As Biggus says, the MOD should be wary of anything that causes valuable personnel to leave.
Here's another
Telegraph article:
Cutting Britain's defence budget to pay other bills is a false economy
A free people, George Washington said, must be constantly awake against the insidious wiles of foreign influence. At any moment, from any quarter, trouble may pounce to put the sovereignty of the nation under threat. Defending the realm demands eternal vigilance.
Yet in this particular kingdom we are nodding off, distracted by the agonies of a financial crisis and the positioning of leaders vying for power. A time of great uncertainty abroad is met by political indifference at home.
Climate change and resource shortages, to cyber-warfare and disorderly states, to Islamist terrorism and international criminal networks, the dangers are multiplying. And then there are the unknown unknowns, the things we don't know that we don't know that kept Donald Rumsfeld up at night. Thirty years from now, who is to say that Russia will not have reverted to its expansionist ways, or that a nuclear-armed Caliphate of Waziristan will not be parked where Pakistan used to be?
Which is what makes British foreign policy, and our capacity to implement it, such a vital part of what a government does. It remains essential to us that our diplomatic effort be played out in the international premier league.
Only the other day, I was talking to a former US Naval Aviator who said....
No money = No toys and it doesn’t matter how much anybody screams. And I’m sorry if this sounds arrogant but if you aren’t bringing something real to a coalition, then at the military level you aren’t worth listening to. That said, I really think that the British have a viewpoint that the Americans need to hear at times.
I think this underlines the value of CVF. This was in the context of naval aviation issues post
Sea Jet.
On a naval theme, this
Proceedings Story from the US Naval Institute asked the heads of various Navies what they see as the main challenges they face. There are responses from the heads of the Navies of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Croatia, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and finally, the UK.
Our own First Sea Lord comments:
The most significant maritime security threat facing the United Kingdom is the complacency that flows from ignorance about the importance of the sea. Sea blindness is endemic in the UK and across the western world and leads to a lack of appreciation of the full extent of maritime threats to global security, which could be allowed to develop if unchecked. These threats range from the expansionist policies of emerging nation states to the criminal activities of pirates and people traffickers.
If anyone is still reading this, this video (from YouTube) about the Canadian naval part of the war on terror (sic) reflects the activities of all the Western Navies - including the RN.
Operation
Apollo:
part one