If the British Empire and its Commonwealth...
.....were to last a thousand years men will still say that this was their finest hour. So spoke Winston Spencer Churchill as he paid tribute to the brave men of the RAF after they stood up to Goering's Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain in 1941.
Well what a difference 65 years makes....The Iran - Royal Navy hostage crisis has been resolved but has shown that the Navy of Lord Nelson, the same Navy that made Britannia Queen of the Seas and the World has morphed into a bunch of tea drinking sissies.
The behavior shown by the 15 Royal Navy sailors as they were paraded for all the world to see was absolutely embarrassing. It proves once and for all that the UK is at best no longer a world power and at worst a banana republic.
posted by Sanjay @ 7:16 AM
1 Comments:
I think the fundamental "force protection" posture of the Royal Navy in this instance was completely to blame. For all military units there is always an element of "force protection" that has to be planned for in any operation. This warfighting function has to do with ensuring that the "force" is protected from outside threats.
In this case, I believe the Royal Navy's rules of engagement and its view towards "force protection" for this boarding operation did not allow for active engagement with an enemy force until too late. By the time the Iranian craft got close in, it was too late for the British to engage in any defensive actions that would not have led to significant casualties.
In the words of a US Special Forces operator I know well, "Those Iranians wouldn't have gotten with 2 miles of me". This operation took place in daylight and the Iranian boats could be seen approaching in the distance. US rules of engagement would most likely have allowed the boarding party to "force protect" itself at a distance, and not have all avenues of engagement cut off as happened to the British sailors and Royal Marines.
Given the "force protection" posture, and the resultant inaction on the part of the British to prevent the Iranians from closing on their position, I do not necessarily blame the British officer for surrendering his crew.
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