Britain's underequipped armed forces are asked to reduce expenditure on equipment

This morning's Telegraph notes that UK defence spending has fallen from 4.5% of national income in the mid-1980s to 2.3% now.  Because defence spending is due to increase by just 1.6% this year our military chiefs are being asked to cut £4.5bn from their £20bn equipment budget over the next three years.

The Sky website lists some of their options:

• "Halving to four the Royal Navy's order for Astute-class nuclear attack submarines;
• Halving to six the number of Type 45 destroyers;
• Delaying two new aircraft carriers already on order;
• Reducing the RAF's order for more than 250 Typhoon/Eurofighters;
• Cutting the number of Tornado squadrons and selling off airfields;
• Delaying or downsizing the Army's planned £14bn battlefield vehicle fleet."

Over at ConservativeHome I have argued for much tighter control of overall expenditure but the defence of our country should always be the first priority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  More than a fifth of our hugely overstretched armed forces are currently on active duty.  They deserve nothing less. 

12.30pm update: Comments on this post by Defence Select Committee member Bernard Jenkin MP, and Conservative candidate and former RAMC Major Dan Byles are worth noting.

Comments

[Brad Cohen]

No, the first priority of this chancellor and govt is to free up taxmoney to continue bribing voters with their own property and then posing as great humanitarians. 'What, we're in 2 wars that we started and haven't got the first clue how to win?' says broon 'Hoots mon, I'm nae giving that evil right wing bastion of britishness the tools ta dae the job, not when I can bribe off Scots and immigrants to keep maself in power, especially as they're the only branch of our bloated bureaucracy that ever seems to do its job right, people'd start expecting tae much frae us...'. I'd imagine that the armed forces and families vote for labour is like the black vote for the Republicans in the states, almost irrelevant to their electoral chances, so they just plain disregard them to concentrate on their core...well, the climate and attitude toward the armed forces seems to be getting slightly better, so this'll blow up in their face...3%GDP is the minimum we should be spending...

[Comstock]

"but the defence of our country should always be the first priority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer"

Ah come on Tim! Are your seriously suggesting Iraq or Afghanistan were about to invade the UK?

[Tony Makara]

Politicians need to look at the long term picture. China has become an economic superpower and will look to protect its economic interests and that means access to energy and materials. Russia too is becoming more assertive. China and Russia are looking to each other for mutual military co-operation. This is not the time for the west to scale down military spending but to increase it. We should always strive for friendly relations with China and Russia but we should also be strong, to check any ambitions they may have in the future. A natural catastrophe and shortages could change a peaceful situation into a crisis situation overnight. The west cannot afford to be usurped by the power of the east. If we show weakness in military spending it will be a sign to the east that the west is in decline and doesn't have the will to protect its economic interests. We must remain strong.

[Bernard Jenkin MP]

As a member of the Defence Select Committee, I have become aware of other risks to the procurement programme. The Future Large Tanker Aircraft is at risk - this is vital for sustaining airborne surveillance and communications in Afghanistan. The present tanker fleet is completely clapped out. It was also originally intended that the UK should purchase around 150 Joint Strike Fighters. People are talking now about an initial order fewer than 20, on the basis that they will only be required to fly from one Carrier on operations at any one time. (Talk of savings from reducing orders for Eurofighter Typhoon are unrealistic, since any reduction in fighter numbers will increase the unit cost. This does not apply to JSF because it is basically an American production line aircraft.) The real crunch is coming because, within the present resource constraints, the priority must be equipment for current operations, so the damage is being inflicted on long term procurement. As one MoD official privately told me, "The days of salami slicing are over. We now have to decide which programmes to cut." This is surely why the impressive Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Drayson decided his time was better spent motor racing.

We have a choice in the UK. Either we carry on running down our defences and effectively opt out of a global role; or we spend what it takes to remain a medium sized global power. For a full exposition of this choice, see my Conservative Way Forward paper produced in November with Foreword by Lord Guthrie, A DEFENCE POLICY FOR THE UK: MATCHING COMMITMENTS AND RESOURCES. http://www.conwayfor.org/report.pdf

[Dan Byles]

I have written on ConHom and spoken at Conference on the subject of overstretch for our Armed Forces, and the scandalous slump in real defence spending in recent years.

Many point at the last Conservative Government and suggest the rot started then. That is true, but the context was dramatically different. Margaret Thatcher increased defence spending as a % of GDP in the 1980s, but the Conservative defence cuts in 1990s need to be seen in the context of the end of the Cold War, and a fall in defence spending around the world.

Labour's current defence cuts need to be seen against the background of huge commitments to two long drawn out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rising defence spending in the USA, Russia, China, Japan...

We haven't spent this small a proportion of our national treasure on defence since the 1930s. We are failing to learn the lessons of history yet again.

Between WW1 and WW2, military spending was allowed to fall below levels that were known to be inadequate. As a consequence, we lost the first half of WW2, and countless British solders' lives were lost due to poor equipment, training and oganisation. Some cavalry units were still equiped with horses in the late 1930s. German combined arms tactics (known as blitzkrieg) were actually based on early development work by British officers JFC Fuller and BH Liddell Hart. Their Experimental Mechanized Force was disbanded by the British due to funding cuts, but not before it had been observed by the German officer Guderian - who later developed the idea for the more forward thinking German military.

Forgive the history lesson, but shouldn't the British military learn that we absolutely must remain at the forefront of military thinking? We must maintain effective, well trained, well equiped and properly funded Armed Forces - because if we don't, it's not the politicians who suffer the consequiences. It's British soldiers who pay with their lives. We must never again allow ourselves to be so complacent.

Current Defence Planning Assumptions state that we will have 10 years advance notice before we have to fight a large scale war. That is lunacy. Consider that WW2 started 10 years after 1929 - when there was no inkling of the horrors that were to come. The Russian and the Chinese militaries are rearming even now - when does this 10 year clock start ticking?

The British military has earned it's superb reputation and record for success over centuries. Excellence cannot simply be switched on and off on the whim of the Treasury. It must be maintained, and there is a cost to that. But at some point we need to decide what our priorities are.

Do we wish to maintain a world class military, capable of deploying anywhere in the world in defence of British interests? Or would we rather spend £20billion on compulsory ID cards; £22billion and rising on the failed NHS computer system; we don't even know how many £billion on saving Brown and Darling the embarassment of allowing Northern Rock to go bankrupt; £12.8billion a year on unelected Regional Development Agencies; £4.1billion estimated extra annual cost of Govt bureaucracy under Labour; £3billion a year on management consultants alone...

I accept that at present, the Conservatives cannot throw around uncosted pledges of increased spending. Indeed, George Osborne is currently fending off demands that he commit to significant government spending cuts. I agree entriely that govt spending is too high, and I believe in lower taxes.

But at some point, we need to make a pledge that we will stop the spending decline, and over time we will grow Defence spending as a percentage of GDP to a sustainable level of probably around 3% in the first instance.

I don't see a contradiction in committing ourselves in principle to lower taxes, and a higher priority for Defence spending. There is enough waste in current Government spending to do both.

In the meantime, until higher resources can be committed, we need to seriously reconsider the sustainability of our current commitments. That may realistically mean withdrawing from other commitments in order to concentrate on Afghanistan.

Dan Byles
Former Major, RAMC
PPC North Warwickshire

[Malcolm Dunn]

Bernard, Drayson wasn't impressive but apart from that I agree with everything you've written. The difficulty in mounting attacks on the Government and the MOD is that we are unwilling to say what we would do differently. This blunts our attacks considerably.

[Tony Makara]

This from the Times August 6th 2007:

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato.

Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics.

Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At least 6,500 troops are involved in what is described as an antiterror exercise.

Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, said: “The exercise will involve practically all SCO members for the first time in its history.”

Staff officers from Uzbekistan, the sixth SCO member, will also attend in what is being regarded as a major extension of the organisation’s capabilities. The SCO was founded as a nonmilitary alliance in 2001 to combat drugs and weapons smuggling as well as terrorism and separatism in the region. It has since developed a role in regional trade and is increasingly regarded by Moscow and Beijing as a counterweight to US global influence.

The secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) called last week for joint military exercises with the SCO. Nikolai Bordyuzha said that the body representing Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan should work with the SCO to guarantee security across the region. Mr Bordyuzha has already announced a CSTO plan to create a large military force capable of assisting a member state in the event of an attack. A rapid-reaction force is already based in Central Asia and there are plans for a common air defence system covering most of the former Soviet Union.

Leaders of SCO member states will meet in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, next week for their annual summit. Turkmenistan will also attend for the first time, while Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan have observer status.

Igor Ivanov, the head of Russian security, played down concerns in May that the SCO was evolving into a military alliance to counter the expansion of Nato into Asia as part of the War on Terror. But MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee expressed fears last year that the West could be on a collision course in the struggle for energy resources with “an authoritarian bloc opposed to democracy” that was based on an alliance between China and Russia.

A newly assertive Russia, flush with oil and gas revenues, is moving rapidly to increase its military capability amid tensions with the West over missile defence and Nato expansion. Almost £100 billion has been set aside for rearmament over the next eight years.

At the ready

$24.9bn Russian defence budget 2006

395,000 on active service in army

142,000 in active service in navy

160,000 on active service in air force $35.3bn Chinese defence budget

$35.3bn Chinese defence budget

1.6m Army

255,000 Navy

400,000 Air force

$535bn US defence budget

595,946 Army

376,750 Navy

347,400 Air force

Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies

[Comstock]

"We have a choice in the UK. Either we carry on running down our defences and effectively opt out of a global role"

Sounds good to me. There are far too many people (and not just conservatives) who like to think we are more important in the world than other nations of our size.

I see it on the right, as here, and I see it on the left, or more particuarly the green-left who somehow believe our CO2 emissions are more important than those of India, China, USA etc :D

Very different groups but same mentality..

[Brad Cohen]

Well, with that sort of 1970s attitude Comstock, we'll definitely be as worthless as our European neighbours, yes. So, do you think your own countries values and interests are so meaningless as to not be worth promoting? Britains biggest problem in the 20th century was not overstretch, but 'under-stretch', failing to exert ourselves in peace and then paying the price in war, and listening to defeatists and the demoralised old establishment, people who actually had the bare faced gall to imagine that their job was to 'manage Britains decline'. Well, hopefully the post-war generation will hurry up and die off and we can get on with fixing the mess created since the 60s...

[Dan Lewis]

RE: Tony Makara | February 21, 2008 at 11:51

Actually, Russian Defence Expenditure is probably at least double the headline figure of USD 24 billion. According to the IISS "The Military Balance 2008" under a section entitled "Estimating Russian military expenditure" in Purchasing Power Parity Terms, "...defence spending measured USD 67 billion. With the addition of revenues from international arms exports, it is possibly that the total may have reached USD 70 billion".

[Dan Byles]

I have to say, in response to Comstock@1248, that I DO believe the United Kingdom is more important that many other nations of a similar size (I am not referring to CO2 emissions).

The United Kingdom has played a unique role in world history, and that is reflected in our current role on the world stage. We are a major economic power, with a place in the G8; we are one of only five nations in the world with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council; we have a unique and unusual relationship with the most powerful nation on the planet, the United States; we are a nuclear weapons power; we have close historic links with a huge number of countries around the world through the Commonwealth; and we remain (just) one of the few nations capable of projecting conventional military force globally in defence of our interests and/or values.

Now you may not like some of these (such as our relationship with the USA, or our status as a nuclear weapons power), but they remain facts.

It is also the fact that we have the second most international economy in the world after the United States. After the USA, we trade more, we invest more overseas, and we attract more foreign direct investment than any other country. That gives us a direct and vital interest in international events, and we are very short sighted if we believe we can retreat into a bubble and simply hope that the world remains a safe and stable place in which to trade.

[Comstock]

Now you see, I'd be quite happy to see us leave the G8 and the UN security council if it meant we finally accept Britiania no longer rules the waves........

[Patsy Sergeant]

Comstock - you sound very much like a child of the seventies, thats fine, its your right!

However, not to believe in war, is, unfortunately not sufficient to prevent a war, especially when diplomacy is largely seen as a thing of the past.

To arm oneself in case of a 'threat' of war can be argued as a waste of money, and indeed the cost of armaments is hardly realistic. However, to imagine that a populous country with such a disparate population, can negotiate the world, and remain uninvolved with any disputes arising anywhere - like a beacon of saintliness, is to say the least blinkered!

[Malcolm Dunn]

No one is suggesting that Britannia rules the waves Comstock. What point are you trying to make?
No Prime Minister in the modern era has asked more of our Armed Services than Tony Blair did. No PM has spent less as a proportion of GDP on the Armed Services than Blair and now Brown. I suggest you either engage with that debate or keep out of it. A lot of good men are dead or maimed as a direct result.