defence establishment and they will admit that it is not a matter of if, but when, an attack will be made against the British homeland.

This is not scaremongering but a sober assessment of the current international situation. After the attacks on the US in September 2001, two things became clear: the fragility of national defences was exposed and emergency services came under unsustainable pressure. As the armed forces are linked into these, there are fears that there would not be enough resources to meet the demands of a major emergency. Soldiers would be required to help with rescue operations, work with the emergency services in establishing command and control and guard key points. With 102,000 troops already covering 15 overseas deployments, it is not difficult to see that the army is already stretched to the limit.

Senior commanders say it boils down to what the country wants, what it can afford and what it is prepared to provide. A recent paper by the Royal United Services Institute produced this stark analysis which encapsulates these concerns: “As a nation, we appear to have decided that we do not wish to fund our armed forces to enable them to carry out their tasks, from high-intensity conflict through nation-building, conflict prevention and counter-terrorism, down to replacing striking firefighters. Yet, paradoxically, the government demands that they are prepared to carry out these roles at any time and in any place.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UK left Battlefield Lite and hi-tech heavy

Opinion (http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=850712004)

[marktigger]

yes and multi bn regiments make sense to this government cause in their first efence review after the next election (if they get re-elected) the multi bn regiments will start loosing Bns to save money.

[crazyman]

thats really too bad. theres' something to be said for unit traditions, especially ones as far reaching as some of the brit regiments out there.