The fact is that the Army can do its job (whatever that is) by employing relatively inexpensive (in Defence terms) equipment. Amongst the most costly items in the Army's inventory are a Challenger 2 MBT at around £3M each and an AS90 Artillery piece at £1.6M. Now if you decide to get rid of, or seriously downscale, Armour or Artillery capabilities in the Army, the amortized equipment costs of those capabilities would come to about £1B for CR2 and £300M for AS90. If you do the same exercise for the RAF you quickly get to about £15B for Typhoon and £9B and rising for F-35.

Now these numbers have nothing to do with strategic capabilities or Air Power projection, but I suspect the hatchet men in the treasury will be paying even less regard to what capabilities they slash - to them it is simply a numbers reduction exercise.

So CAS finally realising his most precious future assets are under threat is neither "taking the gloves off" or "starting to counter the BS coming from the rest of defence. ". It is a very late recognition that cutting the Army's equipment programs can save well over a Billion, but cutting the pointy jets can save nearly £25B.

The Navy have a couple of obvious targets - CVF at £5B and Trident replacement at anything from £25B - £70B. Cut CVF and JSF is just a bonus saving alongside. Of course Trident replacement depends on this and successive Governments appetite for an independent deterrent. Bottom line is that whereas the Army's future role is clearly up for grabs, the money to be saved in any strategic realignment is chicken feed alongside the massive re-equipment budgets of the Air Force and Navy. The cuts will be aimed at realising the maximum savings, and that money lies between those 2 services, not the Army.

Two's in,

agree with your post, but .......

The 'Amongst' is duly noted, but I'll warrant AH64 costs a lot more than £3M per unit. So does Wildcat

MGD,

I was just coming back to add in an edit that Apache was deliberately discounted as one of the few pieces of defence equipment that the Army is getting tremendous utility and value from, whatever the scenario. And some of those airframes are nearly 10 years old now, so probably aren't worth that much.

Wildcat isn't here yet...

Yes, Defence, and especially air and naval forces are expensive. However, they are not optional items in any credible military capability that seeks to both defend its interests at home and abroad and act as a force for good. I'm not a big fan of that last phrase, but it does appear to be here to stay.

However, if you cut your air and naval capabilities beyond a critical mass, then you have to ask whether or not you may as well just disband the military in total and give the money to the police, intelligence services, foreign office and various international development agencies. Without a decent air and naval capability, the army is pretty much relegated to the Home Guard. They are going nowhere other than very slowly or by charter - assuming that you can get a charter into a war zone without paying eye wateringly high prices which might just make you think back to the wisdom of cutting your other forces. And when they get to wherever it is they are going, they will be very much on their own without any other supporting assets they might enjoy at the moment.

Likewise, without an army, the air and naval forces are not going to win wars outright. We can shape, influence and even define the battlespace, but like it or not, a Typhoon, F-35 or aircraft carrier isn't going to take ground without obliterating it and negating any reason to hold it.

In a nut shell, despite all the infighting, we are all dependent on each other to provide a balanced and credible military capability. There are a few single service functions that can not be achieved outside of their respective services, but on the whole, we are an independent and interdependent set of services, each with our own specialist capabilities. How you use those capabilities should be determined on the basis of military professionals and their political masters conducting a thorough strategic estimate of current and likely future threats. It should not be done on the back of a study by Nigel and Derek in accounts and their band of polyester suited new university bean counters and Sir Humphries who quite frankly think an estimate is something they get from a Polish plumber when the toilet has gone U/S.Cutting the big ticket items on that basis will leave the UK's military capability irrevocably weakened for at least a generation, by which time - and with any luck, those who have foisted this abomination on us will either be pushing up daisies or contemplating what they have done to this once great country.

Defence is a tricky thing to justify to the Nigels and Dereks of this world whose CBE depends on some bottom line on a ledger. Or even to the Waynes and Tracys who when faced with the defence of the country during some of the most unstable times we have seen for a generation is being asked to make the choice between kit for the troops or dole money for the next week in the local boozer. Unfortunately, we work in fairly simple but none the less abstract concepts: rather than balancing the books, our books balance when the same numbers of troops come home as go out on deployment; we have done our jobs not when we have slashed millions at a stroke from a capability we don't understand, but when we wake up each morning knowing that our families are still safe and that what we are doing will at least give our kids a fighting chance of growing up in a decent country.

Unfortunately, all those things cost, and won't get Nigel and Derek a CBE. However, I do hope they listen to the recent timely words from the Defence Select Committee warning of yet another 'gathering storm' as the Nigels and Dereks of the world play poker with the security of this once great nation.

Quite right Melchett; accountants know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Should we really be leaving defence decisions to them?

However, there is a fairly astute observation by Guy Gibson VC in his book 'Enemy Coast Ahead', written before his death in action. Whatever people may say about Gibson as a person, he clearly had more foresight than most and questioned the morality of war - like many who have been in the thick of it. He delivers a lesson that we ignore at our peril.

and in a similar vein

Edmund Burke or George Santayana (take your pick)

Guy Gibson VC:
Well we haven't, that is not the kind of global wars he was referring to presumably. The reason why we haven't hasn't been any great change in "the people themselves", for as he says they forget or more accurately newer generations, too young or unborn then, "forget" what they never truly experienced. The reason for the prolonged peace that we have enjoyed and that he yearned for lies with the very RAF Command in which he served, and latterly the Royal Navy. For it is "the bomb" that has kept the peace, I would suggest. Whether it will continue to do so only time will tell, but the repeated claims that this country does not face foreseeable direct military threats to itself and therefore can run down its military capabilities, including possibly the nuclear deterrent itself, are misguided and dangerous. It is not the RAF that needs to "get it" but the nation itself, lest the schools and hospitals that it prizes above all else end up as smouldering ruins along with everything else.

"The 'Amongst' is duly noted, but I'll warrant AH64 costs a lot more than £3M per unit. So does Wildcat"

As would a Challenger 2...Maybe double that!
The army may not purchase the most expensive equipment, but they do buy quite expensive stuff, and then expend it in very large numbers....Just consider the cost of killing one Taliban sniper with one anti tank round, and then doing it all day, day after day! That soon adds up.



Edited to add: good value in my view, if the alternative is lost life on the allied side!

And whilst proportionally their cost over-runs and delays are no less than other military hardware, that lower initial cost means the headline figure is less.

Terrier anyone?

Good point. In all this discussion about SDSR i haven't heard many mentions of the four letter word that is FRES.