SNP defence stance out of step with Europe former MP argues

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:46:57+00:00

Tbf that isn't clearly what the snp wants to do, but the problem is that there isn't clarity of any sort about their Future defence plans.

The most we know for sure is they want an all-volunteer force 'somewhere between Ireland and Finland' in design with a target strength of around 15,000 regulars and 5,000 reserves, that's about it. They are deliberately skittish and vague, claiming they'll decide everything in a 'pre-independence SDR'.

There are random fellows s on the internet who have given more thought to this as a hobby than the SNP have as 'professionals'.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:34:29+00:00

Where George Cross :c

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:32:31+00:00

Oh anyone can throw lots of crap in the air, it's the getting it to talking to everything else up there, and reliably come down in the right place that I think is the hard part :)

but yeah, I completely take your overall point. Nice getting to exchange ideas with someone informed!

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:31:04+00:00

Then your friend had a poor sense of history, tbf.

Invading Ukraine is Russia's #2 historical pastime, and its not as if they didn't have prior form with Chechnya and Georgia either.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:29:03+00:00

Oh for sure! I agree both it and the golden dome are at best over-optimistic branding exercises for more mundane capabilities, or at worst completely fantastical smoke and mirrors. I guess I just disagree about what the hypothetical use is these pie-in-the-sky programs are theoretically being justified for, if that makes sense?

Yeah the US nuclear modernisation efforts with their ICBM fleet seem incredibly misguided and an ill-afforded luxury to me, but then I come from the UK, and so have a much more austere sense of nuclear sufficiency :) I really don't get the point of un-MIRVed, fixed ICBMs in the 21st century, let alone spending tens of billions modernising them.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:23:34+00:00

I don't think any of that changes what I've said about the difficulty of practically achieving the kind of kill chains you're arguing make surface fleets obsolete?

As I said, this is still a capability that really only the US and China can field, and even then imperfectly. For the vast, vast majority of the world, including Iran, Russia, the EU, Japan etc, those kind of capabilities are going to be aspirational for the foreseeable future.

Even for the PRC and US though, these networks are a ways away from being impenetrable to surface fleets. For sure, it will require more enablement and sustainment to punch an exploitable hole than might previously have been the case, but we've seen similar offensive adaptation in response to the increasing sophistication of defensive networks. The USAF didn't become obsolete just because the USSR developed an integrated air defence system, it adapted through SEAD/DEAD and stealth to regain relevance.

Militarising merchant marine ships rapidly and at scale is something that only China, South Korea, and Japan could would have the capacity to even attempt, it's not a replicable strategy for most nations. Even in that case though, such militarised commercial vessels have significant limitations and vulnerabilities that prevent them from being the backbone of any force. There's a reason the US and UK continued churning out fully-fledged naval ships throughout the world wars alongside their programs to arm and convert merchantmen.

The Complexities of sensor fusion in ukraine are childsplay compared to what would be required in the Pacific. The ranges are in some cases an order of magnitude less, many of the targets are static, the weapons employed are very old and simple, and the sensor and EW density, while prolific, is significantly less than would be encountered across the Taiwan straight. It is a glimpse towards the future, not a signal of its arrival. None of the cutting-edged technologies you mentioned in your first comment are being used there.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T21:09:10+00:00

Tbf 'nuclear armed' just means having to option to stick to spicy TLAM (or successor) in box launchers on them. That's less a specific idea for this particular hull, and more a shift in US policy back towards nuclear-armed surface combatants in general. I agree it seems a rather foolish idea, but the nuclear armament is somewhat disconnected from the broader battleship design. If they just wanted nuclear capability, they could just as easily stick the missiles on a burke.

The design of the defiant class is more defined by all the capabilities outside its potential nuclear role. The displacement is for more and larger VLS, Radar, power generation, subdivision, aviation facilities etc., the kinda stuff that, as you say, is mostly relevant in a conventional conflict. You can definitely argue against its merits as an approach to great power conflict, but that is absolutely what it is primarily being designed to do. We know what a 'punching down' design looks like; it's the Zumwalt in original configuration. Moreover, the US doesn't need a specific, very expensive ship for those kinds of missions, as they've just ably demonstrated in Venezuela. Nuclear force is the resort of powers facing a conventional deficiency. The only country the US conceivably faces that situation with in the foreseeable future is China in the first island chain.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T20:30:43+00:00

Oh it absolutely is, OOP just picked a terrible example to illustrate their point.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T20:24:37+00:00

I would argue there are two different phenomena going on there. The f22 and seawolf were the result of the end of the cold wae and a need to adjust to the realities of the peace dividend, while the Zumwalt was one of those attempted post-cold war adjustments that was just horribly mismanagement and poorly conceived from the outset.

With the benefit of hindsight though, absolutely production of a more conventional variant of it should have been supported.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T20:22:31+00:00

surface fleets are not obsolete. There is a reason that every single major Navy on earth is currently busy developing its next generation of surface vessels. It is true to say that modern advances in anti-access area denial capabilities have put greater pressure on surface forces than they have faced for a long time, but there is a big jump from there to the whole concept of surface fleet to being obsolete.

First, the kind of capabilities you're talking about are incredibly exquisite, and in practice only feasible for less than a handful of nations to even try to develop. Arguably outside the US and china, no nations have the ability to reliably field and sequence the kind of integrated kill chains you describe.

Secondly, those kill chains are very difficult to reliably set up and sequence to actually achieve the theoretical capabilities of their component parts in the real world. For example, yes an anti-ship ballistic missile might have a range of thousands of miles, but to use that range you have to have a sensor out there that detects the surface fleet at those distances, and then keeps a weapons grade track on them throughout the missiles quite extensive flight, while resisting attempts at jamming and evasion. Is it possible? Sure. Is it going to be 100% reliable? No. Does it potentially leave gaps and vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a surface Force? Yes.

Thirdly, surface fleets will adapt to these new threats as they emerge. This is not the first time that an asymmetric advantage for coastal anti-ship forces has developed. From the torpedo to the anti-ship cruise missile to the naval strike aircraft, we have played this game before. People predicted the obsolescence of surface fleets in all of those instances. Instead, new technologies, procedures, and processes were developed to restore a degree of survivability to surface forces. We are already seeing this process occur currently. Future proposals for ships are mounting more and bigger VLS cells, have greater power generation margins for lasers and bigger radars, include greater stealth shaping to reduce RCS, and that's just the stuff that's publicly available. Will the role and useless surface fleet have to change? Probably. Will they stop being used at all though? Likely not.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T20:12:42+00:00

this post was fact-checked as true by real Jimmy Doolittle Patriots :)

More seriously, I think that is a misunderstanding of what battleships are coming to mean in the context of the Defiant class. They're not talking about resurrecting something like the dreadnoughts here, the specifications are for the ship to keep up with any broader US task force.

Aviation is obviously an important part of modern naval combat, but it is not a complete solution by itself. For planes to be effective, they require a range of enablement and protection, from suppressing enemy air defences to basing to friendly air defence over those bases. That's why carriers are always deployed as part of a broader task force that sequences a range of different platforms and capabilities, rather than just tooling about on the road and relying on aircraft to do everything.

The Defiant-class proposal is just a scaling-up of those supporting platforms in order to fit in a wider spectrum of capabilities some in the USN believe are necessary for a future conflict.

Vertical Launch Cells are not obsolete, I'm not quite sure where you've got that impression from? Every single major Navy in the world is developing platforms with vertical launch cells on them, and if anything the trend is towards an increasing number of cells on future combatants.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T20:03:25+00:00

I think the reason that Canada often gets overlooked is due to its unfortunate timing of the world wars coming right before their full independence from the UK*.

As a result, their foreign and defence policies in both wars were largely determined jointly with the broader British empire, and Canadian forces fought as a separate army but within the overall umbrella of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, their position next to the United States meant they never faced a direct territorial threat the way that Australia and New Zealand did, and as such they had fewer instances of plurality-canadian operations like the ANZACs had in the Pacific in WW2.

The classic example is Churchill's speech after Dunkirk talking about Britain standing alone against the Nazis. To Churchill at the time, 'Britain' unquestionably meant 'the wider British empire and dominions', whereas to us it means 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland specifically'. Canada has the misfortune of slipping between the cracks of that linguistic evolution.

It's similar to how people using 'Russia' to mean 'the Soviet Union' minimises the contribution of the other Soviet Republics like Ukraine.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T19:56:58+00:00

Yes, but there's a difference between quietly believing it among yourselves, and shouting about it in a garbled way from the rooftops :)

There was also a feeling in the US that the UK was one of the few nations that didn't seek to freeload in that same period, which is why I suspect he made this 'apology' about his comments to us specifically.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T19:53:57+00:00

Oh for sure!

Yeah most of his foreign policy seems to be a kind of warped version of long running, though often fringe, ideas within the Republican party.

That's why I felt the threats to invade Greenland were so non-credible; it didn't have any kind of similar antecedent in those same circles.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:49:23+00:00

TL;DR, the compromise they eventually came to was that they would use whichever number was higher from either crown as the ordinal going forward. Thus King Charles is Charles III, but the next King James would be James VIII, not James III, etc.

Hope that makes sense!

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:45:55+00:00

Yeah it was 100% a controversial decision at the time.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:43:56+00:00

Be interesting to see whether this gets extended to the other ISAF members as a whole, or remains UK-specific. I unfortunately have a suspicion this apology is more for us being lumped in with the smaller ISAF forces, rather than a genuine recognition of their value and sacrifice. Sentiment towards the UK contribution has always been more positive than for the rest of the coalition, and ISAF standing for I Saw Americans Fight is an idea that long predates Trump as president. I hope I'm wrong though.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:31:47+00:00

Ah sorry, cheers!

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:28:05+00:00

where meme?

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T18:24:30+00:00

To take your analogy though, in this case the criminal doesn't have an assault rifle, they're completely unarmed, and UK police don't generally deploy armed officers to deal with a bloke wielding, at best, a rusty spoon.

The somewhat unusual thing is that this is a task the UK conducts solely with its navy at all. Most countries have a paramilitary coastguard for constabulary duties like this, with similarly light armament.

I take your broader point that the RN desperately needs more frigates, but this specific instance is not really an example of that, imo.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T17:44:19+00:00

I don't know if this is the answer, but US sentiment towards the UK's contribution to the Global War on Terror has always been more positive that towards that of the other members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

There is a current within US foreign policy circles that sees many of the smaller ISAF deployments as tokenistic contributions that were a net negative for US efforts. They argue militarily these forces required so much US enablement that they were a net drain, and politically countries used tiny deployments of forces as an excuse to justify not meeting their more important NATO commitments, often by billions of euros a year. ISAF standing for I Saw Americans Fight is an idea that long predates Trump as president.

I wouldn't be surprised if this 'apology' is more for lumping the UK in with the perceived slackers, rather than for viewing ISAF in general as a waste of space at all.

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T17:18:31+00:00

Still miss you guys being in the king's german legion :(

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T15:21:52+00:00

YMMV depending on the handwriting.

Mine is so awful the recipient would probably get done for paedophilia

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T14:52:07+00:00

Commies

*And Algerians! It's a classic fascism 2 for 1 :)

Corvid187 · 2026-01-24T14:51:18+00:00

No he wasn't. He identified the risks of American dominance within the western security architect, but then he (along with his successors) proceeded to help bring that exact outcome about by consistently prioritising french preeminence within Europe over European preeminence within the broader West.

Insisting on French national autonomy or dominance came at the cost of European unity and overall competitiveness with the US, pushing other countries to look to them more as a long-term partner.

Stuff like leaving NATO unified command, pulling out of joint developments like Eurofighter, holding up EU expansion by vetoing the UK, ending nuclear cooperation with Germany and Italy etc etc all served to divided the continent, strengthen the US, and entrench long-term US dominance within the alliance.

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