[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

The two biggest problems with an expansion of the Uk armed forces are money and men.

After WW2 Britain stopped being a dominant power, we steadily lost our empire and our industry and by the 90's had sod all left. Building new factories costs money that the treasury doesn't have, training and equiping new regiments costs money, upgrading the RAF costs shedload and don't get me started on the costs of rebuilding the Royal navy.

Britain is a democracy, how are you going to sell all this to the British people? We where not scared of the reds the way Americans where back in the cold war. We had our own problems with the IRA and public opinion was pretty much along the lines of let the rest of the UN deal with things, why should we get dragged into it?

Manpower is an issue aswell, the 90's where a relatively good time for the UK. The job market was on the up and we'd come out of the recession of the 80's.

Completely agree with the above. IMO if you want to get a substantially expanded Army (i.e. more than than a few Battalions) you're going to have to look at some seriously out of the box thinking and / or some significant divergences from the Real World timeline to make it work. Some form of conscription in the early 90's would probably do the job from the point of view of the manpower, but I'm not sure that would be a particularly plausible option without some sort of major World event happening to justify it. Also that wouldn't address the financial issues.