Last Wednesday, on the same day we allowed UK missiles to be used against Russia, the Defence Secretary announced a round of defence cuts. It reminded me of action movies where the hero lays their weapon down to make it a fair fight before vanquishing the villain in a bloody yet noble manner. In real life, however, you just get stabbed.
From a Royal Naval perspective, we lost five ships to the Treasury knife. Two amphibious landing ships (HMS Albion and Bulwark – LPDs), two Wave-class tankers from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) and one Type 23 Frigate. They were all old, some were in poor repair and none had the crew to operate them. Low-hanging fruit, one might say.
Between these ships and the helicopters and Watchkeeper drones that were deleted, Defence will save £500m over five years. This equates to 0.17 per cent of the defence budget over the same period – or as someone else calculated, 4.5 hours of NHS spending. For the sake of a rounding error, we have eviscerated our ability to conduct amphibious operations. You can talk about the changing character of warfare and so on, but stripped back, that’s what happened on Wednesday.
Apart from the terrible timing, I can think of six ideas that reinforce the general sense of strategic incontinence created by this announcement.
First, what is the plan? We are being told to wait for the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and all will become clear. OK, that’s fair enough. But why then are we still axing stuff as part of an in-year spending review? Shouldn’t that be part of the plan as well? It makes ‘wait for the review’ sound like a can-kicking exercise.
Last Wednesday, on the same day we allowed UK missiles to be used against Russia, the Defence Secretary announced a round of defence cuts. It reminded me of action movies where the hero lays their weapon down to make it a fair fight before vanquishing the villain in a bloody yet noble manner. In real life, however, you just get stabbed.
From a Royal Naval perspective, we lost five ships to the Treasury knife. Two amphibious landing ships (HMS Albion and Bulwark – LPDs), two Wave-class tankers from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) and one Type 23 Frigate. They were all old, some were in poor repair and none had the crew to operate them. Low-hanging fruit, one might say.
Between these ships and the helicopters and Watchkeeper drones that were deleted, Defence will save £500m over five years. This equates to 0.17 per cent of the defence budget over the same period – or as someone else calculated, 4.5 hours of NHS spending. For the sake of a rounding error, we have eviscerated our ability to conduct amphibious operations. You can talk about the changing character of warfare and so on, but stripped back, that’s what happened on Wednesday.
Apart from the terrible timing, I can think of six ideas that reinforce the general sense of strategic incontinence created by this announcement.
First, what is the plan? We are being told to wait for the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and all will become clear. OK, that’s fair enough. But why then are we still axing stuff as part of an in-year spending review? Shouldn’t that be part of the plan as well? It makes ‘wait for the review’ sound like a can-kicking exercise.