New Labour maintains that we just need a new chapter to the fiasco that was SDR. The pretence remains that the SDR was a proportionate, properly funded attempt to reconfigure UK armed forces to meet post Cold War requirements (and not a well-argued but ultimately cynical justification for swingeing cuts which dramatically increased overstretch and torpedoed morale).
Thus the attack on the WTC and Pentagon by about 20 terrorists was unpredictable because of its scale.
What is needed is a recognition that SDR talked the talk (that it was necessary to re-configure the armed forces to meet the needs of a new and less predictable world, with increased emphasis on expensive out-of-area and expeditionary capabilities) but didn't walk the walk.
With war against Afghanistan looming, maybe we need to recognise that the Trident nuclear capability is an expensive luxury, and that Special Forces, Para Battalions, transport aircraft and deployable FJs are more relevant than six modernised tank regiments and maintaining infantry numbers.
If we can't repeat a Granby-sized contribution to an air war, and if UK AD isn't significantly strengthened then SDR and its latest incarnation will have failed to address the requirements of the unstable and unpredictable world in which we now live.
Retain the Jags to 2015 (and then replace them with JAS 39), retain three F3 squadrons in the 'Weasel' role, and order more EFs (six/seven squadrons isn't enough).
To restore capabilities to the 1990 level would apparently cost £10 Bn extra per year.