Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)

This is a post I have been meaning to do for quite a while. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the government department which is responsible for the armed forces. Its badge is below:

The anchor represents the Naval Service, the crossed swords represent the British Army, and the Hawk (not an eagle) represents the Royal Air Force. All these are toped by the crown of state. The MoD uses a tri-service flag :

 

 

This flag is a tricolour with each colour representing one of the armed services. Dark blue the Navy, Red the Army, and sky blue the Air Force. In the middle is the MoD badge with the individual components in the colour of its respective service. On a personal level I think this is rather ugly. These colours don't work well together without fimbriation and I don't think the badge is recognizable on a flag that is flying.

 

My solution is a new badge and flag. The new badge is below:

 

It is similar to the old one however the individual component. I replaced the hawk of the RAF with a pair of wings similar to the badge of a military pilot. The Navy's anchor goes through the wings and the Army's swords are behind. The Mod has no motto but I added one, which translates as "The military is only as strong as the institutions supporting it." Which is a quote from the author Michael DeLong. Unlike the MoD I won't use the entire badge on a flag. My tri-service flag is below:

 

Firstly the only the tri-service emblems and colours are on the flag leaving out the unnecessary clutter of the full badge. I changed the colours to red, white and blue. Unlike the current flag the colours are not arranged in seniority of service, but in what is more aesthetically pleasing from a vexilogical point of view. by putting the white in the centre it separates the red and blue, which the current flag doesn't.

 

The Red represents the army, I had thought of changing this to green to represent the Khaki colour of the Army's general service (No2) Dress, and because one of the nicknames of the army is "the green."

 

However the traditional colour is red, and the army is still known as the "thin red line" and the full dress uniform of most regiments is still red, although some units wear green or black.

 

The use of red also means the flag is in the national colours of the UK. White represents the Navy, although Naval uniform is only white in warm climates, the colour white in the navy can't be ignored. The Naval ensign is after all the white ensign.

The Blue of course represents the Royal Air Force.

The flag of the Secretary of State for Defence is the government minister who is in charge of the MoD. the flag I designed for him is below:

If features a Union Flag at the hoist, with the tri-service colours in the fly. The badge in the centre is the Westminster Gate, the symbol of the houses of parliament, of which the Secretary of State is naturally a member. The colour represents the house of parliament he is a member of in this case the House of Commons.

Below the Secretary of State for Defence is the Chief of the Defence Staff. This is the highest military position in the Armed Forces. The current CoDS flag was my inspiration for the personal flags here:

 

This flag fallows the same pattern as Secretary of State, but with the emblems of the armed forces and crown, the Chief of Staff is assisted by the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff:

It is the same as Chief of the Defence Staff but minus the crown. There are also Deputy chiefs who are responsible for individual areas such as training, equipment, operations etc. The Flag for a Deputy Chief is below:





 

The heads of the army, navy and air force would use the rank flag of their respected service.

I hope you enjoyed this please feel free to comment.