“The British Army Is Now Too Small To Effectively Perform Its Tasks.”
In the midst of debate in America and Europe over European adequately funding their NATO defense obligations, historian and YouTuber Mark Felton has put up a couple of videos that question the United Kingdom’s commitment to fielding an adequate military.
First up: The Navy with more Admirals than Warships
“New US president Donald Trump has made it very clear that America’s NATO allies must increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP in order to shoulder more of the burden of their own defense.”
“This is particularly pertinent in my country, Great Britain, which has seen defense spending decline massively over the past three decades, from 4.1% in 1990 to only 2.3% today, reflected in 30 plus years of shrinkage and reductions, but plenty of fresh conflicts to manage with less equipment, less investment and less personnel.”
“The Royal Navy is a brilliant example of the managed decline of Britain’s Armed Forces…presenting a hollowed out shadow of the force that, even in 1982, at the height of the Cold War, still managed, on its own, a brilliant Naval campaign in the Faulklands those days are well and truly over.”
“In 2025, the Royal Navy has 62 commissioned ships, but only 25 of those vessels are real warships designed to fight battles at sea. The rest are lightly armed patrol vessels, transport ships, and survey vessels and so on.”
“Breaking this figure of 25 warships down, the Royal Navy currently has two aircraft carriers, six guided missile destroyers, eight frigates and a grand total of just two classes of submarine totaling nine vessels.”
“But the Royal Navy also has 40 serving officers at the rank of Rear Admiral and above.”
“The personnel strength of the Royal Navy in 2025 is, including reserves, only 32,225 men and women. This means that there is an admiral for every 805 sailors.”
“Britain can no longer deploy large numbers of warships to sea, as we simply don’t have large numbers of warships. What we do have are a small number of warships, with quite a number of them currently in refit, mothball or lacking sufficient crew due to the dire state of Royal Navy recruitment.” Sounds similar to U.S. armed forces recruitment woes under Biden.
Only two destroyers are currently ready for active duty.
“How would our Royal Navy cope in the event of another Falklands crisis? For example, in 1982, the Falkland’s task force consisted of two aircraft carriers, eight destroyers, 16 frigates, and six submarines, plus many other Royal Navy vessels and auxiliaries, and still the Navy maintained its presence around the rest of the world.”
“[With] the current number of ships and their readiness, I think we’d struggle to put together a task force even half as big, and even then we’d have to send virtually every surface asset we have stripping vessels from all other tasks globally.”
Next up: The Army with more Horses than Tanks.
“2012. Number of main battle tanks: 334. Number of horses: 501. 2015. Number of MBTs: 227. Number of horses 494. 2024. Number of MBTs: 213. Number of horses: 497.”
“The number of main battle tanks in, this case the Challenger 2, has been steadily reduced over the past decade while the number of horses in the Army has remained constant at slightly under 500 animals.”
In 1991, Britain had 1,200 MBTs.
“In 2025 investigations by journalists and the Ministry of Defence’s own figures revealed that, despite the conflict in Ukraine, a very tank heavy war, Britain’s armored backbone is consistently decreasing year on year. We currently have 213 Challenger 2s, but only about 157 actually combat ready, or able to be activated within 30 days for combat deployment.”
Naturally the horses are used extensively in ceremonial duties, the details of which I’m skipping over.
“The British Army is the smallest it’s been for centuries, reduced by endless amalgamations and cuts numbering today only 78,500 personnel, plus just over 25,000 in the volunteer reserves.” That’s half the size of Japan’s armed forces.
“The British army is now too small to effectively perform its tasks.”
By the way, the U.S. army now has 176 horses…and 4,650 Abrams tanks.
Tune in next week, when Felton will no doubt note that the Royal Air Force has more tubas than aircraft…
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 20th, 2025 at 6:34 PM and is filed under Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
4 Responses to ““The British Army Is Now Too Small To Effectively Perform Its Tasks.””
On a population adjusted basis, the Royal Navy total fleet is a few ships behind the U.S. Navy. The UK population is 69.5 million, while the U.S. population is probably 340 million, when you include all our illegal immigrants. Hence the raw multiplying factor to adjust for population is 4.89.
The U.S. Navy has 237 commissioned vessels and 90 non commissioned vessels for a total of 327 total vessels. The Royal Navy’s 62 total vessels would become 303 vessels when adjusted for population.
This analysis doesn’t find the Royal Navy to be stronger than the video suggests, rather it shows the terrible weakness of both the U.S. and Royal Navies. The real benchmark should be the Chinese PLAN with its 788 ships.
The rationale for an officer-heavy reserve force is that in time of war, the ranks of enlisted men swell and a sufficient number of trained officers would be necessary to oversee the force enlargement. Then the ratio of officers-to-enlisted men would revert to historic norms.
Given the lengthy lead time required to commission a new naval vessel, this precaution seems to be unnecessary.
It would be better to redeploy these superfluous officers into an alternate activity. One suggestion is that the majority of them become Royal Marines, repurposed for expeditionary tasks.
Given the ubiquitous nature of drone warfare, a landing force would need a sophisticated net of interceptors to shield themselves from aerial and “jet ski”attack. This is a daunting task that deserves oversight from the best on-site war planners in the Navy.
Admittedly, this may be little more than a feeble “sunk costs” argument but the presence arrangement is clearly untenable and in need of reform.
Considering China’s current population, the US would only need 193 ships to match China’s 788 ships on a per capita basis. So that isn’t a good comparison. The bigger problem for China is their ship building problems. Not only are they having great difficulties with aircraft carriers, they have had major failures within their submarine fleet, with their latest model sinking at dock and another sub lost at sea. Tofu quality is a problem with their fancier weapons. Despite being able to steal knowledge from all over, they continue to fail when it comes to the high quality metallurgy required for advanced weapons systems, air and sea. Unlike the IJN in 1941, the PLAN’s every movement can be easily tracked via multiple satellites. Of course, the USN and RN have let serious maintenance, ship command, logistical support and manpower problems infest their services. The biggest problem for the RN is at 10 Downing Street. Sunak’s stupidity has put a Trotskyist in power with an absolute majority for another 4.5 years — Starmer’s main goal is to completely revolutionize the UK. If that means killing off most of his navy, air force and army to minimize any threat to his revolution, then those forces will be sacrificed or deployed around the world. He just needs to keep true believers that he can trust in control of his nukes to maintain power.
Can’t watch the video because I am at work but iirc the British system includes flag officers who are pensioned off but subject to recall should a billet open up. Not sure if it still does. Paul McCartney had a line in a song “Admiral Halsey notified me, he had to have a berth or he couldn’t go to sea” which referred to this commonly known fact in Britain (I lived there in the 70s). So the number of flag officers may be inflated.
On a population adjusted basis, the Royal Navy total fleet is a few ships behind the U.S. Navy. The UK population is 69.5 million, while the U.S. population is probably 340 million, when you include all our illegal immigrants. Hence the raw multiplying factor to adjust for population is 4.89.
The U.S. Navy has 237 commissioned vessels and 90 non commissioned vessels for a total of 327 total vessels. The Royal Navy’s 62 total vessels would become 303 vessels when adjusted for population.
This analysis doesn’t find the Royal Navy to be stronger than the video suggests, rather it shows the terrible weakness of both the U.S. and Royal Navies. The real benchmark should be the Chinese PLAN with its 788 ships.
The rationale for an officer-heavy reserve force is that in time of war, the ranks of enlisted men swell and a sufficient number of trained officers would be necessary to oversee the force enlargement. Then the ratio of officers-to-enlisted men would revert to historic norms.
Given the lengthy lead time required to commission a new naval vessel, this precaution seems to be unnecessary.
It would be better to redeploy these superfluous officers into an alternate activity. One suggestion is that the majority of them become Royal Marines, repurposed for expeditionary tasks.
Given the ubiquitous nature of drone warfare, a landing force would need a sophisticated net of interceptors to shield themselves from aerial and “jet ski”attack. This is a daunting task that deserves oversight from the best on-site war planners in the Navy.
Admittedly, this may be little more than a feeble “sunk costs” argument but the presence arrangement is clearly untenable and in need of reform.
Considering China’s current population, the US would only need 193 ships to match China’s 788 ships on a per capita basis. So that isn’t a good comparison. The bigger problem for China is their ship building problems. Not only are they having great difficulties with aircraft carriers, they have had major failures within their submarine fleet, with their latest model sinking at dock and another sub lost at sea. Tofu quality is a problem with their fancier weapons. Despite being able to steal knowledge from all over, they continue to fail when it comes to the high quality metallurgy required for advanced weapons systems, air and sea. Unlike the IJN in 1941, the PLAN’s every movement can be easily tracked via multiple satellites. Of course, the USN and RN have let serious maintenance, ship command, logistical support and manpower problems infest their services. The biggest problem for the RN is at 10 Downing Street. Sunak’s stupidity has put a Trotskyist in power with an absolute majority for another 4.5 years — Starmer’s main goal is to completely revolutionize the UK. If that means killing off most of his navy, air force and army to minimize any threat to his revolution, then those forces will be sacrificed or deployed around the world. He just needs to keep true believers that he can trust in control of his nukes to maintain power.
Can’t watch the video because I am at work but iirc the British system includes flag officers who are pensioned off but subject to recall should a billet open up. Not sure if it still does. Paul McCartney had a line in a song “Admiral Halsey notified me, he had to have a berth or he couldn’t go to sea” which referred to this commonly known fact in Britain (I lived there in the 70s). So the number of flag officers may be inflated.