With Trump huggig up to Russia’s Putin, who says he want Ukraine and More…
The unthinkable grows worries across Europe….
And the English Channel….
Britain’s last military force dedicated to defending the homeland was disbanded in 1992, after NATO leaders hailed a “promising era” of peace in Europe at the end of the Cold War and the government began scaling back military spending.
More than three decades later, Britain is again preparing for potential attacks on its soil.
With Secretary General Mark Rutte of NATO telling allies this month that “conflict is at our door,” Russia saying it is “ready” for war with Europe and President Trump’s increasingly vocal hostility toward European leaders, the British government is developing what it calls a “whole of society approach to deterrence and defense.”
It says that a wide-ranging home defense program will bring together the military, police and government departments to prepare for multiple scenarios. While a land invasion is not considered likely, military experts at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense research institute, said the war in Ukraine and a spate of hybrid attacks in Europe demonstrated the possibility of assaults on critical infrastructure, through sabotage and drones.
Some military experts and lawmakers think the government is not moving fast enough.
“We are not ready — firstly in terms of resisting an armed attack, but also in terms of the wider threats,” said Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, a Labour Party lawmaker who chairs Parliament’s defense committee. He pointed toward the cutting of undersea cables and a steady drumbeat of Russia-backed cyberattacks…..
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With Britain’s regular army having shrunk to around 70,000 full-time trained soldiers — the fewest since the start of the Napoleonic Wars — protecting the homeland is also expected to extend beyond the military.
Among the organizations taking part are the police, which have joined exercises including a simulated chemical attack in a rural Cambridgeshire village last month.
Mark Williams, the national police leader for civil contingencies, heads a working group that plans for disasters like flooding and pandemics. It has now created a dedicated role for home defense…
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The British government has released few details of the home defense program. In a statement, it said it would ensure “alignment between military and civilian effort — investing in homeland defense, increasing national resilience, and reconnecting the public with those who serve.”
It added that it would invest over a billion pounds on strengthening air and missile defense and would introduce a defense readiness bill in Parliament….
image…British soldiers during an exercise in Smardan, Romania, in February. In June, the British government published a strategic defense review that said the country must move to “war-fighting readiness.”Credit…Andrei Pungovschi/Getty Images
We shall fight them on the beaches….