Funnily enough I talked about this very thing with my mate (ex service like me) and my son as we strolled up a mountain just two days ago (he asked me who's going to pay for all the hardware we might be about to use up)
I can't give you chapter and verse (somebody on here will be able to for sure) but sometime in the last 10-20 years (around the time of foot and mouth???) I believe we changed the way we paid for all this overseas intervention stuff (or "wars", as we used to call them).
In a nutshell, they didn't used to come out the defence budget...now they do.
I'm not sure how accurate that is, I'm old (hence increasingly Mr Thicko) and suffering Post Lagavulin Stress Disorder, but I believe there to be an element of fact in that statement.
Which roughly translates to...
Here is X amount of money. Spend it on what you want (wars included) and when its gone, its gone.
More than happy to stand corrected though.
And PA, that's a good input...maybe some reason for optimism. One can but hope.
PS That beast was not (completely) in service when I left in 2003. And now it's going
That stinks to high heaven as well. WTFIGO!