The UK - A world player - Joke!

[Tallsar]

IMO we have witnessed today what is tantamount to deriliction of duty by HMG. How can any government of ours have the two faced cheek to claim we remain strong, particularly when viewed against their own Strategic analysis of the threats against us, never mind the reality of those conveniently under-played, and what the emergence of the future superpowers (China in particular) means to our place in the world and our access to precious resources to maintain our way of life. The PM eulogises on how it is always a governments responsibility to put defence first...mmmm well that would be a novel development would it not?
Today we as an island and maritme nation have lost some eseential capabilities......maritme air combat capability, any sort of dedicated maritme patrol and attack (never mind the ISTAR contribution it could make) and a signifcant proportion of our Tac and long range transport . And now Sentinel too - so much for increasing our capability in the future ISTAR and cyberwarfare domains eh? So much for protecting our sealanes and our deterrent eh? ... and as for protecting that single new carrier and the rest of the RN if there is anything of a submarine threat....well your guess is as good as anybody's!!! Lets face it people,our politicians of any party have grown up in a softy Britain and would rather spend more billions on the inefficient NHS, and even more billions on slackers and Benefit dependent wasters than ensure the protection of our country, the maintainance of its influence on world affairs, and in the end, our ability to demonstrate that we still mean business. I cannot imagine any potential aggressor giving a damn if we halved our social security budget, but OMG they will count every reduction we have heard today and calculate very carefully what it means to our ability to counter whatever plans they have to get one over on us. Britannia is inded now sinking below those waves we once ruled.:{:{

[thunderbird7]

Funny that there is plenty of money to bail out banks (which I accept had to be done to keep the economy in the perilous state it is in now) but none to keep the basic bits of the country running, the bits that we all use but which most politicians and bankers seem to avoid.

Maybe an economy built in the la-la land of financial services and investments, that purely runs on confidence not reality is where it all went wrong.

We still need basic items and raw materials (for what little we make) shipping in from overseas and therefore have interests globally. How do we protect them after such a blatant smash and grab raid on defence spending?

Anybody who thinks this review was 'strategic' is just plain stupid. It will take many years for HM forces to recover.

[davejb]

The banking bailout was pretty much essential, it's a bit like not being able to pay your credit card and the effect that has on your credit rating.

What wasn't essential is that everyone who helped promote the problem should remain in a similar role post bailout.

The subsequent pain, as HMG slashes various budgets, was bound to come at some point - the only real issue is where the limited cash should have gone, and it seems bizarre to me to ensure we retain the ability to intervene overseas in far off places but not to retain an effective defence of the UK itself.

I can only presume that Cameron etc believe that a Chinook full of SAS troopers is all it will take to fend off any future aggressor....I think he's been watching 'Ultimate Force' a bit too often.

[Tallsar]

cp - yes you are correct but being in the top 5 spenders says little about our genuine capabilty. It is not neccessarily a good "bang for the buck" - for a various reasons some as a result of our procurement structure and the greater overhead costs per service personel compared to others....its what we get for that money that counts ...and the capabilities balance within the budget. Yes I would have not cut Defence at all in the circumstances, and cut the social budget by a further by a commensurate amount.

RA - stay cool friend - the enormity of what has happened today desreves a variety of threads of differing emphases IMO. I did not wish the more strategic points I made and wish to debate by starting this thread to dissapear in some poignant but nonetheless tactical thread about MRA4, or numbers and types etc.

DJB - I agree, and indeed its at the root of my point too....and despite the threats outlined to the UK homeland that this government has stated but yesterday. All those lost capabilites, save perhaps the carrier combat ac, would make an invaluable and essential contribution in many such UK scenarios. As for power projection....the lack of these capabilities will probably make UK only missions unachievable in anything like a more comprehensive capability scenario than we have recently found in Iraq or Afghanistan.

:sad:

[Always a Sapper]

Whats your answer? GDP defence spending is still going to put us in the top 5 in the world. There is no money.

Stop sending overseas aid to countries that can seemingly afford big defence budgets and space programmes for starters, come to that stop overseas aid full stop unless there is:

a. A real humanitarian need.

b. We, as a country aren’t the only one's with their hand in their pocket and paying out on whatever duty bleeding heart story is being pushed out by the scrounging country at the time. (Real natural disasters exempted).

c. Whenever practicable goods supplied should be made and paid for in the UK thereby keeping most of the value at home, unless buying local would help the aid recipient long term and be a contributing factor to them not getting the hat out again!

d. We, as a country do NOT need to take out a 'loan' in order to give the aid or as a result of giving said aid then need to take out a 'loan' in order to meet our own in house commitments.


Aid is all well and good, and contrary to the view shown above I do believe that we should stand up and be counted. That said I also firmly believe any aid given out should be very very carefully targeted to provide long term permanent solutions and measures taken to guarantee that it does not fall into the wrong hands. It also helps if the country giving it can afford to give it in the first place!


Oh and another thing… The difference between some of these so called ‘aid’ recipient countries and the DSS scrounging scum here in the UK that have never worked is?

[The B Word]

Tallsar

Today we as an island and maritme nation have lost some eseential capabilities......maritme air combat capability, any sort of dedicated maritme patrol and attack (never mind the ISTAR contribution it could make) and a signifcant proportion of our Tac and long range transport . And now Sentinel too - so much for increasing our capability in the future ISTAR and cyberwarfare domains eh?

MRA4 - best thing that could have happened. The whole program has been a joke from start to finish! Luckily no-one has been killed as we are now doing the right thing when something is not airworthy.

Sentinel - stays until at least 2015 for Afghanistan. Read the SDSR 77 page document and you will see. It really is a Cold War bit of kit that is a one-trick pony; so many assets can do SAR/GMTI these days. The only real thing that it did compared to others was wide area GMTI, but that will be covered by a new capability that the SDSR hints at being unmanned.

Cyber - what the Hell has MRA4 and Sentinel got to do with Cyber-Warfare!!!

The B Word

[Thelma Viaduct]

Looking at the defence cuts from a different perspective:

Is the UK in 2010 & beyond actually worth defending?

The X factor generation, jeremy kyle watching benefit claiming layabouts and immigrants are not worth 2p, let alone billions pi$$ed up the wall on defending a nation that has nothing to offer other than burgers & insurance.

We never get to see the wealth of our natural resources, even they're taxed to the hilt by t''goven'ment.

[Tallsar]

B

Have you been close to the MRA4 programme?? If not I thnk such sweeping statemnt might be inappropriate given the loss of this capability overall. There is no doubt the programme had significant issues in the early years...many caused by the procurement process and over-ambitious initial progrmme design and management. That said, the platform was on the threshold of delivering a very good capaibility which would have been versatile and useful in many Uk focussed or overseas scenarios.

Your point re Sentinel is a curates'egg...and yes in the future such capabilites might be availbale from appriate UAVs...show me the funded programmes emerging fom today's paper? That said too,if it has uitilty in Afghanistan, and counter terrorism and asymetric warfare is where its at...in other countries and scenarios...better the bird in the hand etc.....and who is to say the next main event will not be akin to Iraq and the need to do precisely what Sentinel delivers......Perhaps more cogently is the fact that unlikeMRA4 (IMO)...Sentinel has been moreof a bag of worms from the outset and simply is no longer worth the investment.

Cyberwafre...yes a seemingly obtuse tenuous link I grant you.....but in the round, the loss of large and long range platform maritme ISTAR and attack capability with its search and intercept capability could have all manner tangential data gathering possibilites.....particulalry in more remote locations (remotefrom the UK mainland that is).

The loss of these capabilites is a signifcant blow in principle........with little planned and funded replacement xcept perhaps rather old 135 platforms...How our potentia ladversaries will view all this together is my most signifcant point.

[vernon99]

IMO the politicians should have done this properly, if we really are so badly done to, we should take a very hard look at "everything", by that I mean every penny that goes abroad, such as foreign aid, EU contributions etc.

I would have thought we should sort out our deficit before giving others money! The government keeps pedalling the line that for every £4 collected they spend £1 on interest payments. Of the remaining £3 how much is given away?

How much do we give the EU each year? Perhaps we could abstain from paying until the next election, how much could we save if we stopped handouts to other countries? Maybe we could then retain more of the services we need, that the current government seems to think we can do without.

[VX275]

Did I mishear or were the politicians talking about operating UAV off the new carriers? Is this the first hint of a BAE Systems 'Black Project' ?

Also, whoever wrote the White paper didn't use a Spool Chucker as amongst other errors FSTA is described as an A300 and the Harrier as a Verticle take off and landing aircraft. :ugh:

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Britannia is inded now sinking below those waves we once ruled.http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/boohoo.gifhttp://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/boohoo.gif

Tallsar,

You been at the red wine mon brave? I agree with what you say but the tone is not quite as erudite as some of your posts on eg Rotorheads!

[anotherthing]

...what some people fail to understand, especially BBC Journo's, is that Cyberwarfare is being touted as a NEW and real threat. It is not R not being touted as the only threat we face in the future.

Stupid questions asking why we still invest in conventional forces after the statement about Cyberwarfare merely show the complete ignorance and lack of understanding of those doing the asking.

[Postman Plod]

As Pious Pilot says:
Looking at the defence cuts from a different perspective:

Is the UK in 2010 & beyond actually worth defending?

The X factor generation, jeremy kyle watching benefit claiming layabouts and immigrants are not worth 2p, let alone billions pi$$ed up the wall on defending a nation that has nothing to offer other than burgers & insurance.

We never get to see the wealth of our natural resources, even they're taxed to the hilt by t''goven'ment.

Nobody gives a stuff about anything any more. They'll bend over and take whats coming to them time and time again, as long as they can get their X-Factor fix at the end of the week.

You know what, its not just the benefit claiming layabout wannabes either - nobody, from any part of society will stand up for what they believe in, cos they don't believe in anything. Politicians will continue to rip us off and support banks and big business over the people who "voted" them in (not that there was actually any real choice) and anyone who does stick their head above the parapet to complain will simply be chucked in prison, or be spun out of existance and the country told that the only way to do it is through the "elected" representative...

[Al R]

Plod,

I find it so depressing, ironic and bitterly sad, that we are losing men and women all over Afghanistan to enforce the right of free speech there, when (mainly because of Brain Haws) it was decimated right here, at home, in Parliament Square.

Interesting that the Queen's references in her Speech, to the Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill have so far been very vague about free and non violent protest. Hopefully, the rancid distortion of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act will prove to be the low watermark of freedom in the UK. I doubt it though.

[green granite]

Is the UK in 2010 & beyond actually worth defending?

Or is there anything here that would make someone want to attack us? :E

[NURSE]

UK has been a medium sized power since Suez in the 1950's.
We need to sort out our economey we spend more on interest payments than we do on defence and for that money we get nothing! once the defecit is gone that money will be available to invest or for tax cuts.
the bank bailout was necessary but the defecit was building up with Gordo's borrow to invest policy.
When we withdraw from Afghanistan in 2015 the economic situation may mean no "peace dividend" as Gordo demanded after Northern Ireland & Bosnia!
The changes in welfare culture may force some of the life long claimants to get of their Ar$es. This govt may actually start to change the culture of this country. I seam to remember Last tory govt did something similar in 80's following years of decline under labour including massive defence cuts which the armed forces survived!

[Postman Plod]

Get off their ar$es to do what jobs exactly??

There are likely to be 500,000 civil servants on the dole over the next 5 years looking for jobs, another load of skilled aviation engineers looking for jobs in the north west, skilled trades looking for jobs cos no houses are being built, IT contractors and service providers looking for jobs because nobody is investing in IT (particularly the public sector, where much of these jobs come from), retail sector employees looking for jobs because nobody is buying anything because they're either redundant or in fear of their jobs, manufacturing sector (ha!) because nobody is buying anything we make, etc etc etc.

All of these people will be potentially claiming on the state!

So what are we all going to do? Work for tescos, or selling mobile phones?? Would that pay your mortgage? Or are you smugly sitting in retirement with not a care in the world cos you're now safe and out of it?

Maybe the bank bailout WAS necessary (how did it get to that?!) but where is the return on our investment?!?!?! In fact where is our investment full stop??? In their fkn pockets or making up their corporate profits, thats where!

Yet there is a 1 in 3 chance I'll be out of a job in the next 5 years, through no fault of my own, and in a part of the country with few employment prospects for skilled people, in a falling housing market and likely to be a deepening double-dip recession??

Tell you what - getting these lazy ar$se Kyle watching slackers into a job is the least of our worries.

[NutLoose]

Bring back Lend Lease..

Agree with you Postman.....

If you chop all these Jobs fine, but you then lose the tax from them and have them as a State burden that has to be financed, only way is to put everyone elses taxes up!

I would cap unemployment benefit at 2 years...... after that you get none.

[Arclite01]

Nut loose

I had a similar thought about family allowance - why not cap it at say £100 regardles of how many kids you have. That way the state makes a contribution - but not an open ended unlimited one.................

Arc

[ShortFatOne]

"Cyber - what the Hell has MRA4 and Sentinel got to do with Cyber-Warfare!!!"

Without too much investigation on t'interweb you could have discovered (if you had bothered) that the nations of the world are connected together by data cables running around the various sea beds of the world's oceans. It would be a relatively straight-forward exercise for a submersed vehicle to capture these cables, break into them and monitor the data traffic, hey-presto, Cyber warfare.

So what do you think the MRA4 would have had to do with Cyber warfare? Far more than your precious E3 I would suggest.

But it's irrelevant now, cos the fight against Cyber threats is not a top priority is it? What, Sorry? It is? Bugger!

[Tallsar]

My apologies ToD - you are right to pick me up and yes I had consummed a glass or two.....but my fury holds no bounds.....particularly as I gather it was the PM who made the final decision on the MRA4 against direct CAS advice ..saving that damned £400M upgrade of those Plastic Pursuit ships (Puma Mk2 for non-rote types)......you can see it now....."Nimrod scrapped" has positive headlines (despite the waste of £3.5Bn!!!!!!)..."New Puma helo project for the troops scrapped" has too much negative potential....Oh how we are betrayed eh? The Puma upgrade is a gross waste of cash given the alternatives too.
Not only is our our maritime defence of the UK homeland now severely and dangerously depleted, but the UK has lost a very modern and capable ISTAR platform (the very thing that is supposed to be essential to modern warfare), and a digitally-enabled long range precision weapons platform for use in all sorts of scenarios (in some people's view a long awaited potential V bomber replacement and particularly if there are no jets on the carriers for 10 years). Despite all the ignorance and negative spin doctoring.... MRA4 works really well!! I maintain it is criminal dereliction of duty by HMG...and a Conservative one at that....BTW SAR-H pales into insignificance against this issue.

Cheers :{:ugh:

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Tallsar,

No need to apologize - I agree with it all, especially your last sentence. It's like a bad dream...

[RumPunch]

The Nimrod MR2 was adored by the US, the coalition and most of all our Army Bretheren, I just hope one day somebody actually releases what the Nimrod has done and then people will get a full picture of its worth.

The MRA4 had all fitted what the MR2 had (except the camera , it was lower quaility) but things that are easily upgraded.

The MRA4 was asked for the 2012 Olympics, The MR2 had a huge part in 7/7 . I dont want to say things I should not but its one of the big players on counter terrorism and amazingly paid for.

But the government will soon realise the decision it has made and will realise they have messed this one up big time.

[day1-week1]

Rumpunch

I think thats where nimrod folk have f??ked up royally, not publicising what it can do under some misguided OPSEC bulls@@t. In hindsight, what's the bigger risk? People knowing what you can do, or not being able to do the stuff that was so important because no one knew that's what you did!

[Lonewolf_50]

The Nimrod MR2 was adored by the US, the coalition

Yep. Nice capability. :ok:

So too was (is) varying mods of the P-3. The Orion community found itself in many ways re-kitted based on 90's Balkans experience and tests, with stuff that helps in overland missions.

Recall some years back a heated exchange between AirPac and some in theater folks on how many missions/hours were weekly available from the Orions assigned. I did not hear similar, but suspect similar, and less public exchange in re Nimrod: too is a LDHD asset: Low Density, High Demand.

If you ask a ground commander, he'll just say "Give me more of that, as much more as you can manage."