Nice aircraft carrier sir, but we're fighting in the desert.

[Al R]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article3423663.ece

".. what is clear is that this government made a colossal error on coming to power in 1997-8. In the Strategic Defence Review (on whose lay committee I served), George Robertson, the then defence secretary, and John Reid and John Gilbert, his junior ministers, flatly refused an open discussion. Having been told to “think the unthinkable”, the review’s authors were told that the three biggest and most contentious procurement items inherited from the Tories were sacred.

They were the Eurofighter project (£15-£20 billion), the new aircraft carriers (£4 billion) and their frigate escorts, and a replacement for the Trident missile and its submarines (£20 billion). These pet projects of the Royal Navy and RAF were protected so new Labour would not appear soft on defence. There was no consideration given to the equipment needs of Tony Blair’s more interventionist foreign policy. The government decided, in effect, to pretend that it was still fighting the Russians (and possibly the Germans).

Those decisions locked the procurement budget for more than a decade. Above all they shut out the army, on which British defence activity has depended ever since. The army’s unglamorous but urgent need for battlefield helicopters and armoured personnel carriers was ignored. So, too, were supplies of such things as grenade launchers, field radios, body armour and night-vision equipment. This year the Eurofighter, carrier and Trident projects all came on stream at £5 billion annually between them and the defence budget has hit the predictable wall.

The first to howl are the chiefs of staff. It is customary at such times for them to stand as one, arms linked like Roman legions in a square. Yet they will never adjudicate on priorities. An admiral will not doubt (in public) the RAF’s need for more jet fighters. A general will never question the need for carriers. An air marshal will cast no aspersions on Trident. All they will do is sing in unison, “No defence cuts”.

Nor do ministers dare to take painful decisions for them. Every cut is across the board. Gordon Brown has let it be known that there must be no talk of cancellations, only postponements. Carriers may be delayed, Astute-class submarines may be reduced from eight to four and Type 45 destroyers from 12 to six. The number of Eurofighter Typhoons on order may be slashed. Strategy can go to the wall but not politics. As one sceptic said last week, “The chiefs have planned to go on fighting the Russians, but to lose.”

[extpwron]

An Admiral's response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6h8i8wrajA&feature

[Jetex Jim]

The first to howl are the chiefs of staff. It is customary at such times for them to stand as one, arms linked like Roman legions in a square. Yet they will never adjudicate on priorities. An admiral will not doubt (in public) the RAF’s need for more jet fighters. A general will never question the need for carriers. An air marshal will cast no aspersions on Trident. All they will do is sing in unison, “No defence cuts”.


Clearly, combining all three services into a unified British defence force, is long overdue.

[Al R]

If Bird & Fortune wasn't so close to the truth, it'd be funny.

And having just seen Margaret Beckett on Andrew Marr, I'm not laughing. Lets hope Ken Livingstone can lighten my mood with talk of reducing pollution by taxing cars.

B&F pokes fun at the army.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pcePHasv5w&feature=related

[Pontius Navigator]

Al R, that goes some way to explain the realities on the ground in the late 90s. NATO was a stuck in the old ways too, but remember where George Robbertson went next.

We still had all the defend Fortress Britain documents and even the old style air defence exercises.

Only a couple of years later were the old books destroyed.

[chuks]

If your Roman legions (sic) stand with their arms linked, just how do they expect to fight? I always thought they needed to keep their arms free to do all that stabbing, hacking and slashing that was part of the job description.

Just asking, mind you!

[WE Branch Fanatic]

A far more balanced view is taken here (http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=89896/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=0.html)over on ARRSE.

Or here (http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=89888.html) for an analysis of the article.

Afghanistan was a land locked nation controlled by medieval thugs. Iraq was almost land locked, and had over ten years of sanction, no fly zones etc prior to the 2003 invasion. Next time we are likely to face a functioning air force and navy.

What sort of forces would be needed if a showdown beetween Iran and the West should occur, or a conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia in which merchant shipping is targeted?

[Sunk at Narvik]

Certainly seems as if the army have a better grip on strategic realities :hmm:

[Al R]

In reading Ottar's 'rebuttal', I wonder if he's got the wrong end of the stick? He has taken it to bits, piece by piece and lost the perspective.

No one is suggesting we don't need aircraft carriers. Of course we do - we're a ruddy island. But what the article suggests is that what we do have is purchased appallingly badly, and that when Labour came to power, and when it made these decisions, we didn't know that we'd be locked in fighting mainly land locked countries. So, it was myopic. The g'ment, the MoD and Gordon Brown committed itself far too readily to courses of actions which only now, we are feeling the impact of. Yes, the MacPrime Minister refers to 'just' delays and not cancellations but in the real world (you know Gordon, the one where most people spend time..?), where lives are being lost as a result, is there any difference? We're in a cycle of reacting now, and playing catch up. And we're going to be stuck with operating in, and buying shedloads of war fighting stock for desert, and dry and arrid conditions when, in a few years, we're probably going to be bogged down in the snowy Balkans again. We have lost all flexibility, and working at a reactive 100% (almost) capacity all the time when all we do is struggle to play catch up is good for no one.

On a rather anal note, Ottar refers to 'admirals/generals' etc being in a discourteous lower case. Unless as a salutation or referring to someone in rank, I thought that they could be lower case?

[SirToppamHat]

In DW convention, rank is capitalised when referring to a specific individual.

eg 'Sergeant John Smith' is correct as is 'tell the Sergeant' (when it applies to Sgt Smith. However, if we were to say that 'we need a sergeant', or 'It's 1530, where have all the sergeants gone?'

The same applies for all ranks.

STH

[Not_a_boffin]

Jenkins loses all credibility the minute he refers to Lewis Page. His is also extremely disingenous to try and portray the carrier programme, escort, Trident and Eurofighter as Tory holdovers. The size, number and capability of the "carrier" was not even finalised until 98-99, the escort (despite the blatherings of Page) does far more than escort a carrier and is needed to fill all the agreed MT that the Navy does. Typhoon should be a belter of an aircraft if we ever have to fight a campaign that requires OCA or DCA and the new Trident boats have only just been approved, far less contracted for.

What he neglects to say (and as he was by his own admission part of the process, he must know) is that SDR and its successors funded the military on certain level of operational use, which have been drastically exceeded every year this century. Given that Jenkins is a vehement critic of both TELIC & HERRICK, you might have thought he'd point that out, which is in fact the root cause of all the problems. Labour wanted to use UK military power way in excess of what it funded it for and then put off equipment decisions to make the books look kosher to the more naive.

Were he to have more than a passing acquaintance with the defence procurement system, he would be aware that it spends inordinate amounts of time and money, justifying decisions rather than sorting kit.

[LowObservable]

Great prose like this reminds me of a Mercedes S-Class being driven the wrong way down the M4. It's a smooth ride in very much the wrong direction.

The principal error here is to confuse strategy (should the Army be the prime service with the others in the support role) with tactics (in this case, the management of procurement). All the battlefield helicopters in the world will be no use against an adversary with the most rudimentary air arm, unless we have the means to control the air, and the best army in the world is no use if there is nowhere, ashore, secure enough to support it. I've argued here and elsewhere that nobody argues that combat operations should not be joint, but that there's good reason to organize the procurement, support and operation of land, sea, air and space systems separately.

Procurement is a mess, but to finger the service leaders or industry for this problem is simplistic. It's politicians who enforce national-supplier preferences, and defense appointees who sign off on spending plans without knowing where the money will come from in the out-years.

Treasury mandarins, politicians and financial appointees contribute to this by share-the-pain policies: if you know that everyone will get 85 per cent of what they ask for, you're a fool if everyone else asks and plans for 120 per cent of what they need and you don't.

Industry, meanwhile, is under constant pressure to promise more and charge less, so that its direct customers can sell the program to their superiors - the White House and Congress, Number Ten and the ruling party - and the media. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the political animal; if you aren't optimistic, and predict that the program will cost $15 billion and take five years when history suggests $20 billion and seven years, you'll never get started; or worse, the contract will go to people who are more optimistic because they don't understand the problems. Either way, if you don't start you won't finish.

[hulahoop7]

.. and by extension of the same logic, after the Falklands War we should have realised that land based fighters, and armoured brigades were an anachronism and scrapped the lot. I mean why have them when we were fighting a predominantly amphibious, light infantry battle?

It does amaze me how supposedly intelligent people can be led my the nose … and by comedians.. surely the predominant experts in strategic military matters.

God help us.
:ugh:

[Occasional Aviator]

Is there anything new in this recycled drivel at all? Apart from the very poor grasp on where money is in the procurement programme (eg ignoring FRES, not counting the cost of aicraft to go on the carriers etc), this just seems to be a repetition of received wisdom that goes around those on the sidelines like defence correspondents who read Jane's but don't actually know anything about what's going on.

The sad thing is that these oversimplifications seep their way into the military too. Just the other day a junior major harangued me over a beer that the RAF should stop insisting on 232 Eurofighters so the money could be spent of FRES - ye gods, do people still think this is what's happening and that we could get any of the money back? Similarly, the fact that aircraft carriers are not terribly important to the COIN campaigns we are in at the moment doesn't mean that we don't need them - clearly if Broon decided that we didn't want to be expeditionary any more they might be a bit surplus to requirements - like heavy armour and deep strike - but to allocate blame for the mess we're in with underfunding and UOR purchases for ops outside our SDR commitments to the considered Equipment Capability plan betrays a lack of understanding so fundamental that I'd correct it even if I only heard it in Happy Hour.

[steamchicken]

I wonder if Simon Jenkins is aware that the US's response to 11th September was - immediately and unhesitatingly - to send all available carriers to the Indian Ocean? These foolish Americans; what on earth would these "aircraft carriers" be doing in Afghanistan? Ships cannot fly!

[Henry_Harris]

Found this highly amusing video. I suggest anyone interested watches it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6h8i8wrajA