Cameron dismisses US warning on defence capability

[Sun Who]

BBC News - David Cameron dismisses Robert Gates' defence cuts warning (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25763902)

Sun.

[NutLoose]

Well he would, wouldn't he, he is hardly likely to stand up and say it's all true, while we have to prostitute ourselves around the World to borrow equipment to fulfil those roles we no longer have the capability to fulfil....

I see the Taliban have said the minute we leave they will move back in... No surprises there either, both Countries are run by a bunch of deluded muppets who seem to think you can run wars on fixed budgets and declare themselves winners when the budget is spent. I'll give it 6 months to a year.

The only advantage the Americans have this time is they have learnt not to be filmed clambering off an Embassy roof and into waiting helicopters.




..

[Sun Who]

But what do you really think Nutloose?

Sun:)

[smujsmith]

Personally, I'd take anything the deluded fool Cameron says as a sort of "April fool joke" come early this year. But then, how can the fool say anything else when he's busy ripping the crap out of the British Armed forces. It's enough to make you weep.

Smudge

[Melchett01]

If I have to listen to some politician or MOD Yes-Man trot out the 'but we have the 4th biggest defence budget in the world' line, I won't be held responsible for my actions!

But let's play Devil's Advocate then shall we. So we have the 4th largest budget:

Why then in terms of pretty much every capability is that capability numerically smaller than it was 10 years ago? Why, when we are an island nation, was it deemed too expensive to have a MPA capability and a credible blue water naval capability? I have just seen the PM insist Mr Gates is wrong and claimed we are building 2 new ac carriers. We might be building them, but will we get them both and the full complement of ac required to make them operational? No, thought not.

How many proper flying sqns do we have now compared to 10 years ago? And I don't mean what is the total number of aircraft with all the AEF and VGS aircraft included to bump up the numbers.

Why are we contractorising or civilianizing everything we can just about get away with removing from uniform because it's cheaper to do so?

Why if spending has increased to put us in that lofty 4th place are we sacking thousands of people, with the FOURTH round of Army redundancies due to be announced next week?

Why are so many people if not already on the way out or planning their escape in the short term actively making plans to get out in the medium term? Why do so many people look on a daily basis as tired and stressed as we used to do coming back from a 6 month op tour 5 years ago?

If we have the world's fourth largest defence budget, maybe somebody can explain to this clearly simple staff officer where the hell all the money has gone?!!!

Nutloose - 6 months to a year - you are clearly in a more generous frame of mind than most people when looking at the likely direction of travel in Afghanistan.

[Surplus]

But what do you really think Nutloose?

I really think he's bang on.

[NutLoose]

Nutloose - 6 months to a year - you are clearly in a more generous frame of mind than most people when looking at the likely direction of travel in Afghanistan.

Agreed, one thinks the first Afghan flights after the departure of the final coalition jet will be Karzia and his cronies in their new Afghan C130H's with their suitcases / pallets full of US Dollars as they flee into asylum.

[Like This - Do That]

We down at the '@rse End of the World' have frequently heard our pollies coming up with the same excuses when our American friends point out the obvious.

The standard DoD-approved retort when our rather paltry commitment to propping up the Karzai regime was questioned was: "We're the largest non-NATO contributor and tenth-largest overall". What wasn't ever admitted was the lack of Australian capabilities in theatre; much due to the cynical manning cap and much due to the lack of that capability in the ADF at all.

Also not mentioned was the size of the nations proving larger commitments than we were.

Apparently this vital strategic effort was so important that the largest non-NATO partner could only manage a battle group with very restricted ROEs and OFOF. A single battle group.

Sadly we can look back even further for the malaise. When Mr 'Fitted For But Not With' Beazley was MINDEF in the early 1990s he was asked about the presence of RNZAF A-4s at HMAS Albatross by a reporter:

Minister, those are the same A-4s based at Albatross that we grounded and sold to the RNZAF. If we need them here why did we ask NZ to base a Squadron in Australia?"

Bomber's response was a pathetic: "I think we're doing OK". We were doing so OK thanks to the post-Vietnam treatment of Defence, not only under Bomber and his ALP mates, but Fraser too, that when World War Timor broke out ... a stability Op in a pissant little country only a few hundred miles from Darwin ... we couldn't manage it alone. Had to ask NZ for help. And Singapore. And Britain. And many others.

Enough to make you sick. :ugh:

[Hangarshuffle]

I would like to see the results published when our defence systems are tested.
I've often wondered how we would stand up to a 9/11 scenario.
If airliners approached several UK cities at once, could we actually deal with it?
Nobody ever wants to answer that on here (might be wrong, might have been done already and I missed it).


Like to see the Senior Officers stand up on that one, not the politicians (of whom nobody now believes when it comes to matters of this magnitude).


Just a a drift could someone answer this?


Just out of interest and to settle a pub debate, and as a civvy, where are the UK defence aircraft flown from?
I'm guessing/thinking Leuchars, Leeming and Wattisham? Is that correct?


Who covers the west of the UK?


What happened to the rumour that fighters would be despatched to places like RNAS Culdrose or RNAS Yeovilton as pairs on alert?

[Wyler]

As someone who has been involved in UK Defence for over 3 decades I think we are currently well placed. Technology has improved tenfold and we are, IMHO, able to meet realistic threats rather than perceived ones.
The details on how we do that are not for this Forum but there is plenty of information out there in the Public domain that would answer some of your questions. Just google QRA News reports for example.

As to the state of the forces overall, well years ago you could look at any UK radar screen and see a sky full of Mil aircraft. Now you have to look long and hard to spot them. Now personnel numbers are made up with civvies (like me :ok:) and an increasing number of FTRS. Sad days. A mere shadow of our former selves. No votes in the Military, best to focus on the grey/gay/immigrant vote :*

[HTB]

There was a series of BBC television programmes in the mid-2000s (about 2004-5) that postulated a variety of emegency/disaster scenarios, including a terror attck on London (where else, there being no other large cities in UK?). A panel of 3 diverse experts was assembled to role play government ministers, military interest, media communications, etc. As I recall, each episode had about four internal scenarios and outcomes determined by the decision making panel's actions, or lack of.

For the terror attack episode, the military aspects were covered by Sir Tim Garden (later Lord Garden), AM RAF Retd. I think it involved a 9/11 type threat and I seem to remember a lot of hand-wringing about whether to launch QRA, if so what to do with them once airborne - shoot at a distance from London, allow further encroachment by the non-responding airliner, shoot a bit closer to London, wait to see intentions, shoot when over London - too bloddy late, no shoot, flash bang wallop...

It was all very plausible and gave a quite realistic impression of the smell of tension and anxiety in COBRA. It is possible that in reality similar decisions, or dithering could have averted or allowed a disaster to occur.

Wattisham - perhaps QRA Landrovers might be deployed...:E

Mister B

[NutLoose]

Perhaps the COBRA committee should lose the gunho macho name and rename themselves after the Garter Snake. After all that is toothless

[Hangarshuffle]

Good, very funny I guess not Wattisham then!
Fair comments, answers perhaps not for this public forum.


Driving down the A1 on Tuesday (most of it) I saw one Tucano pounding the circuit at (I think at Dishforth), nothing at Leeming and I think some green Lynx on a pan (glimpsed this somewhere Linton?), and a low flying Herc going east to west. That was it.


All seems so little compared to even very recent times but there we are. I to find it hard to reconcile what the ministers say to what I've seen and what I hear.

[SASless]

Nutty......oh Nutty!



The only advantage the Americans have this time is they have learnt not to be filmed clambering off an Embassy roof and into waiting helicopters.


With the current crew in Washington....you are so wrong!

Remember a place called Benghazi and a disaster that occurred there not so long ago?

Remember how things went in Egypt?

In Afghanistan.....when the Taliban take over....your reckon we will leave earlier enough that it does not look like Saigon Redux?

What happens when Iraq goes to the Radical Islamists?

AQ has Fallujah and Romadi now....Baghdad is just down the road....and when that goes....the Largest US Embassy is going to be evacuated. How will we sneak out of there?

[Melchett01]

An interesting further take on the Gates - Cameron 'discussion' from RUSI. Interesting in the sense that RUSI are a heck of a lot closer in their opinion to the front line operators than the Government are:

From the RUSI website yesterday:

Building a Force for the Future: The UK Needs Depth not Breadth
RUSI Analysis, 17 Jan 2014 By Elizabeth Quintana, Senior Research Fellow, Air Power and Technology and Director of Military Sciences

The former US Defense Secretary has expressed concerns about the UK’s ability to provide full spectrum defence capabilities. Yet, the UK has not had a full spectrum capability for a number of years. It is actually a more worrying lack of depth, not breadth of capabilities that concerns most British defence officials today.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Robert Gates expressed concern that the US would no longer be able to rely on the UK to provide full spectrum capability in operations in the future. Specific concern was raised over the lack of an operational aircraft carrier and discussions over whether or not the UK wanted to retain its nuclear capability through the Trident programme. While his concern is valid, it is not the high end capabilities that need investment but rather a more pragmatic approach to the building of the UK’s future forces that will ensure the necessary breadth and depth of capability that befits our armed forces.

Ironically, it is precisely because the UK has invested in its relationship with the US and looked to retain high end or ‘exquisite’ capability on a par with its American cousin that has driven the nation’s armed forces to be ‘hollowed out’. Interdependence with the US means the UK already has holes in its ‘full spectrum’ capability in areas such as Ground Based Air Defence and Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence, Space-based Earth Observation satellites and Maritime Patrol Aircraft. Indeed David Cameron in 2011 admitted as much when he remarked that the UK retained a ‘pretty full spectrum capability’.[1]

It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Defence’s official response was the standard line that the ‘UK is the eighth largest economy and has the fourth largest defence budget’. As the armed forces continue to shrink both in terms of personnel and platforms, it has left some wondering why we are spending so much with so little to show for it? In his RUSI lecture last month, the Chief of the Defence Staff stressed the need to step away from ‘exquisite technologies’ that were used to bolster the UK’s national industrial base. While he is correct in the first part of his statement – that a focus on high end capability at the expense of mass is a decision that the armed forces will live to regret – a healthy relationship with the industrial base is necessary for a number of reasons.

In 2010, the government prioritised the economic crisis that faced many countries in the Western world and implemented an 8% defence cut; recapitalised the equipment programme to take out a £38bn deficit in the forward plan and incorporated the running costs of the Trident programme into the MoD’s budget. This effectively took out around 25% off the MoD’s budget. It was both right and necessary given the national debt at the time.

The coalition government also recognised the continuing need to modernise the Armed forces. Its policy was to make painful cuts in the short term but to build in a programme of new platforms and capabilities that would see a stronger, if leaner, defence force emerge in 2020. There was a priority on high end capabilities – a submarine replacement programme for Trident, commitment to the F-35 programme and the carrier programme that came with it. However, this ‘Future Force 2020’ was predicated on a rise in the defence budget after 2015, and the Chancellor has made it clear that further cuts are needed if the government is to make a serious impact on the national deficit.

The MoD has recognised that it has backed itself into a corner and is therefore in danger of losing critical mass in a race to retain superior capabilities. The Royal Navy, which is particularly dependent on ‘jam tomorrow’ is causing concern to senior officials in the MoD as both the numbers of platforms (the Royal Navy now has less than half the vessels it has in 1990) and personnel are at critically low levels. The investment in carrier capability and highly expensive destroyers and submarines over the last ten years has substantially reduced the numbers of platforms that the navy can physically deploy. The Royal Air Force too has seen its combat air fleet slashed from twenty-seven squadrons to six in a similar period and with costs of the Joint Strike Fighter at around £80m a piece, it will take some time before all 136 are in service. Meanwhile, the RAF will lose 112 combat aircraft at the end of the decade when the Tornado GR4 goes out of service.
Necessity Being the Mother of Invention

Relative to the UK, France has both greater force numbers and a broader set of capabilities. The UK is also much more dependent on the US industrial base than France, which has looked to ensure national sovereignty is retained to the greatest extent possible. Whether or not France can continue to afford such a policy is questionable but the fact is that their current situation is very much a legacy of being outside NATO for over forty years. Similarly, Sweden and Finland can deploy an impressive range of national capabilities for countries with relatively small defence budgets.

In order to achieve both breadth and depth, France has also deliberately chosen to sacrifice capability and has also focused on developing platforms that it would be able to export. The French Air Force, for example, has deliberately not opted for fifth generation combat aircraft in order to retain greater numbers of aircraft. In Sweden, where neutrality was a matter of national survivability during the Cold War, a similarly pragmatic approach has been adopted. The Swedish Air Chief made it clear at a conference on European Air Power [2] that they had adopted strict control over requirements when developing their own national Combat Air and ISTAR platforms, which have both had export successes. Sweden’s Visby Corvette with its innovative composite hull is another example of innovation at relatively low cost.

Both countries have demonstrated that smaller budgets do not require a reduction in ambition but if a broad range of capabilities are to be maintained, the UK has to rethink its approach to requirements. British industry too must play its part if platforms are to be affordable and it goes without saying that exportability must be part of the design, something that the MoD is now trying to achieve through the Type 26 programme. Buying everything off the shelf (from the US) may be an attractive proposition in the short term but it does not sit well with the government’s prosperity agenda in the long term and the Ministry of Defence’s needs to be incentivised financially if it is to make decisions on platforms and personnel that will support exports.

Fundamentally, the UK needs to accept that the best way it can support the US in the long term is not to try to keep up with the US in the short term. And US officials also need to recognise the importance of depth as well as breadth.

[SASless]

Absent "Breadth".....what good is "Depth" if your Enemy makes the smart move and plays to your Weakness?

Just why does ridding oneself of Nuclear Weapons as a part of reducing "Breadth"....ensure the USA will make up for that missing link?

Are you sure we will always embrace your position in some fuss with Argentina or some other Nation and provide Troops, Aircraft, Carriers, Nukes.....or whatever you lack but need?

I am not sure I would want to bet all my chips on that if I were you.....as I know I would not do the same if the situation was reversed.

[Bastardeux]

Seems like there is an awful lot of waffle in there with no clear diction other than the fact that we need to support a defence industrial base by including exportability into the requirements. Is it trying to suggest we get more of less capable equipment? Or cut out some of our capabilities entirely and expand the remaining ones!?

We are also 6th, not 8th in the world. PPP is not representative of nominal wealth!

[Melchett01]

Bastardeaux,

Were you reading the same article? To my mind, what it said was very clear and points to our entire capability development and procurement strategy having skewed by the desire to have the highest tech capabilities we can get our hands on at the expense of numbers - just as CDS warned last week in his speech.

It's all well and good having something like the F-35, but if it's so expensive you can only have a handful of them and you will have to slash other capabilities to be able to afford those few, then it creates major problems. It will also likely increase your risk aversion as the loss of one single platform will now have a disproportionate effect; taken to the nth degree, that course of action leads to lots of very shiny, very capable and eye-wateringly expensive aircraft sitting round doing not a lot because we can't afford to scratch the paint let alone use them in anger.

Whilst we are (were?) the US' partner of choice, that has come with a hefty price tag of 'trying to keep up with the Jones'' to ensure maximum compatibility. We need to realise that unless the government's desire for defence on the cheap changes, we can't afford that. It pains me to say it, but the French might just have it right in terms of pausing at 4th generation capability that works and guaranteeing numbers. It's the only way we will ever stop ourselves disappearing up our own tailpipes as the numbers get smaller and smaller. It isn't going to be much of an air force with only a couple of operational sqns which is the definite direction of travel unless we change and unless the US accepts that nobody can afford to keep up with it, so it also needs to slow down if it wants to keep access to its traditional partners of choice.

And given that the US likes to work in coalitions for the political and influence message that it sends - lets face it, they don't actually need us to be there from a capability perspective - I honestly think that they would either ease up or find other ways to help their key partners out if it meant guaranteeing that high level geo-pol / mil support that they rely on. Those are the buttons we need to be pushing, not paying billions for 2 sqns of fast jets.

[OutlawPete]

Cameron can dismiss all he likes but nothing changes the fact that a Russian naval ship managed to park itself in the Moray firth a few weeks ago and it took us 24 hrs to do anything about it. The Americans are spot on, their advice is correct.

[500N]

"that when World War Timor broke out ... a stability Op in a pissant little country only a few hundred miles from Darwin ..."

What was that about shipping troops via leased Catamarans because
we didn't have any or enough ships to do the job !

[glad rag]

Are you sure we will always embrace your position in some fuss with Argentina or some other Nation and provide Troops, Aircraft, Carriers, Nukes.....or whatever you lack but need?



I doubt very much that we will be retrieving any US "aid" that could be used in that particular sphere of operations.........

[NutLoose]

Oddly enough, I've been reading about Shorts aircraft, and the factory was quoted as being ran along with the Shipyards as Strategic production capability, i.e. they were given contracts to secure a home production capability, one wonders when that all changed.

[Heathrow Harry]

when we realised we couldn't afford to keep a dozen yards open

[Courtney Mil]

500N, was that INTERFET you're refering to? Some of the cats that now run as ferries between UK, Channel Islands and France? Or do I have that wrong?

[Bastardeux]

Melchett,

I agree with you, I just don't think the article makes it particularly clear what it thinks is the way forward.

The financing point is a very interesting one because it seems (from my perspective) that politicians are finally beginning to realise that if you want to play with the big boys, your buy in is going to have to be bigger than what we've been willing to pay over the last 2 decades.

The EU has around 8.5% of the world's population, 25% of its GDP and 50% of its welfare spending. There is money for the full spectrum of capabilities at the technological level we want; we as Europeans have just become too accustomed to free-riding off the United States and instead used the money to feed a monumentally sized poverty trap. The UK (barely) has a higher level of spending than the European average, but by world-wide comparisons we actually spend considerably less of our GDP on defence.

It seems to me that there is going to have to be some considerable soul-searching at the next defence review.

[tucumseh]

Melchett, excellent post. A few years ago we had Lord Drayson's Defence Industrial Strategy (and Technology Strategy) which was actually a pretty good attempt at clarifying these indigenous issues although, as ever, implementation was lacking partly because he "moved on". Its main weaknesses were, in my mind, rolling over to BAeS bullying and losing sight of the fact QinetiQ were now a private company and should be subject to the vagaries of competition. For example, it "solutionised" a critical enabling technology by citing some R&D that QQ were undertaking under MoD contarct, despite a far better solution already being in production. But that wasn't Drayson's fault - it was the MB scientists who simply weren't abreast of developments.

I'm critical of them because they were given the opportunity to save lives by getting that CET in-service immediately, but refused because it would expose their shortcomings. This wasn't an isolated case - the DTS also included a critical aircraft safety technology, saying MoD would be progressing development. They kept quiet when it was pointed out a far better system had been fitted to RN helicopters 12 years earlier, and MoD owned the IPR. To this day, MoD buys inferior commercial products, at greater cost. (It was one of the last ITTs Nimrod issued before cancellation - the IPT threatened to blacklist a company who declined to bid while pointing out MoD already had a better system).

Anyone involved in procurement knows the main technologies that MoD won't, or try to avoid, buying from abroad. On aircraft, sonics is one example. We have pretty good kit, but others have far better, at a fraction of the cost. Blind testing has proved it many times, but while we encourage foreign companies to bid, they know they will never win - which is deceitful and counter-productive, as it simply increases their overheads, which they pass on to us in contracts they do win. At another level, political lobbying often dictates constituencies get contracts, not who submitted the best bid. One infamous example is Crawley, when a major programme was awarded to a company who hadn't even bid, as a result of the "Industrial Impact Paper" being written by lobbyists and withheld below 1 Star level.

Openness and honesty are not admired concepts in MoD!

[The Old Fat One]

Good post Melchett, except the comparison with Sweden and other Scandinavian countries is invalid...apples and oranges argument applies.

The UK is tied to foreign policy commitments that simply don't burden Sweden and others, enabling and empowering them to simply match their capabilities to their homeland security needs and thus get the best bang for their buck. In this instance, less is indeed more.

Neil Kinnock suggested this policy for the UK way back (in a famous breakfast TV interview) and he actually named Sweden as a model for a good security policy. The resulting media outrage was entirely predictable; can you image how pprune would have received it, had it been around in those days?

Trying to do too much with too little is the price we pay for NATO and the debris of our imperialist past. Can't see us giving either up yet awhile...what price the career of a politician who gives the heave ho to Gibraltar and the Falklands?

[SASless]

Trying to do too much with too little is the price we pay for NATO and the debris of our imperialist past. Can't see us giving either up yet awhile...what price the career of a politician who gives the heave ho to Gibraltar and the Falklands?

What real strategic value does Great Britain have in keeping those places in today's World?

What real benefit does Great Britain derive from holding onto Gibraltar?

If Great Britain embraced defense of the Homeland and wrote off defense of outlying lands.....it would afford a much better way to equip, man, and structure your Defense Forces.

Or....alternatively.....accept that there shall not be another European War....and structure your Military Forces to be able to conduct Expeditionary Warfare in support of NATO and UN needs.

It would seem one way or the other is the right answer.....and trying to be all things to everyone just isn't working.

[NutLoose]

What real benefit does Great Britain derive from holding onto Gibraltar?


Your joking aren't you? it's a key strategic ent....... It allows us to piss off the Spanish..

Falklands and the rest give us rights to the vast untapped mineral and oil reserves in the regions.

[SASless]

It allows us to piss off the Spanish..

i should think the "Tipping" habits of British Tourists was very effective in doing that!

[langleybaston]

Please look up the Stanhope Memorandum for historical perspective.

Very instructive.

Modern needs seem to be a complete inverse of the list, do they not?