King George V reviewing The Grand Fleet at Spithead in 1914. 98 years later, Queen Elizabeth II had to settle for watching a procession of private launches motoring up the River Thames in London.
Britain is widely regarded by all (except perhaps our ‘Commander-in-Chief’) as being this country’s strongest ally – it is the country we have a ‘special relationship’ with. They feel the same way about us too, and they’ve not hesitated to support us whenever we’ve needed it.
The strength of Britain as our ally is measured not just in its moral support of our policies and positions on the world stage, but also in its military support too. Wherever we’ve been fighting in the last several decades, there have been British troops, planes and ships alongside ours.
It is sobering therefore to understand how Britain’s military capabilities have massively imploded in on themselves. We not only have our President spurning our relationship with Britain while racing around the world apologizing and bowing to our enemies, weakening the strength of the ties that keep us and Britain so closely together, we also have Britain’s disarming of itself to the point of international irrelevance.
This article, in Britain’s leading and somewhat conservative newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, is mainly of little interest to most Americans, inasmuch as it involves Britain’s dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. But we can’t let that topic pass without point out how sad it is to note the contrast between the short war with Argentina in 1982 when President Reagan fully supported Britain, and the current situation where our President and his team are unable to even say they support Britain, while cozying up to Argentina.
What is most interesting, however, is to look down to the bottom, at the table of Britain’s military strength as between 1982 and 2013. In case the link has eroded over time, we repeat the information here :
| 1982 | 2013 | |
| Total personnel | 320,000 | 160,000 |
| Carriers | 2 | 0 |
| Submarines | 32 | 9 |
| Destroyers | 15 | 7 |
| Frigates | 46 | 13 |
| Assault ships | 2 | 4 |
| Patrol boats | 15 | 4 |
| Minesweepers/hunters | 29 | 15 |
| Auxiliary (tankers, etc) | 45 | 13 |
| Aircraft | 400+ | 130 |
This isn’t just a recent decline over the past 30 years, it has been steady and almost without a break all the way since World War 2. For example, total personnel in Britain’s armed services in 1972 were 371,000; in 1962 were 434,000; and in 1952 were 872,000. In sixty years, personnel have reduced five-fold.
In 1913 Britain’s navy was the most powerful in the world, and by official policy, larger than the next two navies combined. In time for World War 2 Britain’s navy was still larger than any other single nation, but by the end of the war, the US navy was massively larger, and Britain’s navy has continued to decline ever since.
When Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953 the Royal Navy put on a formal ‘review’ at Spithead, with nearly all its fleet lined up in massive rows of warships. When she observed the 60th anniversary of her ascending to the throne in 2012, the tradition of reviews, dating back to the 1700s, was replaced by a ‘flotilla’ of pleasure launches cruising along the Thames river in London. The Royal Navy was too embarrassed to admit it no longer had enough ships to be reviewed and hoped people would not notice the difference between private boats motoring along the Thames compared to the former might of the Royal Navy in years past.
The reduction in armed personnel is all the more extreme when plotted against the rise in Britain’s total population. In other words, the number of armed personnel as a percentage of the total country’s population is declining more rapidly than the simple decline in staffing. This chart below gives a perspective on numbers from 1950 through 2012 (source).
There are two other issues arising from this, beyond Britain’s simple loss of military power.
The first is that it takes a lot longer to train a soldier, sailor, or airman now than it did 50 years ago. Everything is much more complicated, and requires much more training. This means that if Britain had to suddenly respond to a ‘high intensity’ conflict, or to come to our aid in a high intensity conflict of ours, by the time Britain could start deploying newly trained recruits, it would probably be too late.
The second issue is more subtle. For almost all of Britain’s history, the armed services were a key part of the nation’s social fabric. Occasional high intensity conflicts, occurring once a generation or so, saw large swathes of the population called up for service (as much as 10% of the population in both World War 1 and 2). It wasn’t just the small percentage who served in wartime, either – even during peacetime, universal conscription – ‘national service’ saw all young male adults exposed to army training and discipline. This ended in 1960 with the last intake being November 1963 – 50 years ago.
For the last 70 years, Britain has not had any high intensity conflicts, while the ‘pool’ of ex-servicemen has been dwindling as the old soldiers simply die. The number of surviving WW2 soldiers is now rapidly reducing and soon there’ll be no more.
Britain is losing touch with its proud past, and is instead willing itself to become weaker and weaker. Even if Britain wished to strongly support us in the future, it will lack the men and the equipment to do so.
Oh – and as for our own military capabilities? Don’t ask. It’s a similar story (but one to be told another time.
