"The solution is not to cancel projects - the solution is to get more money and employ smarter procurement methods." That would be the best solution, yes. It would be my preferred solution. But it's not going to happen. More money to defence will not happen unless and until it's too late, and when we're fighting for our lives. That's why Drayson went motor-racing, I suspect.
Smarter procurement would also be laudable, but the very concept has been hijacked by risk-averse engineers who think that the term equates to sloughing off all support and upgrade activity to a single monolithic and monopolistic supplier.
This doesn't just seem like pie in the sky.
In the real world, budgets will continue to dwindle, and fighting for increases that will never come will prevent the radical restructuring that is required to maintain the best possible overall capability.
You have two choices. The first is to sacrifice real world warfighting capabilities, force structure and force levels and to rob the current equipment budgets in order to pay for glamorous, high profile, big ticket prestige programmes.
Some of those are essential, and some are merely nice to have, but should be judged unaffordable.
The forces have to be equipped using the money allocated by the democratically elected government. You and I might wish to see higher spending. We might even recognise that that would require higher taxation. But it ain't going to happen.
And the question: "On what are we going to spend this limited and inadequate budget" requires an analysis of priorities and needs, and then needs to be answered with a list of what we need to spend money on. Insisting that we need more money will be fruitless, and will merely ensure that the cuts made are decided on the basis of political and not military requirements, influenced by whichever service chiefs manage to shout loudest.
They won't give us a full set of clubs. While we're arguing that we need the full set to be funded, they're selling off clubs without reference to the player as to which he needs, and are buying new clubs based on what the sports shop and the caddy are shouting about, rather than on the basis of what the player needs to play a normal round. We'll end up with a few rusty irons (7, 8 and 9) and a couple of high tech carbon fibre drivers, with no mid-range clubs, no putter, no tees and no balls!
GBZ,
I have every sympathy with the need for traditions and heritage, and find it all personally inspiring. I don't want our armed forces to become a tradition-blind force along the lines of the Canadian model.
But the money isn't there, however much you and I would like it to be, and there must come a time when tough choices have to be made. How small does the RAF frontline have to be before you'd make the choice between the Reds and a frontline squadron? I think that we're past that point, and I seriously doubt whether the two high profile medal winners today were inspired by the efforts of the Reds.
Nor do I think that the queue of recruits for the Royal Navy would evaporate if HMS Victory was sold off to become an exhibit in some Disney theme park, and certainly not if its upkeep was paid for from heritage and culture funds, rather than from the defence budget.