Iran escalation?

jdevil

Lockhead Martin, one of the many weapon manufactures. Compare 2005 figures to 2017, one of the many many american (same goes for the UK) benefitting. The same money that gets pump back to the UK.
Who is arming the Yemen war? An update | Reinventing Peace

Lockheed Martin - Wikipedia

richp007

People like me?

I was merely pointing out that Iran are treading on dangerous ground. And that's exactly what they're doing.

All the points you raise are fair enough to be discussed, but I wasn't going that deep with my short post. Even if you were correct on every single point you raise, it matters little when they take action such as this. Essentially poking and prodding at the US and UK in a very unwise manner.

Trollslayer

The US (well, Trump and Bolton) wanted someone to defeat and make money from weapons in the process.

jdevil

By the way, I didn't mean 'people like you' it in a condescending way. So apologises if it did come out that way.

My point was, Iran is playing in the hands of the US/UK. They took one of their ships and Iran bit back (fairly). All this is done for public perception and manipulation, slowly and eventually the people will rally in agreement with the government.

Trollslayer

It can be easy to get over passionate about something important.
Not that I would know...

richp007

Unfortunately I fear public perception will matter little. There's a whiff of Iraq here, and currently we've got a complete gobsh*te sitting in the Oval office, and another complete gobsh*te about to take the reigns in No.10.

Plus we'll do just about anything to please Trump in the coming months.

Trollslayer

If only you were wrong

Sonic67

You were fine with the defence cuts. Also wrong. A lot of the equipment bought is still in use. We still have Panthers, WIMIKs etc.

Could we defend ourselves if attacked?

                                                                               

                                                                               

What you have always resented was that when we honoured a Nato commitment we had to buy new vehicles and body armour as people were dying.

Reservists To Play A Greater Role In The Military

                                                                       

Rasczak

Thank you for confirming that my predictions were correct!   That was seven years ago and I absolutely nailed it - "for virtually every operation we will now require a coalition partner to make good our own deficiencies in equipment" - as now evidenced by this Iran crisis.

I will emphasis though that spending more money on defence is not the answer - the department must live within its means as the country doesn't have a magic money tree - it is a question of smarter spending.  There will be a Strategic Defence and Security Review next year so perhaps these issues can be tackled then when we shape Future Force 2030.

Sonic67

We will never have enough money to deal with every crisis.
Which means massive defence spending. You didn't want more defence spending. You were against cuts in 2010. It was done as we had a massive debt.
How? We don't know what we will need. For Eastern Europe where we have sent troops, we have needed, armour and aircraft.

Here we'd have been better off without extremely expensive carriers and having lots of frigates or corvettes to increase the number of ships and that they will be around when needed.

As for your constant gripes about having to fund body armour, that's worn by all the services including marines that will board ships.