Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
If it was sufficiently in our strategic interest, we could do it. There’s no hard and fast reason that would make it impossible. The problem in Kabul is a tactical one. The US has about 6,000 personnel there, some of them in quite specific skilled roles (like running air traffic control). The British military has about 1,000 personnel at the airport and the force is not configured to simply take over an operation like that at short notice. Why would we, when the whole thing was planned on the understanding that the Americans were handling that side of it?
The pressing strategic question now is how reliable an ally America really is. The UK and France already undertake a lot of defence cooperation and now would be a good time for us together to think about how we configure our forces to undertake operations relevant to our regional security. I also think that the strategic assumptions around the operation of the new QE-class carriers is flawed if it is possible for American retrenchment to effectively force them into port (an unlikely scenario I admit but at present the air wing is partly comprised of USMC F-35Bs and the carrier strike group includes a US navy destroyer). Particularly with regards to the aircraft the whole show has been planned on the assumption that there will always be a USMC detachment on board, even after we have taken delivery of all our F-35Bs, seeing as we have only ordered 48 of them.
I doubt very much of this will be spoken aloud anywhere but you can bet they’re thinking about it carefully at the MoD.
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Ignored by Washington and mistrusted in Europe, we need a re-think if we are going to live up to the Global Britain strapline.