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omnipus
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 03:41

There also certainly wasn't the proliferation of private military companies that there is today, but there were a few. Many of British Commonwealth origin.
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ottarrus
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 11:11

There also certainly wasn't the proliferation of private military companies that there is today, but there were a few. Many of British Commonwealth origin.
I agree. The fiascos and circuses of white mercenaries in Africa, Asia, and the Indian Ocean, along with the prevalence of terrorism, has utterly undermined the 'soldier for hire' industry. While individual contractors might exist in a T2K scenario, 'Executive Outcomes' and 'Blackwater' are strictly private bodyguards, not the monstrosities they are today.
And what is it about the UK that generates so many mercs? Is the size of the army? You know, too many trained guys getting out because Whitehall issued another study that's gonna reduce the British Army by another 5000 men?
Last edited by ottarrus on Fri 29 Oct 2021, 20:56, edited 1 time in total.
 
baldrick0712
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 14:25

And what is it about the UK that generates so many merc?
Exceptionally good training.
 
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ottarrus
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 20:56

And what is it about the UK that generates so many mercs?
Exceptionally good training.
The US trains well too, but we don't seem to have the romanticism that the UK ascribes to the 'soldier of fiction' profession.
 
baldrick0712
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 22:18

And what is it about the UK that generates so many mercs?
Exceptionally good training.
The US trains well too, but we don't seem to have the romanticism that the UK ascribes to the 'soldier of fiction' profession.
I'm not trying to be anti-American honest but whilst the British Army is quite small in numbers the UK spends far more on training per head compared to the US. Basic Training in the British Army is 23 weeks compared to just 10 weeks in the US Army, and training in specialist units like the Paras and Royal Marines is even longer (Paratroop Regiment: 30 weeks, Royal Marines: 32 weeks). They are very skilled soldiers who are probably also much lower paid than their US counterparts so the prospect of earning £10,000 a month as a military contractor must be hard to resist. I agree though that there is probably a more romantic view of mercenaries in the UK compared to the US.

By the way, have you seen the British Mercs movie "The Wild Geese"? Excellent movie if you haven't.
 
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Fri 29 Oct 2021, 23:10



Exceptionally good training.
The US trains well too, but we don't seem to have the romanticism that the UK ascribes to the 'soldier of fiction' profession.
I'm not trying to be anti-American honest but whilst the British Army is quite small in numbers the UK spends far more on training per head compared to the US. Basic Training in the British Army is 23 weeks compared to just 10 weeks in the US Army, and training in specialist units like the Paras and Royal Marines is even longer (Paratroop Regiment: 30 weeks, Royal Marines: 32 weeks). They are very skilled soldiers who are probably also much lower paid than their US counterparts so the prospect of earning £10,000 a month as a military contractor must be hard to resist. I agree though that there is probably a more romantic view of mercenaries in the UK compared to the US.

By the way, have you seen the British Mercs movie "The Wild Geese"? Excellent movie if you haven't.
You're fine, baldrick. We're good.

Comparing US to UK Army training is rather like comparing oranges to lemons... same family, different flavor. The British Para's, for example, have a level of training somewhere between the US 82dn Abn and a Ranger Battalion... same role, but different training standards.

In many ways, I see the British Army rather like the German Reichsheer between Wars One and Two. Since the size of the Army is so small, the troops that are accepted into service are trained to a fare thee well. As one historian put it, "It was an entire army of NCO's." In the budgetary battles at MoD to commission two new carriers and completely upgrade the RAF to F35's, something had to give, and what gave was the Army. Good lord, there are proud regiments in the British Army with service histories stretching back 300 years and reputations that took 1000 men to uphold that have been amalgamated down to under-strength PLATOONS [the entire Scots Establishment is what, 6 battalions including the Scots Dragoon Guards now?] or a rock in a memorial garden [the Glosters, for example].
One of these days, the UK is going to need soldiers, not sailors or airmen, and she's not going to have them. And that's a Goddamn shame. As Grigory Zhukov once put it, "Quantity has a quality all it's own".
As for mercenaries themselves, I live near a major US base with three battalion-equivilents of Special Operations Forces [a Ranger battalion and a Group and a half of Special Forces] and I watched these Blackwater clowns come into town recruiting every single guy they could get their hands on who was within 6 months of the end of their enlistment. They'd offer these huge salaries and large signing bonuses which, as you say, is hard to turn down on a personal level. But what they also did was deprive their units of experienced and trained up NCO's right before they deployed to the Sandbox. More than one SOC unit took unneeded casualties because a needed NCO [like an SF A-team Team Sergeant] was head-hunted away by the Almighty Dollar. Then the poor fool gets his ass whacked working for Halliburton and now his family wants a full military funeral...
As for 'The Wild Geese', yes I've seen it, along with 'The Dogs of War', 'The Mechanic', 'The Killer Elite' and rest of the 'Mercs R Us' movies. Pretty standard barracks movie fare in the 80's. I'm not very impressed with them though. I'm a lifelong military historian and I'm well informed about the shenanigans of the likes of Bob Denard and Mike Hoare. Whenever their type's reputation gets so bad that even Executive Outcomes won't hire them, they pick a Third World country and decide to stage a coup attempt. In the end, I see mercenaries as causing more problems than they solve..
 
baldrick0712
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Sat 30 Oct 2021, 01:24

You're fine, baldrick. We're good.
Glad to hear it friend. I do sometimes shoot my mouth off. I'm a British patriot through and through - a rare sight these days outside of the working class - and I love my country's armed forces. Favourite poet, Rudyard Kipling, the soldier's poet.
Comparing US to UK Army training is rather like comparing oranges to lemons...
This is very true. What the US does really well is absolutely obliterate conventional armies like those of Iraq in 2003. In contrast, the UK did quite poorly in Iraq. It failed in Basra and we had to eventually hand it over to the Americans. The experience of counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland didn't give us the expected edge in Iraq.
One of these days, the UK is going to need soldiers, not sailors or airmen, and she's not going to have them. And that's a Goddamn shame. As Grigory Zhukov once put it, "Quantity has a quality all it's own".
As a historical maritime power, the British Army has always been neglected - under both Right and Left wing governments. I believe it is currently at its smallest strength since the 1700s. It's a risky strategy as you never know what is around the corner. I hear that Poland is so concerned about Russia that they are DOUBLING defense spending.
I see mercenaries as causing more problems than they solve..
Certainly mercenaries have had a chequered record but they will always be around, not least because national governments are always ready to hire them. It's politically expedient to hire contractors rather than announce another troop deployment.
 
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ottarrus
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Sat 30 Oct 2021, 02:47

I'm an American patriot, so I know what you mean. And I get pretty blunt with my opinions too. I'm not trying to offend anybody, but I find that there are times where plain speaking gets across what you intend to say much better than tap dancing around a subject. Some people see that as arrogance, but it really isn't. I'm perfectly happy to listen to a thought out differing opinion and I have no problem admitting it when I'm proven wrong.

As to the British Army, wikipedia lists the number of personnel at a little over 82,000 as of 2020. Which is 18,000 less than the Treaty of Versailles authorized the German Reichsheer in 1919....

As to unconventional warfare, that is a subject of two halves. The first half is doctrine and technique... while the US Army did the pioneering of modern insurgency warfare in Vietnam, Great Britain certainly refined it to fare thee well in Northern Ireland. The second half is cultural... each insurgency is rooted in the history and culture of the peoples fighting it and if foreign power gets involved in it they must understand those aspects. And that's where we, the US and UK kind of screwed the pooch in the GWOT. In the US case, we tried to make line infantry do Special Forces jobs. In the UK's case they thought that because they'd had experience in the region they could just handle everything with polite conversation over tea [referring to the book, "Three Cups of Tea" by Mortensen]. And we were BOTH wrong.
As to Poland, if I were the neighbor Czar Vlad II Putin, I sure as Hell would put some money into my military. Yeah, I know Belarus is between them, but Belarus is owned and operated by a Putin aparatchik. Minsk isn't about to object to anything Moscow decides to do.
 
paladin2019
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Sat 30 Oct 2021, 03:06

"Yeah, I know Belarus is between them"

Psssst. Kaliningrad might like a word ;)
 
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omnipus
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Re: Intelligence Career - Paramilitary?

Sat 30 Oct 2021, 03:18

And what is it about the UK that generates so many merc?

The real answer? Colonial interests across most of the world that didn't just vanish with decolonization.
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