[Rainbow Six]

Louie, thanks for sharing this.

Trying to come up with a workable T2K orbat for the British Army has always been a challenge in my experience and often ends up being a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, particularly if one tries to pay lipservice to the mess that is the canon British Army order of battle (or at least Regular Army order of battle).

I do have some reservations about your suggestion to boost numbers with Gurkhas and Eastern European immigrants. I guess I don't see the latter providing the numbers required to make good any shortfalls. In the case of the former I completely agree that there would be a steady stream of potential recruits available but I see large scale recruitment of additional Gurkhas being a potential political issue - there's always been the argument that Gurkhas are mercenaries (for the record they're not. Period) and the larger the numbers the stronger I think that narrative becomes. Unless you're talking about only raising Gurkha incremental Companies to back fill British Battalions so the same numbers are recruited but they're more spread out so not so noticeable...

Another potential solution is incremental companies drawn from areas where recruitment was strong - there's a passage in (I think) Sir Richard Dannatt's autobiography where he discusses how during his time with the Green Howards they put an emphasis on recruiting to the point where they were the most overstrength Battalion in the entire Army so 'loaned out' a Company to another Battalion. if that could be replicated Army wide (possibly with an increase in salary / benefits to make an Army career more attractive) that could go some way to resolving manpower issues (if it's not Dannatt's book it's Mike Jackson's).

Of course, all of these solutions come at a cost, which brings us back to the political aspect and is why I don't see any major efforts to do anything about lack of manpower until we're almost at the eve of War (possibly the start of the Sino - Soviet War could be the catalyst, in the same way that the Ukraine War prompted Germany to increase defence spending).

Another solution is attempts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland earlier (bearing in mind the equivalent of a Division of Infantry were usually in NI at any given point in time) but that gets into a much bigger picture.

I can't wait for the home defence part...that's one circle that I could never really square.