I was under the impression that half the active navy was based there.
The UK will never give up Gibralter. It's just too good.
Naw there is next to no military left there.
Two
Scimitar class patrol boats and 3 inflatables is what the British Navy has stationed there.
Airforce wise there is zero planes. They had to abandon that, after Spain refused to let the RAF pass over Spanish territory to go to training grounds in the med sea. So the only training that the RAF pilots could do, was flying around and around and around the Rock.. looked funny as hell.
Military wise there is light infantry battalion.. 650 troops, but that is at full strength.. they rarely are.
Gibraltar is nothing but a vanity project by the conservative British who long after the "good old days" of empire.
Yes it is a strategic choke point entering the med.. that can be important, if it was not for the fact that Spain has larger bases (including US forces on them), to "choke" the entrance. Gibraltar is pretty much irrelevant now days with NATO around. And even if NATO was not around, then there is not enough modern facilities there to do any real "choking" of the entrance of the med.
More important are the bases on Cyprus..
With the UK leaving the EU, Gibraltar is in a tricky situation. Most people who work there are Spanish, and most Gibraltarians live in Spain because housing is ****ty expensive in Gibraltar.. It is also a massive tax haven and a center of criminal activity on the whole Costa del Sol and parts of Portugal. The British government protects criminals and tax evaders by keeping Gibraltar around in its current form, and that is a political problem in the negotiations with the EU, Spain and the rest of the world. The funny thing about Gibraltar...Spanish is the main language spoken everywhere..
We shall see what happens, but Gibraltarians dont want to leave the EU that is for sure.