Finally somebody asked this question
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Having considered the recent proposed reduction in Army manpower it intrigued me to learn that there are 485 horses in the British Army compared with 227 main line Challenger tanks. Presumably the horses are non operational but kept for ceremonial duties. The Army appears to be the main component of the All Forces Polo Association of which Prince Charles is patron. One wonders how many horses e.g. in the Household Cavalry also double as polo ponies because it appears that Chukhas for aspiring polo players can be subsidised by the Army. I wonder if the reduction in manpower of 10,000 will be commensurate with the number of horses retained. It would be interesting to find out the cost to the taxpayer of the Army’s antiquated and elitist retention of so many useless and redundant nags!!
Finally somebody asked this question
Whilst I take your point, you can’t confuse a polo pony (sports car) with cavalry horse (HGV).
A bit of Googling shows that you can buy around 600 polo ponies for the price of 1 tank.
However 1 Tank has 1,500 horsepower .
Trooping the colour would be interesting if tanks replaced the horses.
An army having lots of horses, including the British army, is nothing new in the so called mechanical age. In WW2 the German and US Armies had thousands of horses, in fact it was only horse meat that kept a lot of German soldiers alive on the eastern front. The US also had thousands of mules. They were fed mainly on Alfalfa grass if Catch 22 is to be believed.
This is all horseshit
To me, this is perfectly believable. If the OP had said that the Army had more Ice cream vans than Tanks, then that would be a bit odd, although that may work as a strategy on the battlefield-serving Mr Whippy to ISIS, a cunning plan.
I was reading a biography of Napoleon recently when the author began describing the thousands of horses that had to be transported on hundreds of ships to support his wars in Egypt and across Europe. And it wasn't just the horses. It was their hay and horseshoes and all that shovelling of horsepoopoo. It just seemed overwhelming, and I thought, why bother?
Just stay home and enjoy the wine, the cheese and the ladies.
Warfare is a strange thing.