UK 🇬🇧 Military 🧵
Part 1.
The UK military didn’t “decline”. It was deliberately gutted.
The peace dividend was national suicide. Here’s exactly how, when and why it all went to shit – and why the MoD, the civil service, and every single government (especially Blair & Starmer’s) have blood on their hands.
30 year veteran thread. No more bullshit.
Early 90s. I’m in 18 Group Maritime Ops (now PJHQ). Real assets – Nimrods, proper RN escort fleet – tracking Soviet subs that never stopped probing us. Russians didn’t take a peace dividend. Our governments did. Scrapping Nimrods, hollowing the fleet, pretending the threat vanished. Cupboard’s been empty ever since. We’re sitting ducks. Literally! What a fkn shambles.
Iraq proved it in blood. No body armour. Open-top Snatch Land Rovers – rolling coffins. Labour sent us to war like that. Yanks nicknamed us “the Borrowers”. 457 of our lads died. Would’ve been far more without American kit and fast air. Chilcot laid it bare. Zero lessons learned.
When British troops were in contact – whether in Iraq, Helmand or beyond – they’d be praying for American fast air, tankers and enablers to keep them alive. That’s not knocking our own pilots – far from it. Finbar Monahan DFC and countless RAF heroes showed incredible bravery and ingenuity under fire. But the brutal reality is the scale and sustainment gap our hollowed-out force created. I saw it from the Battlespace Manager seat. We leaned on the Yanks because successive governments left us no choice.
While the military was shrunk to the bone, the MoD and civil service bloated like a politicians ego. Civil servants multiplied, costing us a fortune, delivering sweet fuck all experience or value. We’ve been properly duped. Every government destroys the original model and swings wildly the other way. The system is broken.
Procurement is still a fucking joke. Military: “We need a dog.” MoD: “Meetings.” Years later: “Here’s a cat. Teach it to bark.” 🐶 = 🐱 I lived this shambles. Left in 2021. Same clowns today.
Leadership rot everywhere. Gavin Williamson pushed woke ideology and hand-picked Mike Wigston as CAS. Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak – every single one owns a slice. Same applies to every Defence Secretary. Let’s talk about the Afghan schemes another day Ben Wallace. Tories slashed the military with Options for Change. Labour did Iraq on the cheap. Now Starmer’s at the helm making excuses instead of fixing the real problems.
End of Part 1/2 – The rot runs deep and cost lives. Part 2 coming straight after: Trump holds up the mirror, Starmer gaslights, the Middle East betrayal, the cancer inside, and the brutal fix we need.