MoD funding appears to be fine....The UK spends more on defence than any other nation on the planet other than the USA
The actual amounts spent on the defence budget is largely irrelevant if it isn't enough to do the job we're being asked to do. We could spend $100 million, but if we need $120 million then funding isn't fine. And I don't think there is anyone with a grip on reality and the actual facts that could argue otherwise that what we are getting is enough to do what we are being asked to do.
If they do decide to reduce the readiness of 6 RN escorts for the rest of this financial year, so what? Iraq and Afghanistan is where the money should be spent
We're desperate for more rotary, more so in AF than IZ, but even the SH fleet is having its budgets butchered despite it needing the exact opposite. Do you really think that any cash generated from axing these escorts will make it to the front-line and JHC in particular? Well having just been told that we are slashing the budget in SH yet again, I somehow don't think so. And we both know that any reduction in RN capability will not be a temporary measure - we will never get those vessels, or the funding associated with them back.
The simple black and white fact is that defence needs more money. End of story. I agree that MOD couldn't organise a p1ss up in a brewery, but at the end of the day it is Gordon and Tony who set the govt priorities and decide how much the MOD gets. The buck stops with them.