Just a quick thought: will their be lessons learnt and ammendments to SDSR after the operations in Libya?
NURSE
It does look like Libya is heading for fragmentation, will Al Qaeda taking advantage. Likewise Yemen is going downhill fast. Can anyone see the very real dangers in the coming months/years?
Not sure what additional assets we could deploy.
Going back to CINCFLEET's comments, it would appear that practical concerns have been ignored by the professional politicians. The idea of having no fixed wing carrier flying for a decade and then suddenly picking up the baton is perhaps the best example of a decision being made by people who are not very practical.
See the
Harrier axed - bonkers thread.
Or perhaps this explains it:
Rethinking defence cuts: the more things change, the more they stay the same…
So any reversal on cuts would have to be balanced with savings elsewhere. In other words, new cuts. And where would those cuts fall? Well, as analysts including Andrew Dorman point out, the Army would have to be prime candidate. Largely shielded from cuts in the SDSR, surely the Army could lose a few more thousand posts to free up some cash for the RAF and Navy? For much of the SDSR process, that was the MoD’s plan, but the Army cuts were scaled back by the PM.
That last-minute decision skewed the rest of the review and its outcomes, with negative consequences for the other services that are still becoming clear. Awareness of that problem is spreading across Whitehall.
Indeed, the annoyingly well-informed Alex Barker of the FT reports today that even the generals now accept that argument. But Mr Cameron, wary of more bad headlines about sacking Our Boys while they fight in Afghanistan, has said No.
And from Andrew Dorman:
Lessons from Libya
The assumption of conflict avoidance for the next decade allowed the government to announce unprecedented cutbacks to the defence budget which have been exacerbated by earlier mismanagement within the MoD and the previous government’s failure to budget for the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent in the defence budget.
It was therefore to be expected that when the current situation in Libya emerged the government would follow the assumptions of the NSS and keep a low profile (like Germany), evacuating entitled personnel when it could and leaving the rest of the international community to take a lead in confronting the Gaddafi regime.
The government seems to have forgotten its own working assumptions with David Cameron leading calls for a no-fly zone and subsequently committing British forces to support the no-fly zone and engage in attacks on Libyan ground forces.
Therefore the SDSR is out of date. Yes?
Firstly, it needs to reflect on what costs it should now rescind as a result of this experience. The cuts to the FCO are obvious examples. In terms of defence, retaining the four Type-22s and the RAF’s Sentinel force would be beneficial. Whether the Harriers can be returned and at what price is another matter.
Secondly, and perhaps most obviously, bring forward the reductions to the proposed 2020 Force Structure. For example, the planned future army will consist of six brigades of 6,500 personnel each, i.e. 39,000 personnel in total. This is enough to continue the planned Afghanistan rotation of forces until 2015.
Under current planning the army is supposed to be reduced to 95,000 by 2015 which raises the question of what the other 56,000 personnel do.
With a generous allowance for training establishment, headquarters and MoD posts etc, a ratio of one-for-one would suggest we only need an army of 78,000 and that assumes that there are no territorial or reserve forces in these brigades.
Interestingly, a Policy Exchange paper by Lieutenant-General Graeme Lamb and Lieutenant-Colonel Richards Williams produced for the SDSR advocated a smaller army of 75,000 with a much larger and more integrated reserve component. The added benefit would be that this would make free bases for forces returning from Germany and thus reduce the infrastructure costs associated with the withdrawal of the army from Germany.