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Subject: Are the British the best trained army in the world?
Britain_patriot    4/13/2005 2:03:23 PM
your views please cheers
 
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HorribleSailor    RE:GOP   5/22/2005 8:49:50 PM
No offense, and maybe I'm reading the wrong forum in light of my hatred of acronyms, but RMC? Royal Marine Corps?! Officially they are the 'Corps of Royal Marines,' they are 'The RM' or '3 Cmdo Bde.' Feel free to correct me if I'm being stupid, but I do so hate made up acronyms (and acronyms in general, if anyone wasn't sure about that!)
 
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GOP    RE:GOP   5/23/2005 7:55:39 AM
Sorry, I have always thought it was the RMC
 
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flamingknives    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/23/2005 2:11:10 PM
By HorribleSailor "flamingknives, it is smaller relative to the population." Any chance of getting the figures? You are right about it being the RM, not RMC. Although there are Royal Marines who are not in the Commandos, so perhaps this distinction was being aimed for.
 
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HorribleSailor    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/23/2005 3:17:28 PM
British army strength - 109,000 (1/4/05 figures) http://www.dasa.mod.uk/natstats/tsp1/gender.html RM strength - 4,800 (1/5/03 figures) http://www.armedforces.co.uk/navy/listings/l0001.html UK population - 58,789,000 (Census day 2001 figures) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=185 --- US army strength - 494,000 (31/12/04 figures) http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/history/hst1204.pdf USMC strength - 177,000 (31/12/04 figures) http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/history/hst1204.pdf US population - 296,186,000 (US Census population clock, 23/5/05) http://www.census.gov/ --- All sources are official government websites. British soldiers as a proportion of population (army and marines) = 0.19% US soldiers as a proportion of population (army and marines) = 0.23% --- Essentially, US soldiers are a greater proportion of the US population in a ratio roughly 5:4 as compared to UK soldiers and the UK population. Not actually as great a difference as I had expected from my very rough knowledge of the figures, but at least I'm technically correct! ;)
 
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flamingknives    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/23/2005 5:06:39 PM
But what proportion of the USMC is support personnel - logistics and the like? The RM gets most of its support from the Navy, whereas I believe the USMC operates its own ships, amongst other things. Thus a larger proportion of the RM will be infantry. Incidently, isn't a UK government website. UK government military-subject webspace falls under the mod.uk domain, while regular Government sites are .gov.uk. While we're on statistics, has US military expenditure at 1.31 time the UK figure per Armed Forces personnel. FWIW
 
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HorribleSailor    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/23/2005 7:45:34 PM
My apologies about the armedforces.co.uk website - you're correct that it's not official, flamingknives, the frontpage fooled me a little. I don't have much information about the workings of the USMC, but I'd be surprised if they drove their own ships, not counting over-the-ramp landing craft carried (as the RM does operate them). I was rather under the impression that the USMC was carried by the USN landing platforms. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're correct that the RM does have support personnel from the RN, but seeing as the numbers are so small it doesn't make much difference to the overal totals. From the top of my head it's about 1500. Also, the RM itself is composed of 3 commandos, battalion equivilents, so it's not as if the total number I quoted is just combat infantry. According to <http://www.mod.uk/aboutus/keyfacts/budget.htm#2> US per capita defence spending is $1419 compared to UK $626. Seeing as we said the UK soldiers are 4/5 the proportion of the total population compared to US soldiers, multiplying the UK figure by 5/4 gives $782.5 1419:782.5 = 1.81:1 Of course, that is inaccurate, as it makes total defence spending proportionate to number of soldiers, so if we assume that the USN and USAF are proportionately bigger than the RN and RAF than the soldier comparison then the figure of 1.31 could well be accurate. If anyone wants to do the maths for that feel free! (For what it's worth.)
 
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perfectgeneral    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/24/2005 2:29:39 PM
I think we should ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to boost the armed forces budget by 31% to help with the math.
 
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flamingknives    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/24/2005 6:07:18 PM
Ah, I thought that the USMC operated it's own LHAs etc. Looks like I may be wrong on that count. The USMC definately has attack and transport aviation capacities, while the RM attack aircraft are provided by the Royal Air Force. Also, technically, the RMs helicopters are Royal Navy and their artillery is Royal Artillery, technically part of the Army.
 
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HorribleSailor    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/25/2005 10:46:00 AM
Royal Artillery 'technically' part of the army?! No need for the 'technically,' it is part of the army! On the aviation side of things matters are a lot more complex. The British military is fairly heavily committed to 'joint' operations now. Attack aircraft acting in support of the RM could be RN or RAF flown. All Harriers are now centrally organised in something called 'Joint Force Harrier' that allocates RN / RAF air assets where they are needed. A similar organisation looks after helicopters. The pilot could be Army Air Corps / Fleet Air Arm / RAF but the machine is managed centrally. Also, the RM does operate some of it's own helicopters, Lynx and Gazelle, though the Gazelle is being retired.
 
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Ehran    RE:How about relative sizes.   5/25/2005 11:33:08 AM
another thing that should be factored into the equations is the average length of service in both armies. the us has a fairly high turnover rate which leads to spending a lot of money teaching new meat the basic skill set instead of honing existing skills. perhaps if one looked to the amount spent per soldiers career on training it would be a useful guide.
 
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