High-ranking officers outnumber heavy artillery in British Army.
The British Army has more senior officers than heavy artillery, revealed official MoD estimates. At the end of 2021, there were 245 people serving in the army, navy, and air force with the rank of one-star general or above, according to a Freedom of Information request reported by The Times.
There were 123 high-ranking commanders in the army, but only 89 AS-90 self-propelled artillery cannons.
There were 123 high-ranking officers in the army and 89 AS-90 self-propelled artillery arms.
The RAF had 56 one-star officers compared to 26 F-35 lightning planes, while the navy had 66 persons with the rank of commodore or above compared to 20 main surface ships. The data do not include high-ranking officers who work for other military organisations such as the Ministry of Defence, NATO, the Permanent Joint Headquarters, or Defence Equipment and Support.
Nicholas Drummond, a defence analyst specialising in ground combat told The Times that the army retained so many senior officers because it still had the structure of a much larger organisation, even though troop numbers were being reduced to less than 76,000.
“The army constantly believes it is going to be regrown to a previous level and that’s never going to happen now,” he said.
He said that the navy and air force had a better balance of senior officers.
“The navy and the air force tend to need the senior people because they have technical expertise,” he added.
“It is misleading to compare the number of people in a certain military rank with pieces of military equipment,” a Ministry of Defence spokesman told the Times.
“Defence requires senior ranks to carry out both operational and non-operational roles and our structure reflects the complexity of the roles we perform,” he added.
British army losing sheen?
A US general allegedly told Ben Wallace, Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom, that the British Army is no longer regarded as one of the world’s top-tier combat forces, according to a Sky News report. Defence sources also said that the unnamed general allegedly warned the Defence Secretary, and sources also claim that he said the UK Armed Forces is “a service unable to protect the UK and its allies.”
Given the mounting security danger presented by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the unnamed general told Sky News that Rishi Sunak ran the risk of failing in his duty as “wartime prime minister” unless he took immediate action.
He continued by saying that in the aftermath of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the UK’s declining warfighting capabilities, which had been the result of decades of budget cuts, needed to be reversed sooner than anticipated.
The general is alleged to have used a word to rank a nation’s military power, with tier one being thought of as a top-level power shared by the US, Russia, China, and France.
Source: WION
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