UK Strategic Defence Review 2015?

[Biggus]

I know that 2015 is still several years away, but with headlines like these:

Austerity May Last Beyond 2020, Says Cameron

Does anyone seriously expect any real increase in the Defence budget as part of the 2015 SDR, especially if we have returned from current overseas Ops by then?

[Lima Juliet]

Yes, I predict the return of the Nimrod MRA5, Harrier GR10, C130P and the Navigator...

[thefodfather]

I predict the long awaited funding for the paddles to enable the few poor souls that are left to try and get the RAF out of a creek that doesn't smell very nice.

[FlyingEagle21]

G4S will be running it all. :P

[Shack37]

Doom, doom, doom until just before the 2015 elections and then some vote catching optimistic good news. Same old, same old. Wouldn't hold out too much hope for Defence though, not enough votes there, unless of course Dave finds another conflict to get into.

[Doctor Cruces]

Shack,

That would be vote catching promises, to be forgotten as soon as the election is over!

Doc C

[Squirrel 41]

SDSR 2016

Will be very interesting, but after the election, so probably 2016. The single biggest programme question will Trident, and this should lead to an interesting debate in the 2015 election.

S41

[iRaven]

I reckon we'll all be ousourced as Security Guards in our spare time...

[Ali Barber]

It won't be worth chasing the military vote. There won't be enough left to make a difference.

[Jimlad1]

Vaguely serious answer time. Much depends on the settlement in the next spending review. If we get the assumed real terms rise, and also inflation remains static then the review is more about confirming the assumptions made in 2010, and tweaking. I'd expect to see more of the same, possibly a wooly worded commitment to MPA, and maybe minor changes.
If funding situation is worse then all cards are off the table.

The SDSR I'm worried about is 2020 - new stuff in service, wheres the money to pay for it to operate it?

[Lockstock]

Exactly.. why waste money on Defence? I mean it's not as though we rely on the Military to give their lives fighting 2 overseas wars, help out striking firemen, fuel drivers and incompetent security companies.

Instead we should spend more public money on asylum seekers, the Olympics and bailing out greedy, corrupt bankers..

[tonker]

Be careful Lockstock, speaking your mind and in doing so agreeing with what the vast majority of people think, will get you put in the "Daily Mail reader/Little Englander" detention pen with a "be silent" note from matron.

[VinRouge]

Regular land army F00ked. Hooligans budget increased. Army will argue large traditional land forces must be maintained, yet with 2 interventions of land forces potentially seen as failures and at best a draw, (at the strat level here, not the small wins we have achieved) I cant imagine they are going to get away lightly. 80,000 seems too many tbh. Territorials will be expanded I expect and called up to deal with humanitarian ops as and when they spring up.

MBT units to go, as will any legacy cold war kit. With FRES canx, it would be interesting to see what happens though, One would have thought a lot of the protective vehicles currently in the desert would suit small highly mobile units.

Mix of network based capable air, sea in connection to spearhead units for raids on terrorist training camps has to be the way forward. Very rapid mobility will also be key. The recent relationship between military might restrained by "ROE" will have to go. It has been an abject failure, and one of the main reasons we failed in Iraq. We could only stay for so long watching an insurgency grow, hiding behind ROE before we lost the support of the local law abiding population surely? If we want to win, we have to relearn how to fight dirty.

Can anyone envisage the political will to invade another country in our lifetimes? I cant.

The SDSR I'm worried about is 2020 - new stuff in service, wheres the money to pay for it to operate it?

I almost suspect that Camerons recent statement is a play at statesmanship. There is a lot of evidence to suggest there will be a boom towards the end of 2014. If you look at Cash holdings of large business, they are massive. THe Special liquidity scheme ends in 2014, meaning the banks will have stopped paying back the BOE and all that liquidity pumped into the system will start to float back (slowly at first) into investment. It is this that will drag us out the mirth and the government know it. Recent statements will have just as much to do with settlement of pensions and other union disputes and a "management of expectations" for todays bad news reference GDP. There is a boom coming in 2015 that will fit in perfectly for the next elections, wait and see. The reversal of QE is going to take a decade to pay back and can be used by the central bank to directly control inflation, rather than brutal rate rises. The inflation we are currently paying for will be taken back at a later stage as the money supply is controlled by reverse QE.

[Heathrow Harry]

Lets hope they are brave enough to answer the real question which is do we wantr/need to be a junior version of the US armed forces with CVNs, SSN's, MBT's, F-35etc etc or are we going to settle for something less?? Like say the Germans

If we want to shadow the Yanks and have full coverage armed services someone is going to have to sell the idea the the great British public and up the cash allocated

I can't see Dave doing it TBH

[Easy Street]

The recent relationship between military might restrained by "ROE" will have to go. It has been an abject failure, and one of the main reasons we failed in Iraq. We could only stay for so long watching an insurgency grow, hiding behind ROE before we lost the support of the local law abiding population surely? If we want to win, we have to relearn how to fight dirty.

Agree. I wouldn't phrase it as "fight dirty" though - I would say apply the appropriate Principle of War, namely "offensive action". We didn't do that in TELIC post-2003 and we haven't done it effectively in HERRICK post-2001. This represents a misuse of military forces, which should not just be plonked passively in hostile territory to be rocketed and shot at. The Libya campaign showed a good deal more strategic aggression and was militarily more successful, not to mention shorter!

While I'm on Clausewitz it's pretty obvious that "selection and maintenance of the aim" was not performed in either TELIC or HERRICK. I'm pretty convinced that senior Army leaders, rather than politicians, were to blame in both instances. Their intention was undoubtedly to carve out a role for a larger proportion of the Army than had been involved in the initial stages of both operations; the end result was perceived failure and the need for large numbers of regular (as opposed to SF) troops being questioned, making them an easy target in SDSR 2010 cuts. The law of unintended consequences...

[Heathrow Harry]

In a Strategic Review presumably they have to think of likely threats

we currently have obvious ones - terrorism, piracy (Afghanistan is reaching the departure lounge)

we have potential threats such as Iran & the Gulf , Falklands maybe

we have the potentially really scarey stuff - Korea, Taiwan or Georgia for example

then we have the stuff that just pops up- hijackings, earthquakes, famine

are we going to have an all round , world-wide reach capability or not???

Lets face it any ship (e.g Type 45) built today will probably still be in service in 40-50 years and I'll bet the C-17s are still around in 20-25 years so you have to take the long term view - which politicians are famous for doing.....

[Ken Scott]

With the increased reliance on reservists to support the regulars this could mean that they are called up to cover things like the security issues at the Olympics, striking public services etc. It would be interesting if a striking fireman (for example) got called up (as a reservist) to cover his own job.

[ORAC]

Grauniad: Trident submarine missiles review to suggest 'stepping down nuclear ladder'

Ousted defence minister Nick Harvey claims military and Whitehall backing for cheaper alternatives

[Courtney Mil]

Or just buy cheaper nuclear weapons. It's all the safety features that make them so expensive, so answer has to be to go for simpler designs without all that fuss.

[Ali Qadoo]

Lions, donkeys and politicians

Anyone expecting government policy in 2015 to be anything other than 'shout loudly and carry a small stick' is likely to be disappointed. After all, it's been like this since Suez so why change a winning formula?*

*Please disable you browser's irony filter