Bastardeux,

I hope many of your friends are also working on what the MOD plans to do in the event of a "yes" vote in the Scottish referendum, which, if it were to happen, would drive a coach and horses through MOD policy for the next 10 years plus - it's called contingency planning, and it's what the military used to do all the time. Whether or not they still do so in this modern day and age...?

prOOne.

I would INCLUDE the present Conservative Party very much within the "liberal" left bracket. Even Maggie referred to her wretched underlings as "wets," and they've gone way downhill since those days. That is why they are hemorrhaging support left (pun intended) right and centre.
Yes, I AM aware how old English/British law is (why shouldn't I be?) Perhaps "regulations" or even "dictacts" might have been a better description. But most people, judging by surging anti so-called "EU" sentiment, would, I'm sure, get my drift.

Pr00ne

Maybe I am wrong, I'm afraid that the position that you adopt is one that I regret to say just rubs me up the wrong way. I have very grave doubts about your defence expertise compared to a number of the other contributors on this forum.

I dont like your politics I'm afraid and I'm sure you probably dont like mine and you dont have to like them. I'm not seeking to convert anyone politically or extol the virtues of one party over another. Thats about the long and short of it, we're never going to agree and I'd rather just leave it at that.

Pr00ne

You clearly have no concept of how it works, those people working on it provide different options for different levels of funding, so it becomes a case of the government choosing the strategy that has been laid out whichever funding level they decide to allocate to defence.

Yes, I suppose you can also throw further decisions on army relocations from Germany, further development of Taranis, firm Type 26 frigate numbers...oh wait, that's a strategic defence review.

BBC News - MPs 'concerned' over defence cuts

What were you saying about it being dead and buried?

In plain English, "do more with less"! How original.

Since before the SDSR, it seems, any criticism of defence cuts posed to whoever is a member of the Government has been met by the same reply "we have the fourth largest defence Budget in the World" quite frankly, while this is always intended to silence criticism, it is I'm absolutely sure a damning comment to make. There is to be sure, a whole heap of explaining to do regarding how we demonstrably have so few assets and personnel, always getting smaller.

pr00ne always points to the credibility of assets and other difficult to deny facts given within the strictest confines of making a point, never placed in any more general or comparative context. Towit, today, and no doubted subject to closer scrutiny in itself, a comparison chart appeared in the Daily Mail, it compared Tanks unit for unit across six countries including the UK. It begins with America, naturally at the top with 10,000 the the second from the bottom of the chart is Switzerland with 380, finally, the UK with 227.

Where frontline aircraft are concerned I believe the comparison is starker, certainly when placed against similar comparison tables of 20 to 25 years ago.

FB:)

I'm sure this has been asked before but does this compare like with like? The "Defence Budget" is about £40Bn but less than third is spent on equipment. A lot of it is pensions and salaries. When you look at it that way, the waste on the likes of Nimrod is a huge percentage.

you have to pay people these days - hence the expenditure on salaries etc etc

Actually for too long we've spent too much on equipment and not enough on people - we never seem to have enough of the PBI around when we need them but we blow zillions on BAe kit that never works

Are you sure pensions come out of the MoD's budget? Nonetheless, your point is entirely valid. The manning cost (per person) for the Indians, the Chinese or the Russians are much, much lower, so they can afford a lot more bods for their buck.

Personnel cost the MoD approximately 33% of its budget and I would guess running costs take up another 3rd again, so what's left for procurement is actually that much.

Yes but my point is, do the headline budgets of other countries include the same things? Our government goes on about this as if we spend £40Bn on kit.

Well a few of you have unearthed some pretty substantial evidence that if Labour are returned in some form then they too will have a version of SDSR, so I suppose that it will happen one way or the other. Point taken.

Roland Pulfrew,

What’s wrong with being a girl? It’s not an insult. I rather guessed that you weren’t though, I just can’t spell moniker…

As regards the EU, my point was that the majority of our rather successful car industry is here precisely because we are in the EU, if we are not then they may as well manufacture at home, or more likely, relocate to an EU country , why be in the UK?

JCB are a shining example of manufacturing success, and they of course are hardly likely to relocate under any circumstances, seeing as they already have a factory in Germany and are building more in India and Brazil.

I was a keen advocate of the Euro, I now share your feelings on the fact that we didn’t join, but I suspect we share the same opinion but for very different reasons!

Stendec5,

So, you are a right wing nut job? Good luck with the BNP or wherever you end up.

Jabba TG12,

Fair enough, I am not here to be liked or to like others, and I am not terribly concerned if I happen to rub you up the wrong way, sorry.

As to my defence expertise, well, I don’t really have any. I flew the F4 for two tours in a very different world a long long time ago, but got out prematurely as I wanted to do other things.

As to my expertise in acting FOR the defence, then there I will have to disagree.

Bastardeux,

I clearly do NOT have a concept of how it works, other than chatting to some of the senior folk involved, both in and out of uniform, but as I alluded to in the para above, my involvement in all this ceased a long, long time ago.

Finningley Boy,

Totals of military kit can be rather pointlessly misleading (particularly if sourced from the Daily Fail!), so what if Switzerland has 380 tanks to our 227? Do they have nuclear powered hunter killer submarines, Strategic nuclear missiles? Do they have the whole myriad of military capabilities that the UK seems to think it needs to keep up. Germany is going down to 225 tanks, Holland has none at all now, so what?


dervish,

In hard cash terms the UK is the 4th largest military spender in the world, even without counting the billions spent from the reserve on Iraq and Afghanistan that do not come from the defence budget.
What that buys us is rather down to the head sheds and top brass who decide such things, I suppose I just react to posts and throw away comments that infer that we spend nothing on the military, which is simply rubbish.

I thought that Saudi Arabia had overtaken us in defence expenditure. In any event the defence budget is not there to subsidize an inefficient industry. How many major projects have been on budget and time in say the last 40 years? Ac wise I can only think of one and even then the MOD PE or whatever they were called tried their best to screw it up.

I would think armoured infantry would have some very choice words to say, if you said that their faces! It is all based on a presumption that the days of state-on-state warfare are gone, or at the very least, the days of sophisticated state vs sophisticated state warfare are gone; a presumption that you only have to look to Ukraine or the Senkaku Islands, to realise is utter bollox.

What happens if a proxy war breaks out between Nato and a Russian or Chinese sponsored state with all the latest mobile SAMs? Suddenly, the Apache has its limitations and there is a distinct lack of heavy armour in the Dutch AO...even I am willing to admit that the infallible doctrine of air power has its limitations, especially when the jets providing close air support are so expensive and so few!

prOOne

Cheap shots = lost argument. Nuff said.

Bastardeux,

I wasn’t intending to question the retention of 227 Challenger2 Main Battle Tanks, merely questioning the point of a Daily Mail list of who has how many tanks.
Your points about sophisticated state on sophisticated state warfare are I suppose precisely why the UK has retained three full up Armoured Brigades in the Army2020 structure. The days of such warfare, if not exactly over, are going to be exceedingly rare, and these ‘proxy wars’ of yours will be almost as rare.

Nuclear armed states tend not to go to war with each other, and we are certainly not going to war with Russia over Crimea (again).

vascodegama,

You may well be right, it will be an ever changing league table after all.

I’m not sure that the defence budget DOES merely subsidize an inefficient industry. The UK has mainly American transport aircraft, German, Belgian and Italian small arms, Belgian and South African artillery ammunition, American AEW, ASTOR and RPAS, Swedish SHORAD radar, Anglo/French/Spanish Tanker Transports and future tactical transports, American multi engine trainers, German Primary Trainers etc etc etc.
And that inefficient industry also just happens to be the second largest exporter of defence equipment around the world, so they are doing something right!

Stendec5,

No, you are mixing up contempt and disregard with a lost argument.

prOOne

I never said merely-simply that we are often forced into procurement which is politically motivated and produces a less than perfect solution.

vascodegama,

A point with which I agree.

A question I've asked before, is the Nuclear deterrent still funded directly from the Treasury? The last time I asked this some pointed out that it doesn't matter, its all part of overall defence spending. But if funded directly through capital expenditure, then it is separate and apart from. But I wonder if that is still the case.

I heard on the news today that the Nato General Secretary has stated that our post-cold war relationship with Russia has altered.

FB:)

it went back into the defence budget when the coalition came in I think

hard to argue it is CAPEX when they've been in service for 21 years...........

prOOne.

I am not mixing anything up. You have LOST the argument. Full stop.
Your feeling "contempt and disregard" (my my, you must be SO important) toward me is, though amusing, both welcome and reassuring. To know that I am at the very opposite end of the spectrum to a nauseating insect like you makes me happy indeed.
Don't bother to reply as I will no longer view any post with your stain on it.
Job done. I feel somehow cleaner already.
Ahh, Spring is in the air. Which is more than can be said for the once mighty RAF. Oops, there I go again...

Sorry for the further thread drift but:

pr00ne

Well apart from the costs of relocation I suppose. It also assumes that by leaving the EU we are also out of the EFTA; there is no reason to suggest that this would be the case. If the EU did force us out or imposed import tariffs on 'UK' goods going into the EU that is a dangerous game. The UK now exports a greater % of goods to the ROW over the EU (albeit only by a margin of 4%) and as EU has a circa £5 billion trade surplus with the UK then just why would they risk damaging that benefit when they are trying to pull their economies out of recession?

I guess no-one really knows what will happen, least of all the politicians (hence Cleggy's scare tactics last week), but as one of the 10 largest economies in the world I think we should have the confidence our entrepreneurs, our engineers, our businessmen and above all else ourselves and just leave the EU (and the EHCR). Lots of smaller countries seem to cope well enough without the straight-jacket of the EU.