More articles:
The Great Harrier Carrier Scandal
Yet there is David Cameron trotting out this rot in the Foreword to the SDSR white paper, which was also signed by somebody named Nick Clegg: “In the short term, there are few circumstances we can envisage where the ability to deploy airpower from the sea will be essential. That is why we have, reluctantly, taken the decision to retire the Harrier aircraft, which has served our country so well. But over the longer term, we cannot assume that bases for land-based aircraft will always be available when and where we need them.”
So, the UK, alone among the leading powers, will get rid of its carriers and their jets with a fully functioning air wing potentially not available until 2020 and beyond? What’s the reality behind the scandalous situation, in which the country that invented the Harrier, which deployed the revolutionary aircraft and the ships they were meant to fly from to such deadly effect in the Falklands War, doesn’t need them anymore? The Italians, the Spanish and the Americans, as well as the Thais and the Indians will continue to fly them for quite some time. They must all be singing from a different hymn sheet to the UK and have no grasp of strategic reality at all?
The SDSR white paper states: ‘The Invincible Class carriers were designed principally to meet Cold War threats on the high seas, with short-range jets providing air-defence for a naval task group, without the ability to interoperate aircraft with our key allies and whose primary mission was anti-submarine warfare.’ In one feeble paragraph of spin, the SDSR overlooks the remarkable multi-role evolution of the Invincible Class ships from their original ASW role. Their Sea Harrier fighters defeated the Argentinean Air Force, the same jets rode shotgun overhead as the British Army pursued its forlorn peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.
The Sea Harrier FA2 was the most lethal fighter jet in the UK’s inventory for many years and as such flew Combat Air Patrols over southern Iraq in the late 1990s. During the Iraq War of 2003, acting as a helicopter carrier, Ark Royal sent ashore Royal Marines, too, while Illustrious evacuated British citizens from war-torn Lebanon just a few years later. In countless missions since the Cold War the Invincible Class proved themselves in every role EXCEPT Anti-Submarine Warfare (a role which nonetheless they could still do)
As for lacking ‘the ability to interoperate aircraft with our key allies’, that is just plain nonsense. In recent years American, Italian and Spanish Harriers have flown from the Royal Navy’s Invincible Class ships, due to the fact that the UK’s own Harriers were committed to flying Combat Air Support (CAS) for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Isn’t it also amazing that the Italian Navy’s new aircraft carrier, the ITS Cavour, is a development of the Invincible Class, while the Spanish have just commissioned into service the Juan Carlos, another ship that owes a lot to the Invincibles?
How did this sorry story come about? There are some disturbing claims circulating about the skulduggery of the RAF, which has retained it distinctly useless Tornados and super-expensive Typhoon fighters while volunteering the Harrier for the chop. The ultra-capable Harrier GR9, two squadrons of which formed the Naval Strike Wing, has life in it until 2021. However, since the Navy gave up the Sea Harrier in 2006, to save money in order to invest in the new carriers, the RAF has physically owned all the aircraft, hence the ability of the RAF to deal a death blow to Fleet Air Arm fixed-wing squadrons. Yet the saving if the Tornados were cut would have been £7.5 billion, while the ditching of the Harrier saves only £1.1 billion. On top of that the RAF will have to spend £1.4 billion on new engines by 2014 for the Tornados to keep flying. The Tornado also needs other investment in its operational capabilities to remain relevant. Whereas all 79 Harriers have, thanks to £800 million spent since 2005 on upgrades, the capability to operate both from the sea and over Afghanistan, only 31 Tornado GR4s out of 135 are fit to handle the Afghan mission, and of course have no carrier capability at all, and never will have.
Here is another one, (contains one or two errors, but the message is clear enough) from
The American Spectator:
Senior officers have said British forces would struggle to mount even a small-scale military intervention as the cupboard for resources is bare.
They have also warned that there is little chance of even being able to mount rescue operations similar to that which Cumberland undertook in the future. Service chiefs have also warned the Prime Minister that destroying the Harrier jet force and scrapping Ark Royal would put personnel at considerable risk. The Army has just one battalion on standby for emergency operations and this is said to lack the correct equipment for training.
As well as other losses the Navy's amphibious landing force will be cut in half by the mothballing of the landing ship Bulwark and other craft.
One senior officer was quoted as saying: "We certainly could not do an operation like Sierra Leone again because we have no fast jets. Even to achieve and sustain a foothold ashore would be difficult." Another senior Navy officer said, "The locker is not just empty it's completely threadbare."
H. G. Wells suggested for his epitaph: "I told you so, you bloody fools!"
And in
this linked article:
It is as if the weird Conservative-Liberal-Democrat coalition of Cameron and Clegg is simply unable to take sovereignty or national security seriously or to realize the obvious fact that the world may be moving into a new phase of dangerous instability.
It is true that much of the fault lies with the previous Labour Governments. A decade of the socialism of Blair and Brown has left the British economy a shambles. Yet even this doesn't wash as an excuse when one considers the stunning fact that Britain, allegedly too poor to defend itself, has actually increased its Foreign Aid budget, with the equivalent of about $1.6 billion going to India alone -- enough to pay for a large part of the Indian space program, or perhaps its aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine program -- the Indian Navy has 56,000 personnel compared to a projected 30,000 for the Royal Navy, as well as about twice the number of ships.
Among innumerable other examples of horrendous waste are the London Olympics and the six-figure pay packets of not only senior national civil servants but also of local government functionaries whose responsibilities revolve round such weighty matters as garbage collection.
Defense has, throughout history, been the first (some would say almost the only) justification of government. The history of the early Middle Ages shows peasants putting up with all manner of tyrannical lords, tax-collectors and robber barons, so long as they kept their part of the bargain and supplied defense and protection. The peasants revolted when their overlords lost the will or ability to defend them. Perhaps Cameron should read some of the accounts of knights in full armor being roasted on spits by the common folk they had failed to defend.
Cameron may have it brought home to him that there is more to leading Britain than membership of the Bullingdon drinking club, a cheesy smile, pretty wife, and cunning in party management.
From the
Telegraph:
Will Dr Liam Fox reopen the box?
It gets worse. Next Friday, as Mr Cameron arrives in Brussels to discuss the European Union’s response to the Libyan crisis, HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s flagship and last remaining aircraft carrier, will be formally decommissioned, two years ahead of schedule.
That sad ceremony, like the redundancy programme, is the bitter fruit of last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review. To call the SDSR controversial would be a grotesque understatement. Field Marshal Lord Bramall; Major General Julian Thompson; Admiral Sir Jeremy Black; Lord Ashdown – the roll call of those who have criticised the SDSR is heavy with military honours.
Yesterday, Sir Laurence Martin, a former head of the Chatham House think tank, said the review amounted to “panicked asset-stripping”. Jim Murphy, the Labour shadow defence secretary, joined the chorus, calling for a “wider reassessment of the assumptions on which defence policy has been based”.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The SDSR was supposed to prepare Britain and its Armed Forces for an unpredictable world, anticipating crises and equipping us to respond.
The bedrock on which British defence stands is British foreign policy. Soldiers, ships and planes all exist to promote and defend our interests around the globe. So what is our foreign policy?
If we’d had a working aircraft carrier, would it really be steaming towards the North African coast, ready to project British power and values into sovereign Libyan territory? Are we still that sort of country?
Some of the public reaction to the Libyan crisis suggests that many people believe the answer should be yes. Mr Cameron’s vacillations suggest his answer is: not sure yet.
The SDSR was also supposed to make the big decisions about the Services, their structure, size and mission. In fact, it deferred many major questions, launching a small armada of reviews, commissions and studies. One was a study of “force generation” ratios, the way the Services produce deployable units. Today, an Army of 100,000 can sustain a frontline force of around 10,000 in Afghanistan. Improve the force generation ratio and you need a smaller standing Army, an outcome as financially attractive as it is politically toxic. Likewise the deferred decisions about which military bases around Britain will close: announcements are due later this year.
After the article goes all over the place, like claiming that HMS
Queen Elizabeth will not enter service until 2020, or that
Illustrious will be unable to embark Harriers. Harriers are the THE issue here.