British army w/o Second Boer War

While the Haldane reforms may have been intended for continental armies, I can't see how the British would be convinced that the Army was ineffective and needed reforms in the first place without the Boer War and the Esher Committee. The Triple Entente (in my opinion) just accelerated the need for reform that was originally created by the Boer War.
There was also the other Royal Commission, the Norfolk Commission, who proposed universal military service as an option and examined the problems with the army reserves.

While I think the British artillery would have improved without the Second Boer War (now that I've read up a bit more, I think that they would have had roughly a BLC 15-pounder equivalent), I highly doubt they would have anything close to what they had OTL. The British really were blind to artillery improvements in other nations before the Second Boer War:

  • they had no indication that their bag guns were inferior in rate of fire to QF guns and had no plans to replace them
  • they had no plans (and likely no intention) to develop recoil-absorbing guns at all (France, Germany, Russia, and the US all were developing or had already introduced such guns by then)
  • they didn't see the need for heavy field guns (though to be fair, no one except Germany did until the Russo-Japanese War)
  • and they were completely oblivious to the fact that their own fuses could not be set to the maximum range of their field guns

It seems that in 1899 British artillery development was disorganized at best (you can thank the Duke of Cambridge for this), and it wasn't until the Boer War that Sir Brackenbury created the Artillery Committee to develop requirements for new artillery (this produced the 18-pounder), formed from the best veterans of the Boer War. If the Boer War hadn't happened, I think that not only would those weapons not be immediately developed, but that no one would see the need for new artillery at all, which is much harder to overcome without experience. In short, the Boers already out-teched the British in 1899, I was trying to see how much farther ahead they could get (or more accurately, how much farther behind the British would fall).
Agreed. It really needed the shock of the defeats in South Africa and the demonstration of technical inferiority to trigger large scale reforms.
 
"In short, the Boers already out-teched the British in 1899"

You are going to have to expand upon that

The only advantage they had that I can see was the Kommando Ethos* / formation which gave them an initial advantage in the type of terrain they were fighting in (but the British were familiar with this and had similar formations of their own which while not very cohesive family groups would have been all volunteer professional soldiers) - but it was effectively an insurgency after the initial battles - Artillery wise - perhaps the 4 'Long Toms' that out ranged all of the artillery the British had in the Cape (with the exception of the 'kit bashed' Naval 4.7") were useless (and subsequently destroyed) once they run out of ammo.

Boer commandos had a mix of Mauser, Kragg and Enfields - 3 different calibres - the British had 1 - and all rifles of both sides used smokeless cartridges and despite a perception that the Mauser was the superior weapon there was little to choose between any of them - all where 800-1000 meter accurate - or to put it bluntly - more accurate than the mass majority of the men using the weapons could use.

As for heavy guns etc - Britain would need heavy field guns for what? - They had no real need for any - but would have been quite aware of their utility. Plus they had the ability to modify large guns available to the Naval Brigades

Enter Haldane reforms in 06 and suddenly a need for Heavy guns for an army preparing to fight in a continental style war!

As for lagging behind everyone else with regards to weapons - Britain has a track record of watching everyone else and then buying the perceived best in class and developing it further - particularly during time of war.

Note how quickly the Artillery Committee was able to move once they got the green light - and knew exactly where to get the weapons they wanted - this does not strike me as an organisation that was not aware of advancements etc

Basically the only thing that holds Britian back from having the best of class weapon's is the treasury - who find the thought of buying expensive weapons that are obsolete within 10 years as an abhorrent waste of money.

The situation in 1906 was that for the first time in decades Britain had a very strong Government that was progressively preparing and changing the British army for a potential future conflict in Europe - something not really seriously considered since 1815.

This would have given the Artillery 'clan' the opportunity (and funding) to pick the best in class weapons of the day and modify them for British use.

The only way that the Boers are going to 'out tech' the British and have the Uitlanders suddenly becoming anti British is if you write the British off as 'Harrison British' (AKA Stars and Stripes forever). Which is silly.
 
The Boer artillery outclassed that of the British in rate of fire (significantly so) and in range- even their howitzers had longer range than the British field guns.

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol022dh.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=O_-0w2WUDd0C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=boer+artillery+outclassed&source=bl&ots=UwKWHHuHk6&sig=HVGJ6UTxOkyu3VoKNWuhouKMUuU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNqf3N68PNAhUB6WMKHQcgCi0Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=boer artillery outclassed&f=false

In that last case, page 9 states that 3 boer guns suppressed 36 British guns with their rate of fire and range advantage.

Also, the Artillery Committee didn't even exist until the Second Boer War, so they couldn't have known much about other nations' artillery advancements at the time. Their requirements were based off of the Second Boer War experience, not possible European wars (hence they didn't develop any new heavy howitzers- those weren't outclassed in the Boer War, so they saw no need to replace them).
 
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