There are no circumstances I believe in which the armed forces will 'expand'. ...The whole emphasis is to downsize, save money and unless the homeland is affected directly, that's how it's likely to continue.
O-D,
I am unfortunately forced to agree with you that the emphasis is on down-sizing to save money. However, this is where the bean counters, and by implication the politicians who are driving them, have it wrong and quite frankly demonstrate their monumental ignorance of anything that doesn't look like a bottom line on a balance sheet.
For a start, we are in the process of 'allegedly re-equipping' with the latest high-tech capabilities. It doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to work out that the unit cost of these capabilities will increase as the numbers we order go down.
To take a hypothetical example, we buy 232 Typhoons at £ X million per ac; politicians and Joe Public are outraged that we should be spending X million per ac, so we reduce the numbers to cut costs. Unfortunately, industry has already spent £ Y million in developing said platform and their shareholders are keen to recoup costs and make a profit. The end result of all this is that whilst over all costs might appear to come down with a reduced order, the relative costs of each ac then becomes £ X+5 million per ac and relative value for money per ac goes down, with Joe Public becoming even more incensed that they have less to spend on benefits and the lefties even more outraged that they have less to spend on propping up various 3rd world defence budgets.
However, the real issue with what is going on in Defence in general and with the Air Force specifically is that re-structuring and re-positioning for 21st century threats, space, cyber warfare and UCAVs is without a doubt going to be eye-wateringly expensive. If that is the direction the govt assess we need to be moving in, then fine. But if you try doing that on the cheap, you will undoubtedly find yourself on the end of a whipping from some 18 yr old cyber guru sitting in China or Russia armed with little more than a decent computer, an encyclopedic knowledge of geekery and licence from a foreign intelligence service to cause chaos amongst western infidels.
There is absolutely no way, that as we push into the next generation of military capabilities that we are going to be able to skimp or save money by cutting platforms if you want a credible capability. And arguably, with much of our strategic national and financial infrastructure dependent on 1s and 0s, the internet and comms systems, we really can't afford to skimp here. Failure to spend here will result in a whole lot more pain than having grounding aircraft fleets for lack of maintenance over the years. And this is before you even take into account that you still need to maintain a half decent traditional military capability to act as a deterrent and deliver hard power where necessary. They may well have thought it through and come up with some sort of new 'strategy', but frankly, I'm not convinced that their logic is entirely in step with the reality of the situation.
Oh and by the way O-D, I suggest you pop down to Argos and get a treadmill - stick the hounds on it first thing in the morning and go back to bed. It's far too cold to be out that early.