UK Army chief: Russia could totally pwn us with cable-cutting and hax0rs The UK needs to invest in up-to-date army tech, including protection from cyber attacks, the Ministry of Defence's chief of general staff will warn today. In a speech to be given today at defence think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), General Sir Nick Carter will warn of the military capabilities of Putin's …
why is there no mention...
Presumably because the secretary for defence thinks there's a chance he can still save what's left of the army but has already written off the navy as a lost cause (which, given its mission is presently to pay for a seemingly unrelated assortment of factory preservation projects, it probably is).
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know he's from the Army; but why is there no mention of the UK barely having enough warships & submarines to track Russian vessels as they sail around the Britain?
Because the RN and RAF with their vastly expensive carriers and F35s are why we are in this financial hole, and everyone knows it.
having enough warships & submarines to track Russian vessels
If you want to track Russian (or any other) ships, you just use the very ample capacity provided by satellites.
Warships serve a different purpose. Unless you have a regular export market, anything bigger than police/coastguard is basically ceremonial.
but we apparently dont even have anything bigger than police/coastguard - basically ceremonial
some study {or DailyWail article} showed UK RN having three boats to cover inshore water, compared to Italy RN having hundreds (for an approximately similar coastline)
I wouldnt be surprised if the Swiss actually have more water craft
> This comes after calls from MPs to increase defence spending
Have the heads of Britain's armed forces every taken a different view?
When was the last time they said "thanks, but we've got enough money".
As for threats to internet traffic from undersea cables being cut - surely the sensible thing is to route all traffic through cables running through the Channel Tunnel. From there the only places that can't be reached by land are the americas, Australia and other Pacific islands.
...and the cutting of the main comms line in the Crimean peninsula during its annexation of the region shows precedence....
Actually, the most obvious precedence was the Royal Navy cutting of German cables in August 1914 - https://warandsecurity.com/2014/08/05/britain-cuts-german-cable-communications-5-august-1914/
If the UK defence community have only just woken up to the practice of cutting your opponents undersea communications, then may I also suggest that it might be a wise move to develop some sort of armoured tracked vehicle which can move over country safely under machine-gun fire to support infantry? And we should pay attention to the possibility that new-fangled flying machines might be able to deliver Whitehead torpedoes onto our heavily-armoured battleships...
Well, three can play at that game. I think that a German cruiser cut the cable to Australia in 1914, and I know that the US cut the (Spanish) cable at Manila in 1898. And the US and perhaps the UK did a lot of tapping of Soviet cables during the later days of the Cold War.
He warns of "Cyber" as being a huge threat and how the army etc should protect against it, but then he doesn't want "cyber" to come out of the military budget.
We need to buy a thousand more expensive warships and reconnaissance planes to protect the cables, but apparently fuck all on getting far more laid, negating the need for such expensive toys.
Oooh look Russia have more guns and bombs and planes and things than us...they could beat us in war.
Err yes, that has been the case for a very long time.
Here a great idea.
Combine all three forces and sack a huge amount of top brass and other duplicates like himself, or at the very least, half their pay.
My high school CS teacher in the days before the political correctness pandemic used to say: "You cannot have your dick in both hands and your soul in paradise at the same time me lad". The equivalent for ladies was: "Darling, there is no such thing as a little bit pregnant". I believe the closest English translation is "You cannot have your cake and eat it too".
The issue with UK is that it is trying to invest beyond what it is capable of. It is a constant: "have cake, eat cake" without anyone actually realizing that the result of that mental experiment is "no cake".
At the PRICE it costs for UK to procure arms it cannot realistically invest into:
1. Armament for local/limited conflicts
2. Armament for the last war that there will be
3. Armament for power projection.
As a comparison, Russia invests only in 1 and 2 in exactly that priority order.
1 - new set of tanks, new set of battlefield vehicles, continuous investment into multiple rocket launchers including guided multiple munitions packages and drone delivery piggy-backing on it, etc. These are now rolling off the production line and they are 10-15 years ahead of what UK has (at least). That is one point where the recent general rants are spot on - if UK armed forces are ever unfortunate to get into a conventional weapons scrap with Russia they will get creamed.
2 - new short range, ICBM missiles and sub improvement.
They have NOT invested in 3. They continue to drag around that smoking distraction (with minor upgrades) called Admiral Kuznetsov from time to time, but they have not tried to build anything which is by default an aggressor power projection technology - something you park off the coast of an enemy and bomb 'em into the stone age.
Compared to that UK has gone in the completely opposite order: It is 3, 2, 1. Which begs the question - was any idiot in the general staff actually thinking. There is NO POINT in 3 if you do not have 1. There is no 1, because there is no money left for 1. There is no armament to actually fight conflicts. All the money went on 3 and 2. Leaving 2 out of the equation, what is the point of 3 (power projection) if you cannot actually fight a conflict because you have nothing to fight it with. Sure, you go somewhere, project power, have a massive w*nk off-shore, use up all of your munitions and flight resource and THEN what do you do?
The other alternative is of course to find a way to reduce the procurement price, but that means disabling the revolving door between BAE, civil service and the army and this will happen only on a very cold day in hell.
You're missing part of the reason behind the British armed forces (and of others around the world), and that is as a source of income and jobs for the so-called defence industries (I suppose 'attack industries' would be a bit much).
If you look at MoD decisions from the angle of "how does this help British arms manufacturers" then they start to make a lot more sense.
If you look at MoD decisions from the angle of "how does this help British arms manufacturers" then they start to make a lot more sense.
Made. Up to the 70-es. Maybe early 80-es.
From there on it has been gradually converted into "How does it help American arms manufacturers". Led by that most American of British arms companies. BAE.
Russia hasn't been trying to keep the peace over the last few years, it's been testing it's equipment/troops in conflict (Syria/Ukraine/etc). As a previous comment has said, you can't do everything. That's why there is NATO.
Cyber warfare is an interesting one, should this be a military task or a government one (GCHQ, etc). I'd argue the latter with input from the first. It benefits everyone, the military like to think everything is a big secret and don't share what they know.
Russia hasn't been trying to keep the peace over the last few years, it's been testing it's equipment/troops in conflict
So have we - Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. With rather abysmal results.
One thing Russians are not even trying to hide and in fact, they openly advertise it when trying to sell their new equipment is that they have carefully observed our trials and tribulations. And learned from them.
They claim to have used them as input to their new generation of tanks, rocket launchers, drones as well as upgrade packages for their older generation of planes which has been sold worldwide.
This one is quite interesting too. Based on their analysis it was pointless to try to do anything to existing ground kit - for the era of IEDs and militias supplied with modern anti-tank weapons you need completely new gear. Otherwise you are toast. Similarly, you need new missiles, drones and other battlefield tech. IMHO, looking at our casualty rates from IEDs and ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan, they may have a point here.
The old aircraft, however and specifically close air support ones are (according to the Russians) perfectly fit for purpose in a 21st century local war once you give them a full revamp of the electronics and targeting. They have a point. THE LUNATICS AND BANANA REPUBLICS DO NOT YET HAVE MODERN AAA. Even if they do, a Tier 1 power can suppress it in minutes.
Verrrry astute observation, one which we have missed and have gone full blast to retire our old aircraft and invest a ridiculous amount of money into a set of weapons which do not belong in this type of warfare like the F35 and the Series 3 Eurofighter. As a result we have no money to spend where it matters - on ground equipment.
Of course the Russians have been watching UK (and other) forces where they've been deployed. They wouldn't be doing their job if they weren't.
And we've been watching them - in Chechnya/Dagestan, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria...
I'm not worried about the Russian army. It's big, but it's crap. And you have to reckon that in any scenario where the Russian army is fighting the British army, the Russians will be distracted by the need to cover their arses against the French, other Europeans, the Chinese, the Americans, and worst of all, against their own central Asian republics (think Chechnya). The British have less to worry about on those lines, simply because they've got a lot more friends. (The Norwegians aren't about to invade Shetland, the French aren't going to seize Guernsey, the Irish won't try to reunify their island by force, even the Scots aren't going to unilaterally declare independence just because the British army happens to be busy elsewhere. The Russians can't be anything like so sanguine about the edges of their territory.)
And that is why the Russian cyber force is a threat to be reckoned with: it's actually world class, unlike their armed forces - and it's playing offense, which is always way easier than defence.
@veti - you might try to get some thing correct.
China and Russia are friendly, and Dagestan and Chechnya are Caucasian areas, not in Central Asia. There are Central Asian republics that were formerly in the Soviet Union - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan. They are more likely to have disputes between themselves rather than anyone else.
their own central Asian republics (think Chechnya).
Their "own" central asian republics are independent and have been for a very long time. They have very little need to "watch" over them.
You are also missing the primary "conflict" problem. It is not directly facing Russia in a "last war". It is running into it or into one of its proxies elsewhere. In that case Ireland, Norway or Germany will be of very little help.
Hire lots of cyber security experts
To lure them away from Amazon/Google etc you need to beat the salaries and not make them do all that extreme camping the Army is so fond of.
Since salaries are fixed with rank you will have to hire these nerds at a rank that is commensurate with $300-500K industry salaries
So that means a pay rise for Brigadier General (or whatever the highest rank is among the brown trousers)
This is sounding just like the pitch the good general was giving - a plea for more money and toys.
A better way to lure people away from Silicon Valley would be to pay the protesters attacking buses ferrying workers, and possibly encourage other forms of violence, then they will flee as refugees to elsewhere. The only problem then is convincing the great unwashed that these are "acceptable" refugees.
Russian checklist for war with Britain, as of 5pm London time.
Natural Resources - used most of it
Industrial base - owned by the Germans and Japanese
Banking Sector - mostly American
Houses - already own most of the larger ones in London
Football teams - ditto
Which can only mean they're in it for regime change... and given the regime we're currently under, this would possibly count as a liberation.
I for one welcome our new vodka fuelled nepotistic former communist overlords! May they succeed in overthrowing the old gin fuelled nepotistic former public school overlords!
We hosted Berezovsky. The Yeltsin-kleptocrat-era billionaire openly seeking the violent overthrow of the Russian government. They had as good a reason to bomb us as the US ever had to go after Bin Laden.
OK, he's dead now, but I suspect we might still host some less-than-desirable Russians.
there's one good reason, our wee island is the main, and in the future possibly the only real foothold, should our US brothers (in arms) decide to fulfill the article 5, (should the Russians decide to test it) And yes, Poland would welcome the Yanks, but HOW will they get there? Not through the Baltic, they won't (consider a2/ad so conveniently provided by the largest Russian aircraft carrier, Kaliningrad area). And, quite possibly, the Americans couldn't get to Eastern Europe, not through French and / or German airspace, given what those NATO countries say and think about the Americans (never mind that you do not ship a brigade or two over air).
So, a wee min-nuke or two over this or that base here would suddenly make our glorious leaders twice - should we welcome the Yanks as declared minutes ago by our PM? Should we fire our nukes towards the Ruskies in response? Trouble is, we don't have small nukes, so would we willingly escalate to lob a biggish one? And wait for them to respond with a still bigger one? And we do happen to be only a short few minutes away, as missile flies. So yes, Russia would want to "fight" us, to deny the US the foothold. Not to turn us into a glowing skate rink, but a slap to show us our place... quite possibly :(
There has been some chatter in the media about ring-fencing the NHS budget. I reply that it is the smaller budgets that need to be ring-fenced, to protect them against raids from the big boys of the NHS and the Social Services.
So ring-fence the defence budget and the roads budget.
OK sure the citizens can't get their daily Facebook fix, but surely there's enough infrastructure that resides within the UK as well as satellite links for critical defense related stuff that it would be more of an attack on the business interests of the UK rather than something that's a military problem.
Those numbers just blow my mind, what an epic waste of resources that conflict seems to create
Surely there must be a better answer, I wonder what it could be?
2007 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2008 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2009 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2010 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2011 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2012 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2013 U.S. Military Defense Spending
2014 U.S. Military Defense Spending
30 years ago I had a rifle whose cocking handle could open beer bottles and a newly issued bivvy bag and maggot that kept me warm and dry. The chicken curry in the 24 hour packs was packed with meat and I could overdose on Spangles at will. We also had twice as many troops as we have now. In the event of a Soviet invasion of Europe I'd have been dead in a German ditch within seven hours, most likely as a result of a blood agent based chemical attack. But we were ok and saw the Berlin Wall crumble.
Race forward to 2018 and perhaps if we hadn't got complacent and then pissed several £billion up the wall on white elephant aircraft carriers to strut around the globe pretending we are still a world power then we'd be able to field a decent sized land force. It's all very well wondering how we combat cyber attacks but as it stands we haven't got enough troops to supply the three Corps you need to even call yourself an Army.
Before you can defend anything, you must have something to defend.
BT is on the job! It has been so slow in building out the UK InterNet, there is precious little worth defending and since most of the submarine cables have been built out by private commercial industry there is even less to defend in the name of Her Majesty.
If the military wants more money - let them get it from the cable operators!
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