Proone,
I have to take issue with your point. What good is a 1.4% increase in money when op tempos are up by at least 10 times that? Our armed forces are committed to a degree probably only exceeded during WW2. A 1.4% increase in at best an offensive political sop to the Treasury and at worst endangering the lives of service personnel everywhere. My only annoyance is all those who think that the other mob would not do exactly the same or worse.
We as a nation have to realise the levels of spending we can afford and then commit ourselves within those limits. It will be hard. We will not be able to be the player on the world stage that Blair would like. Those days are gone. They were gone 50 years ago really. I have no problem with the size and make up of our armed forces that are proposed (except the CVF’s, what a huge white elephant boondoggle they are) but we need to stop sending troops everywhere the US does. We do not need vast numbers of MBT’s, we do not need SSBN’s. We need reliable comms for the Army. We need a decent rifle for the Army as well. We need more Air Transport capability. We need more SH capability. In short cut the Cold War c**p and lets live in the now.
Please excuse the less than eloquent phrasing but I am doing this on a mobile phone.
Cheers
BHR