How good is the British army?

Answer 1

It is very difficult to define the 'best army' and indeed what is a good one. But the British Army has been proved to have some of the most intense training courses of any army and is considered one of the best armies in the world.

The British Army is generally considered to be the 4th best in the world and yet it consists of only 147,000 soldiers, compared to the US over 500,000 and china over a million. That has to show that the British army has the best trained soldiers in the world and that, soldier for soldier, they are the best in the world.

They are also probably one of the oldest standing armies in the world, and have contributed more than a fair share to the development of modern military tactics.

Answer 2

The answer depends on what you mean by "better". If by "better" you mean "what would happen if you dropped a unit from the British Army in a field with a similar unit from the US Army and made them fight it out, who would win?," many would give a very slight lead to the British. More specifically, the average British infantry section is probalby a bit better than the average US infantry section.

But if you mean "who would win a war" then the answer is, hands down by orders of magnitude, the US Army. This much should be obvious to even the most casual observer.

For every rifle in the field there is anywhere up to seven support troops that are absolutely essential to that one rifle. These include logistics, artillery, air, intelligence, transport, etc. In these areas the British Army is, and has been for a while, quite deficient. This is true for most armies in the world, actually. Without US support the British Army would be unable to support its mission in Afghanistan, where it receives practically everything other than uniforms from US supply lines. As the Falklands clearly demonstrated, the British Army is *just* capable of supporting itself in a very limited battlefront against a 3rd world army. Note that it is the *stated intent* of the British armed forces to only operate as part of a supporting coalition.

Now that might sound harsh, but the same is true for every army in the world except the US. Canadians learned that the hard way in 1986, when their "rapid reaction force" (called CAST) required two years of planning and 21 days of sailing to deploy to Norway. Yet by the same measure, every man in that force was at least the equal of the US troops of the same era.

Simply put, no one else has the communications, airlift capability, intelligence assets, sealift and escort, etc., that the US has. And *that* is what wins battles and wars. Global-scale operations are beyond the capabilities of almost every other army, including the Chinese, and likely the USSR as well.

Let's put some numbers to this. The active US Army has about 450,000 men. There are about 250,000 in the Navy and another 250,000 in the Air Force. So every person in the field is supported by about one more in another force backing them up. The British Army has just under 100,000 with 39,000 in the Navy and 48,000 in the RAF. So every British soldier has less than one man backing him up. It's that simple.

A former British soldier adds:

For the record, the British Army is excellent: training standards are extremely high, & junior leadership (especially NCOs) outstanding. Without doubt, British soldiers (especially the Infantry) are some of the most thoroughly trained & best disciplined in the World. Tactical & field soldiering skills are of a very high order: on numerous NATO exercises basic British "line infantry" units (often Territorial part-timers) would run rings around "elite" units of other armies.

That stated, however, the British Army is relatively poorly resourced (although things have got far better recently!), & there are significant deficiencies in things like utility helicopters. Battlefield communications have also been a problem - again, to some degree now remedied, but the US Military is far ahead in battlefield applications of IT.

American soldiers are well trained & highly competent. They may not, on average, have the same level of individual training or skill as their British colleagues, but they're far better resourced and supported, & there are far more of them. The blunt reality is that for serious war fighting mass has its own quality!

The excellence & scale of US Army logistics, plus ready availability of CAS assets (especially helicopters), means that American combat units have a range of tactical options (eg large scale air manoeuvring or "vertical envelopment" etc) that generally are not available to British units.

Finally, but by no means least, the US Army has developed & nurtured a "learning culture" resulting in a great readiness to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances. Institutionally, the US Army of today favors fast learners, & is very open to innovative thinking. This used to be a great strength of the British Army but in recent decades, for complex reasons, it seems somewhat to have lost its way & become rather mired in "Cold War" thinking. Again, this is now changing fast - there's a concerted drive to reshape the institutional mind-set and reinvigorate thinking etc, but it should not be forgotten that it's the British who are following the American lead here, not the other way round!

Answer 3

The British was the most powerful army in the 18 century.