I remember a discussion in the Officers Mess back in the mid 90’s which stated that actually deployable forces from the Bundeswehr were about 30,000. Of course it’s almost impossible to verify that via online sources as they always present the entire package as the “force”. The UK forces are much leaner but also can deploy much larger numbers than that lean structure represents.
Even the French pad their military to hide government expenditure which they would not be able to spend under EU competition rules. Such is the EU game. It leads to a totally false picture of the actual defensive capability of the EU. Also the 40k German “reserves” are predominantly Eastern Germans who were trained with Soviet doctrine and to Soviet standards. When German National Service was running it was quite legal to refuse to do national service in the armed forces and to choose to do civil administration instead. Every German I have worked with chose administration. Hence the reserves are not quite what ours are.
When we talk about military capability, nobody ever talks about the war reserve. The only countries documented with a war reserve stock are the US, Britain and Israel, although I assume both Russia and China have them. The British war reserve used to be twice the size of the standing forces and dispersed between NATO forward bases and UK bases. The amount of equipment is not public knowledge but we do know the maintenance cost which is £277m annually.
None of the EU countries have this war reserve as no one of them have a NATO reserve call up role in the event of an East West war.
The paperwork may say 1,000,000 troops and thousands of aircraft and ships. But when you get down to it, the vast majority (at least 75%) are not combat forces. If you then factor in training, combat fitness and tactics, you get to the point where the UK were in the Falklands where the invading forces had 3 times the force (all combat), vehicles and extensive on site supplies and land based air cover.. Whereas the UK forces were on foot, 1/3 the size and had to carry what they had brought with them. Except in this case the invading force would be 3 times the size, better trained and totally kitted out for combat.
If you look at the Luftwaffe page, it says…
it is the fourth largest air force within the European Union, after the air forces of the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Although its budget has been significantly reduced since the end of the Cold War in 1989/90, the Luftwaffe is still among the best-equipped air forces of the world, although it currently suffers from high levels of aircraft unserviceability.
Italian forces also have the Carabinieri which function like the Gendarmes, so, again, large reduction in headline numbers.
I stand by what I say. The EU would be massively less safe without the UK. The UK would be no less safe without the EU as anyone who wants to get to the UK has to go through the EU on the land and would have to face a nuclear deterrent coming via sea and the UK air defence capability is right up there with the US and Russia.... The UK alone has enough nuclear weapons to devastate Russia and the French deterrent is nothing more than icing on the cake. Nobody in their right, or deranged, mind would choose to make a serious attempt to attack the UK, in the EU or not.
As for an independent Scotland and the EU, perhaps I’m hoping that when the EU get’s on it’s high horse and starts demanding that Scotland basically debase itself to join, that the Scots will get on their high horse and lift two fingers to the EU.
Regardless, Scotland or not, rUK would thrive quite happily, EU or not.
