Ah, Poor Dreamers.

Forget about England of knights in shining armor, Shakespeare, Admiral Nelson or, for that matter, Field-Marshal Bernard Viscount Montgomery. Great Britain doesn't produce anyone of this caliber anymore. She just doesn't, but she still loves to pretend that she matters by telling to herself fairy tales about London City's significance in the world of finances, or other meaningless financial legerdemain, which allegedly move the world around--whatever it takes to continue with palliative therapy for the cancer stricken patient in the geopolitical hospice. That is Great Britain today.  

For the country who had any serious military encounter with clear political goal 40+ years ago, it goes without saying that with the armed forces which wouldn't be able to fill Wembley to 70% capacity for the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool, it is somewhat... preposterous waxing all doctrinal and strategic but that is exactly what they do. The British Army Review (yes, they have such a magazine) published the piece titled: How We Will Fight In 2026. 

The piece is written by Major General (and no, not the one from Gilbert and Sullivan's opera) Colin Weir who thinks hat "WE" meaning the United States and whatever will be left of the British Army may fight in the 2026 and, this is when I begin to suspect that the human material they get into the Army is not exactly of high quality. Reason being of Weir intending to fight "deep battle". Oh God, Lord the Merciful. OK, let's start from the start--not a SINGLE officer in Pentagon, let alone General Staff in London has any idea what is the "deep battle" and how it is practiced in real modern war, period. It is not even the theorem, it is an axiom. 

Weir is an Afghan War veteran and... it means nothing in terms of combined arms multi-domain operations of the scale such as SMO. Generally, most of  NATO's views on modern warfare must be thrown into the trash can, because they are nothing but white board fantasies. I'll give Weir a hint--truck load of Russian highest officers went through Soviet-Afghan War which was much more brutal, with the "Civilized World" supporting anyone who would fight Soviets, unlike it was with NATO's Afghan contingent, and whose lessons are really applicable primarily from the historical review prospective. And here is the thing, being educated historian, Weir begins to look for historical symmetries in WW II. This is the dead-end. For starters, by the time Allies landed in Normandy, Wehrmacht was a pale shadow of itself having its guts torn out by the Red Army... Exactly!! It is the same as applying "lessons" and symmetries from the Gulf War to the warfare of the 21st century. Those, as Lieutenant-General Klokotov stated, cannot serve as standard. 

The whole idea that British Army can somehow aggregate by 2026 a required force, equip it and train it to fight Russians is beyond ridiculous. Average Russian combined arms officer school (academy) takes full 4 years to prepare a competent lieutenant who goes out in the Armed Forces to hone his theoretical and practical skills starting from the platoon commander level. In a few years, sometime at the level of a company commander, if he shows a promise, he may get into the battalion level command structure and even be offered Combined Arms Academy for yet another two full years of study as an officer to be ready to go to the brigade (Deputy Chief of Staff and later Brigade Commander) level. For VKS and Navy those terms are even longer. In related news: Sandhurst takes 44 weeks, roughly 300 days in preparing British officers. 

The higher mil.ed school for British officers is Joint Services Command and Staff College. Just the course in Higher Command and Staff lasts whole... 16 weeks, while Advanced Command and Staff Course lasts 7 months (for reservists). So, make your own conclusions that more and more British top brass sounds like people under the influence of some very serious substances. Obviously, those stupid Russkies after all their study, for those excellent officers, still attend the Military Academy of the General Staff for yet another two years (if they pass entrance exams)--what a silly bunch those Russkies are. Why some Russian corps or army commander should have at least 4 (5)+2+2=8 (9) years of military academic study alone just to have a grasp of how to run armed forces of the 21 century. Hey, 44 weeks plus another whatever... and you have the guys who are ready to fight the army with the firepower that Russia fields. Some really potent shit they smoke there. 

But that brings us to this "WE" issue (no, not first truly dystopian novel by Zamyatin). WE is the United States Armed Forces, who, not unlike British Armed Forces, are NOT fighting Russkies unless someone else is doing it for them. Great Britain out of own resources is not capable to even fight a high intensity police operation in one of the provinces in Afghanistan. But still they continue to pretend that white board strategic sophistry somehow can substitute military history, military experience and military education which Russians honed, for all troubles, throughout XX century and now demonstrate why Svechin, not Tuckhachevsky or Triandafilov, carried the day. So, what's left for British Armed Forces is to continue to supply weapons to Kiev's regime and "train" whatever is left of VSU, part of whose horrendous losses can be easily attributed to this very NATO "training". I wonder what kind of "Deep Battle" can British Army fight with its... two combat ready brigades. Hm... looks like I am beginning to lose patience with this pseudo-military BS. 

They Still Cannot Resign Themselves...

... to a simple fact that UK is not a player in modern geopolitics. It is a small island nation with acutely manifested phantom pains of imperial greatness which disappeared completely after WW II and has been gone now for more than 75 years. Militarily United Kingdom is a midget with semi-autonomous "control" of her nuclear arsenal which in effect are the crumbs from the American nuclear weapons' table. Royal Navy, despite operating a couple of useless aircraft carriers, has only a very few nuclear subs as a real factor in any serious conflict. But the state of the British ground forces is altogether something out of a Benny Hill show, because for all intents and purposes those ground forces do not exist as a viable fighting force. Most importantly, UK doesn't have resources to build anything serious in terms of modern land war. But this is not how British military establishment views it. 

The new head of the British Army has issued a rallying cry to troops - telling them they need to be ready to face Russia on the battlefield.

Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, who started the job last week, addressed all ranks and civil servants in an internal message on 16 June, seen by the BBC.Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows the need "to protect the UK and be ready to fight and win wars on land", he says. He adds the Army and allies must now be "capable of...defeating Russia".A defence source told the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale the tone of the message - issued on the Ministry of Defence's internal intranet - was unsurprising.They said all armies train to fight, but the threat has clearly changed. Gen Sir Patrick noted in the message that he was the first Chief of the General Staff "since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a major continental power".

To fight and win a modern combined arms war against Russia one needs a helluva more resources than UK has or will ever have. But even before one begins to factor in a rather pathetic state of British economy and military technological development, one has to consider a fighting doctrine issue. For starters, Russia is not going to attack UK, unless headless chickenhawks from NATO decide to commit suicide. But then it wouldn't matter anyway--Russia will rearrange stones in London and nothing UK (or, in broader terms, NATO) can do about it. But the issue is even larger, it is this ever present Barnett's 14 points paradigm in which UK is simply non-present with the exception of the financial factor, while the United States is already losing its share in those 14 points with increasing speed. But, in the end, the country which elects BoJo (or, rather, Bozo) as its PM can hardly hope to get itself out of an economic hole which it dug for itself and without it there is very little UK can do for "fighting Russia" other than to continue to buy overpriced and dubiously effective US arms. 

This also brings us to the issue of SMO and not just material resources but issues of C4ISR in which only two countries are competing against each-other and you already guessed it--these are Russia and the US. UK does not even count in matters of combat control, netcentric warfare, full ISR complex, including its space-based assets. So, that reduces any UK military force from today into the future to mere a cannon fodder addition to NATO (read US) military adventurism and I am on record--read my lips: the United States lost the arms race to Russia and the gap only grows. The demonstration of a superb ISR of Russia happened today (in some parts yesterday):

Russian warships have destroyed a Ukrainian command center with Kalibr cruise missiles, killing dozens officers, Moscow's Defense Ministry reported on Sunday. “More than 50 generals and officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed,” the statement outlined. The strike took place near the village of Shirokaya Dacha in Dnepropetrovsk Region. It hit a compound where commanders of several Ukrainian units had gathered for a meeting, according to Moscow. The ministry added that Kalibr missiles were also used to destroy 10 M777 howitzers and up to 20 armored vehicles that were recently delivered from the West, and had been stored inside a factory building in the southern city of Nikolayev.

Russian Duma already responded to these wet dreams of this British military "leader". 

«Вместо того, чтобы попытаться усадить Зеленского за стол переговоров, видные военачальники Британии начинают предаваться мечтам о создании необычайно мощной армии. Они уже грезят о походах и войне на европейском континенте. Но это не способствует улучшению ситуации ни на Украине, ни в Европе, ни в мире», – сказал Герой Российской Федерации, первый заместитель председателя комитета Госдумы по обороне Андрей Красов.«Сейчас весь Запад нацелен только на то, чтобы, как они говорят, «ослабить мощь России». Но эти амбиции неосуществимы. Дело в том, что наши Вооруженные силы обладают всем необходимым для того, чтобы выполнять поставленные перед ними задачи. И ярким тому примером служит специальная военная операция на Украине», – подчеркнул собеседник. Сами же намерения Патрика Сандерса «можно лишь охарактеризовать фразой «надежды юношей питают», отметил Красов. Он также указал на тот факт, что «Великобритании будет довольно сложно превзойти военную мощь России». 

Translation: “Instead of trying to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table, Britain's top military leaders are beginning to dream of building an extraordinarily powerful army. They are already dreaming of campaigns and war on the European continent. But this does not help improve the situation either in Ukraine, or in Europe, or in the world,” said Andrey Krasov, Hero of the Russian Federation, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee. “Now the whole West is aimed only at, as they say, "weaken the power of Russia." But these ambitions are not feasible. The fact is that our Armed Forces have everything necessary to carry out the tasks assigned to them. And a vivid example of this is the special military operation in Ukraine,” the interlocutor stressed. The very intentions of Patrick Sanders “can only be characterized by the phrase “the hopes of young men are nourished,” Krasov noted. He also pointed to the fact that "It will be quite difficult for the UK to surpass the military power of Russia."

Krasov (in Russian) knows what he is talking about, he has a very rich combat (combined arms) experience as paratroop regiment CO, later as Deputy CO of Pskov (76th) air assault division. It is not like he has a degree in marketing. The fate of the West, especially Europe is already decided, and it is not pretty. So, Sir Sanders can dream whatever he wants but UK IS NOT a serious military power and without the US, which itself declines militarily dramatically, is a non-entity which would not sustain serious scale combined arms war for any duration of time. But, it seems, the only war Western generals are good at is the one in publicity and PR. The real combat record, however, is somewhat lacking, to put it mildly, and that should be kept in mind, whenever one hears from the America's lapdogs.

Here is London today:

And this is just the start. Things will get much worse, but I am sure Great Britain's General Staff already made a proper forecast, right? After all, this is what general staffs do--they provide strategic forecasts. In between planning for tolerance and discovery of new genders, and figuring out what people of UK will eat and how they will heat their houses. Other than that--it is all double plus good. Carry on, Sir. 

IngSoc was never closer than it is today.

LOL. Why Not 1.5 million.

Let me be very clear, Ben Wallace, same as any top brass in UK Armed Forces didn't see real armies and real wars in ages. UK as a whole is now a clownish country grasping at the last remaining myths of long passed greatness, and the same goes to British Army. 

Around 15,000 Russian troops have been killed as Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine enters its ninth week, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has told MPs. Giving an update on the conflict, Mr Wallace said the death toll suffered by Vladimir Putin's forces came in addition to the loss of thousands of pieces of military equipment by Russia. He told the House of Commons that latest estimates suggest more than 2,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed or captured - including at least 530 tanks, 530 armoured personnel carriers and 560 infantry fighting vehicles.

Let me put it this way: even the United States who, unlike the UK, has a massive ISR complex ranging from signint in the space to ground, UK has zilch, nada, nothing, even the US cannot make any real assessments of Russia's losses, because nobody can with the exception of Russia's General Staff. Some clownish US former generals who spew primarily Ukie propaganda BS from TV screens in the US do not really represent Pentagon. They represent merely their sinecures in Military-Media-Industrial Complex. 

So, any claims by British has-beens on this, as well as other similar matters related to warfare, are just that--a pile of steaming bullshit. As I already stated, even when adjusted for obvious propaganda and brainwashing of the Western public, one inevitably begins having question about overall professionalism and competence of Western militaries. The question is not just that even respectable West Point has been reduced academically to a joke, but in the fact that the signals of a professional decay of a much more combat experienced US Army have been around for at least two decades. 

Now, the UK which is a woke shell of once great empire and its Army, which can fit (all of it) into the Wembley Arena, underwent a debilitating loss of competence since 1990s and British Army fully reflects the pathetic lap dog status of the UK. Royal General Staff unofficially may sound impressive and pompous, but reality is that the Army whose regular force numbers around 82,000 with zero modern ISR capability and being completely dependent on its master, the United States, strategically and operationally, DOES have General Staff structures which are totally adequate to a rather pathetic state UK Armed Forces as a whole are in. So, the whole idea that UK military and its brain, General Staff, can independently have ANY kind of real data on Russia's losses is down right risible. These pip squeak of the armed forces of a country which has clowns running it assure that the only way UK can ease the pain of being a pompous parody of its glorious self of the past, is to continue to shoot fairy tales about James Bond in which glorious MI-6 fights for the (supports terrorism) everything good against everything bad. 

Now, today Russian MoD warned London (in Russian) that if London thinks that if British weapons transferred to Ukraine "are not necessarily a problem" if they hit Russia proper, Russia will respond, for starters, with wiping out all those "glorious" British "advisers" and spooks on the ground and if need be... well, here is the issue, Russia can do it, UK cannot. Maybe UK does require a little bit of beating to be shaken back into its own reality of being a second-rate country in a complete decline and having the army which faces this:

LONDON — The limitations of the British Army’s ability to field modernized armored fighting forces in the 2020s have been laid bare in evidence submitted by the military to the parliamentary Defence Committee. The Army admitted that by 2025 it would only be able to field a combat division consisting of just a single maneuver brigade and an interim maneuver support brigade.

So, Wallace and his Scots Guards buddies better sit back and learn how real wars are fought in modern times and what are modern combined arms operations against the enemy who uses civilians as human shield. In other news, Russian Military Academy of the General Staff has international programs and, I am sure, that will serve Wallace and his military well, if they are squeamish to enroll there,  to merely go over the list of the alumni of that academy.  May be they will get a hint. But don't hold your breath. 

P.S. To give the scale of British Army to Russian Army one has to know that Russian Army (its Ground Forces alone) are around 300,000 troops (that is 3.7 times larger) and field organic Air Defense and firepower British Army can only dream about.  I don't want to go over other forces which are tightly integrated with Russia's ground forces. But that is a separate issue altogether.