UK Defence Policy question
 

I was reading yesterday about the planned draw down of Leuchars and the flit of the Typhoons to Lossiemouth by end 2014. I also noted that the TGRF will by the end of 2015 be down to two squadrons with an imbedded Training Flight. This will be replaced by a single joint R.A.F./R.N. squadron of F35Bs. What with the reduction of the Army to a force of 82,000 supported by and increase of 15,000 Territorials (Army Reserve as it'll be known) has got me thinking oonce again about the politician's invariable claim that we have the fourth largest Defence Budget in the world.

Without going into the various details of how one thing balances against another in attempts to make direct comparisons, is it now the case, as George Osborne said he wanted to do, that the Nuclear Deterrent is no longer funded by direct Capital spending? and therefore the cost of it is now entirely found from within the ever shrinking fourth largest defence budget in the world?:confused:

FB:)

GR4 situation in 2015 is predicated on the assumption Op Herrick will be finished - as happened with the Harrier force, it will become undeployable on a long-term basis with just two squadrons. Post 2020 assumes Typhoon will be able to pick up most of GR4 current tasking - but there's still a lot of capability to add to Typhoon before that happens. A lot of assumptions...

Could the Middle East Air Force be on the way back? MQs in the Gulf? Fixes the two-squadron problem...!

Budget numbers can be utterly unrelated to numbers of serving personnel if you find you waste billions each year and hardly ever deliver anything useful to time and cost.

Just saying ........... ;)

Since SDSR, most times that "the defence budget" has been discussed, the costs of Successor have been treated as part of it and not separate, eg House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 May 2012 (pt 0001) ,
Trident spending to account for one third of defence budget within a decade - Telegraph , and http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets...Term_Blues.pdf

It's up to you if you want to consider the defence budget to have been cut by SDSR and made to include Successor, or cut even more but not made to include Successor. From the Treasury's view, the distinction is irrelevant; they hold funding lines for elements of Successor and funding lines for the rest of defence, and options can be taken against any of them without anyone being concerned over whether it comes from the 'Defence Budget' or not. Similarly, if the entirety of Successor was cancelled tomorrow, the funding would not automatically be shared between the 'rest of defence' (although you can guarantee that the Chiefs would see an opportunity to argue that we needed some more conventional forces).

Another reason that the Treasury isn't interested in the distinction is that the MOD hasn't yet decided what will and won't be considered to be part of the capital cost of Successor anyway. House of Commons - Defence Committee: Supplementary written evidence from the Ministry of Defence shows that the cost of paying Rolls Royce to develop the PWR3 reactor might not be included, probably since it is expected that this reactor will also be used in the MUFC (the replacement for Astute).

I would also have though that 44 F35Bs would been sufficient to find two squadrons out of. Then again how many are going to O.E.U. and O.C.U. which will likely be based in the states. I'm convinced that the U.K. political elite have convinced themselves that the only military challenges ahead will come from primitively equipped insurgents in wastelands with no air force of any to speak of. That they have decided to steer clear of Syria for now on account of the presence of a reliable air defence element says a lot about the main stream politicians outlook on future Defence and Security requirements. They are eager enough to act as though they carry a big stick but are increasingly being forced to face up to the fact that they don't.

FB

Maybe the UK political elite are 'minded' that if you just have 6 aircraft and 6 crews (pilots or whatever), it means you have 6 deployable assets. And who am I to argue? They're in charge so they must be right.

.I would hope it says far more about engaging in military intervention in local conflicts where today's bad guys turn out to be tomorrow's popularly elected government, and the conversely today's good guys become a now very well equipped jihadist faction. If you think the politicians are capable of sufficient joined up thinking to associated a deficient military capability with a current threat you probably haven't been paying attention. Military action today is a function of being re-elected or justifying cuts/increases to budgets.

Courtney's disappointingly close to the truth there. I remember reading an extract from Hansard when some bestarred officer was being questioned in Parliament.

One MP actually said something along the lines of "you want us to order 232 Typhoons, but you've said by 2015 you'll only have 100 qualified pilots. Who's going to fly all the rest of them?"

I admired his restraint, assuming the Hansard text was accurate.

The operative word to me is Policy.
I foolishly imagined that the defence of the nation was the very thing our government was sworn to achieve.
Epic FAIL>:mad:

There's a few things that I think are becoming increasingly obvious (and that are driving UK Defence Policy:

• The possibility of future large scale "Nation State" warfare is considered remote - at least in the developed western world
• The probability of on-going or new low intensity interventions that UK could be involved in is relatively high
• The likelihood of the UK acting independently in any future conflicts is low
• 9/11 is still fresh enough in the mind to mean that homeland point defence remains a priority
• UK plc still wants to be recognised globally as a "player" (G8, UN perm sec council member, etc)

With the above being said the UK Defence posture will continue to evolve much as it is doing now and that means:

• Many fewer FJ's, MBT's, frigates, etc
• Ever increasing reliance on multi role platforms and smaller more highly deployable forces
• Acceptance that many capabilities considered core until relatively recently will no longer be so (and that we would expect close allies to provide those same capabilities if actually needed)
• Further moves away from manned aircraft to UAV's
• retention of the Nuclear deterrent

FWIW I firmly believe we will eventually get a small force of F-35's but I don't believe the Carriers will survive the next SDSR. GR4 will be pensioned off prematurely leaving us even more exposed when it comes to strategic effect (Typhoon is never going to truly cut it in this arena despite what some might want to believe).

As for the supposed shift back to East of Suez then I see this as nothing more than a relatively lame attempt to shift a few dozen Typhoons onto Gulf states.

All my opinion of course!

What I'd say is, if the money we spend to make us the fourth largest spenders on defence and its all well spent, it is clearly going to some less obvious and less visible but vital areas.

FB

Correct. First things first. Without funding, a "policy" is only an aspiration. At the moment, one of MoD's key policies is to waste money!