It is of
great concern to see the recent suggestions that our armed forces aren’t currently
capable of defending the UK in our times of need, and the MOD is wasting
billions of pounds on vanity projects that aren’t joined up on kit that doesn’t
fully work. Further, with the army down to just 83,000 in number, the RAF at
30,000 and the Royal Navy at 29,000 and just 19 warships and 10 submarines,
things seem very perilous in the current global climate where Russia and China
appear to be developing ever more technologically advanced weapons and
increasing the size and reach of their military capabilities.
Cut-backs
may balance the government’s books in times of austerity, but they don’t defend
our nation from the threat of aggressors – and we have recently seen the
Russian Aircraft Carrier Group sail through the English Channel twice, as well
as the numerous incursions into our airspace from Russian Tu-95 Bears.
Our last
remaining Aircraft Carrier, along with our Harrier Jump Jets, fell victim to
the 2010 cut-backs leaving us without a capability until the new Queen
Elizabeth carriers come in to service in the next 2 or 3 years, although the 24
£105m F-35 jump jets that will fly off them won’t be in service until 2023. Why
did the government not find the funds to have kept the capability that we had
in place until the replacements were ready to be introduced operationally? In
addition, it has been commented that these carriers are already irrelevant due
to China’s carrier killing DF-21 ballistic missile that has a top speed of Mach
10 and a range of 1,100 miles and due to the fact that there are not enough “destroyers,
frigates and submarines to protect the aircraft carriers”.
If the
reports are right, our new state-of-the-art Type 45 Destroyers are unable to
operate in warm waters without suffering engine problems that have shut them
down and left them adrift and stranded. The solution to the engine problem is
to spend yet more money cutting holes in them in order to replace the engines
with ones that work. Furthermore, it is reported that these Destroyers can be
heard 100 miles away by Russian submarines as they sound like “a box of
spanners” underwater. And these ships are so expensive that, at £1Bn each, the
original order for 12 was subsequently reduced to 6.
The
cheaper Type 26 combat ship is believed to have risen well above budget meaning
that the order for 13 has already been reduced to 8, and could reduce further
if costs continue to spiral.
The army’s
42-ton Ajax tanks are too heavy for the RAF’s new transport plane, the A400M,
which can only carry up to 25-tons. This means that the tanks would need
partially disassembling to deploy by air – not exactly rapid reaction is it?
The RAF’s
new maritime patrol aircraft, the Boeing P-8 Poseidon, which doesn’t start to
arrive until 2019, cannot be refuelled in mid-air by our Voyager air-tankers,
and could be vulnerable to cyber-attack. And this is all after the scrapping of
the new Nimrod project in 2010. Sounds like more tax-payer money wasted unnecessarily
by politicians.
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drones were ordered in 2005 for £700m – that cost has now risen to £1.2Bn and they
have still not entered full service.
The
recent $28.8Bn expenditure on aircraft, drones and helicopters from the US
Military is also likely to be hit due to the 21% fall in value of the pound
since the UK voted to leave the European Union increasing the cost of the
equipment. Furthermore, due to the sensitivity of the technology on the US
supplied helicopters, software upgrades and some parts can only be supplied by
American nationals. You couldn’t make this up!
What
happened to the country that developed the Dreadnought warships that
revolutionised modern navies, and the invention of the tank that took armed
warfare from the trenches and made it more mobile? We also seem to have come a
long way from the cutting edge of aircraft design that we held for the first
three—quarters of the twentieth century (Sopwith Camel, Supermarine Spitfire,
Avro Lancaster, De Havilland Mosquito, Avro Vulcan, English Electric Lightning,
Hawker Siddeley Harrier, TSR2 etc.), although much aviation technology still
comes from the UK.
It also
seems a strange strategy to continually allow UK defence companies to
consolidate over the years until there is little or no competition – clearly the
outcome of such a near monopoly position is going to be higher costs and
reduced bargaining power for the government.
And is
the current meagre defence budget being spent in the best possible way to
defend our shores? Are the big tickets items such as aircraft carriers at
£6.2Bn each, Type 45 Destroyers at £1Bn each, F-35 jump jets at £105m each the
best value for money? Or should we have been extending the life of our original
carrier, keeping our Harrier Jump Jets, retaining the numbers within the ranks
of our armed services, ordering more Typhoon Eurofighters and building a more
joined up capability that takes in the modern aspects of cyber-warfare too?
A
cross-service approach to look at what we need to defend our island on land, on
sea and in the air, together with looking at the capabilities within the
technological, engineering and manufacturing sector of the UK’s industrial base
is surely the way to go – particularly within a post-BREXIT Britain where we
will need to rely upon our own independence even further. Smaller ticket items
to match the requirements of a full cross-service capability need identifying
and enacting now – we don’t want to be caught out as almost happened in the
1930s in a world that is rapidly changing. And this would be good for UK
business too; creating jobs, paying salaries, encouraging consumer spending, generating
tax for the government to spend on hospitals, schools, roads etc. as well as
keeping and enhancing skill sets and technology that can be sold to other
countries.
