As some one who you guys defended or defended it saddens me to hear how the UK forces get treated especially at the individual level. Living where I do near Camberley there are a great many retired service personnel and have heard quite a few stories of the difficulties faced by service families and therefore service personnel.
it seems to me if you like as an end user in the defence world that we really must refocus on what our military objectives are. Forget the foreign involvment unless its aprt of a large multinational force and by that i dont mean 90% US and 10% us.
I do agree that some sort of deal with the US on Airforce hardware seems to work well enough for many EU countries but I dont think we can ever fully trust the USA -its always been America first and in terms of any serious land conflict we always have to be aligned with EU countries just because of Geography so in or out of the Eu we are tied to our neighbours -if a country threatens France it threatens us and vv . On the other hand would Trump trust Corbin or a Democrat trust Johnson
So for me cut back strategic spending-the carriers were a joke from the start and invest properly in people to prevent high wastage rates and in new technology be that smart agile weapons system which may in the end be air or ship-mounted and also take a decision over whether cyber threats are a police or Military/Security matter .
Russia if it is an enemy-I dont think it is personally -thats an EU /Euromatter because of Geography as to Iran if they want to attack Iraq again what can we do about it anyway. Its a matter of adjusting to resources and reality and most important is keeping a dedicated and motivated cadre of military personnel and equipping them to deal witht he 21st Centruy not the cold war or colonial past