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As in when was the last time at least one of our soldiers wasnt risking their lives and dodging bullets.
Just a thought that occured to me reading the article that someone posted in another thread - War is the new normal.
Can't think of a time during my lifetime (36 years)
does that include UN peace keeping work?
With and without would be good to know.
we have a defense industry to support you know
IIRC 1967 (or closely thereabouts) was the only year in the 20th century that a UK serviceman didn't die on active service.
Do we count the Dhofar in Oman?
The UK has always been involved in some conflict or other however big or small since guns were invented.
It was pretty quiet between 1992 - 1999 post first Iraq war era, pre 9/11 era.
Things were quiet between the Falklands and Iraq 1990/91 and then until Bosnia? Apart from NI, of course.
Hi iDave,
Not only support but you can't get better than real conflict for r & d... must be a link with the size of our weapons industry and our world police activities......
Before they found liquid gold in the middle east. Although that probably takes us back to the fall of the indian empire and so on...
1065?
defore the Boer War..?
I'm guessing 1065 is going to be most accurate
we didn't do Vietnam, or are you not looking for just major world conflicts?
Don't forget all the claudestine assistance we've been giving to governments/rebels we like in all that time.
Do you really think we're told about all the conflicts our soldiers are involved in?
It was pretty quiet between 1992 - 1999 post first Iraq war era, pre 9/11 era.
by pretty quiet I guess the Balkans weren't very loud then??
When was the last time the UK wasnt involved in any armed conflict?
One of the problems with having an empire is that you're going to be more or less constantly involved in armed conflict - people tend to be extraordinarily ungrateful and very often don't like being dominated by a foreign power.
Of course for pragmatic reasons empires are no longer feasible, so wealthy and powerful nations like Britain, now engage in neocolonialism, which among its many benefits often involves the subjugated people fighting each other - with obviously one side hopefully fighting on our behalf.
This is hugely beneficial to us as it requires us to have minimal involvement other than perhaps bombing the crap out of a country, and also maybe supplying a minimal amount of heavily armed soldiers on a few months tour - they're usually back in Good Ol' Blighty in no time out all.
The result is very little casualties for us in wars that actually result in tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of deaths.
The British navy does particularly well out of this, despite it still being of the largest navies in the world it can go years with incurring any loss of life, as all that is usually required of it is to fire missiles at targets often hundreds of miles away. They also often supply aircraft which usually come back in one piece.
Occasionally things don't quite go like they should and it ends being a bit messing with substantial lose of British lives. In the Falklands War, British Forces were faced with hostile aircraft, artillery, navy, etc, resulting in the deaths of several hundred soldiers, sailors, and airmen, in a short space of time. Mercifully Britain very rarely gets involved in "proper" wars and the Falklands War was over fairly quickly.
Quiet 1992 - 1999 ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Balkans maybe 🙄
Total British loses in the Balkans from 1992 right up until 2006 was 72. This was in a war which costs over a quarter of a million lives. So I reckon describing 1992 - 1999 as "pretty quiet" for British Armed Forces is a perfectly fair comment. Britain has lost more in a matter of minutes, than it did in that 14 year time span. And the poster did qualify it by saying : [i]"The UK has always been involved in some conflict or other however big or small since guns were invented"[/i]