beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

The BBC has a thingy with a graphic about the size of the army, which is going to be reduced to 82,000, smaller than it was ... well, basically ever. Cromwell's was smaller. It says the regular army numbered around 124,000 men during the First Boer War in 1880-81.

"The British army is due to be reduced to 82,000 by 2020, prompting claims it will be the smallest it has been since the 19th Century. But if Britain had a small army then, how did it control an empire?"

It says "The most remarkable thing is that they often had no technical advantages and we managed it by spending only 2.5% of GDP on defence, which is not much higher than we have today." And it says there's always someone saying they're overstretched. "In recent years the newspapers have been full of articles in which senior military figures, or retired grandees, argued the armed forces were 'overstretched'. But this is nothing new". Mostly the article is about the Empire, with references to Carry On films suggesting it isn't taking itself too seriously. But with the comparisons to now, I was left with the impression the article is saying: hey, no worries, we used to rule the world with that much army! Is plenty!

... you know what it left out completely? Army as a proportion of the population.

Around 1850, the last time the British army was near the proposed size (including the TA), the British population was around 21 million (I found an animation. There's more useful forms, I just had other things to do.) World population was somewhere between 1,000,000,000 and 2,000,000,000 (says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ). Now? British population is around 61 million ( says google ) and World population is over 6 billion: more than three times bigger.

That means proportionately it's a teensy tiny bit smaller than it ever has been before.

Articles that leave out the actual important facts kind of annoy me.

The British Army: Getting Much Smaller. Especially compared to how many humans there are now.

Maybe we can fight less people now! :-)



I think Britain's position in the world, military capability, how many ships, how much army, all those things, it has changed rapidly and really really a lot. I don't know how aware of that people are. Is a bit interesting.

I started trying to turn a rather good dream into a story and I crunched right into needing to worldbuild before I can name my characters. I mean, in the dream, one of them was Lieutenant Malcolm Reed. So first, do I want the rank lieutenant in my science fiction future? Do I want to use made up words, or import from a different language? ( Read more... )

BUT, if I use Lt, which system is it out of? Wiki reckons it's a military, naval, fire service, emergency medical services or police officer rank. It's one of the things that makes it useful, everywhere's got them, you can just say the word and move on. It means he's not in charge on his own but he's the boss of some other people. But obviously he's going to know with a great deal more precision where he stands, so I have to as well.
( Read more... )

And what's with the officer and enlisted thing anyway? I understand the kind of rank where you start on the first step and keep climbing up. That's simples. But why are there two sets of steps? I don't really get that. If I'm going to write pseudo military SF I kind of really need to get that, because even if I decide to ignore that and make it go away I need to know what I'm chucking out.

SF TV is a really bad guide to how ships logically should work. ( Read more... )


You know, I think this is why I've previously given up on grand space fleet fiction and gone back to ship full of thieves stuff. It's a sight simpler running an anarchy. Well, when you're the Creator, anyways.