Despite the rather pathetic political fighting about the word ‘cut’ it is obvious to everyone that the public sector is going to be facing tough times and defence isn’t going to be any different. All three parties are starting to lay the ground, put out tentative feelers to gain reaction and generally drop heavy hints about what their plans might be. As the argument moves on from whether there will need to be cuts or not to what and how fast to cut the need to try and make some sense out of their positions becomes important for anyone with even a passing interest in defence matters.
It’s no secret that the Government and opposition defence teams are not of a particularly high calibre and so we should not expect too much in the way of considered thought from any of them. A flurry of announcements from think tanks and MP’s has given rise to the usual sensationalist nonsense in the mainstream media but in fairness to them, the source material was hardly inspiring.
Liberal Democrats
In a report on how to tackle the UK’s deepening financial crisis Vince Cable published a report using the think tank Forum as a vehicle. In the wide ranging report Vince Cable suggested cancelling Typhoon Tranche 3, MRA4, A400, the Defence Training Review contract and the proposed Trident replacement. The report also recognises that as a percentage of GDP the defence budget is likely to remain stable at about 2.7%
Conservative
Blundering into the debate this week, George Osborne (Shadow Chancellor) made an ill conceived comment about possible defence cuts. After a speech about a possible future budget he was asked about specifics and to the dismay of many he cited the Typhoon, CVF and A400 as potential areas for cuts. It is evident that Defence, traditionally perceived as having strong support from the conservatives (although the reality is actually far from the misty eyed perception), is not immune from cuts, unlike health and international development.
Singling out equipment projects for cuts pre empts the Conservatives already announced Strategic Defence and Security Review and the comments must have come as an unwelcome surprise for Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary.
New Labour
As the party in power Labour have to be more circumspect and won’t discuss specific programmes but in what was billed as a major speech this week, Bob Ainsworth, the Secretary of State for Defence, stated the importance and priority of Afghanistan and that he could not exclude major shifts in how the budget is used following the governments announced strategic defence review.
Greenpeace
Looking at a report from Greenpeace you know before you get past the front cover what the thrust of the argument is going to be but jumping on the same bandwagon as the others the report highlights the so called hidden costs of the Trident replacement and CVF. The report is titled ‘In the Firing Line’ and is endorsed by former Defence Secretary, Michael Ancram. In fact, it is actually a well researched report and well worth a read, even if you might not agree with its conclusions. I wholeheartedly agree with some of its arguments but not others.
Because Trident is a strategic decision whose costs will substantially fall outside the conventional defence budget I have decided to leave comment to another post.
The Typhoon, CVF and A400 are easily the most high profile and therefore draw more fire than other programmes which are equally problematical. The Typhoon Tranche 3a order for 40 airframes (including replacements for the 24 we diverted to Saudi Arabia) has been placed and represents the last of our order. Therefore only Tranche 3b can be cancelled, even though it hasn’t been ordered and is not likely to be either.
If we cancel the A400 we would still have spent hundreds of billions of pounds and the requirement for tactical transport aircraft isn’t going away any time soon as we have covered in a number of posts, neither the C17 nor C130 meet the need.
Although we support the cancellation of the CVF and JCA we recognise it would be difficult and likely involve many penalty payments, although we believe that with some hard negotiation and pragmatism on behalf of the MoD and BAe the impact to both would be minimised.
All three parties recognise the need for a dramatic performance improvement in the performance of the equipment acquisition process but as is typical of the uninformed arguments on this subject they tend to concentrate on the same old hobby horses like cutting civil servants.
One thing is certain, there are hard times ahead.
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6 Comments
There are indeed hard times ahead for defence – now if only we could get the politicians to drop the BS about “punching above our weight” then the average service person would be a lot safer !
A question though – if you support cancellation of CVF / JCA – would you support a commercial buy of a smaller carrier built in a foreign dockyard (a couple of Italian Cavour class for example) and a fitting the remaining Harrier GR7A/9 with radar ? Flat-top’s are still amazingly versatile platforms, we are still an island nation, and 90+ % of our trade still arrives by sea…….
I don’t see what war we would ever use the Carriers in, so cant support them.
Either its a war we would be fighting on our own, or a war we would be fighting with US support.
If we have US support, the first thing that’s likely to be is a super carrier battle group, which makes our carriers redundant.
If we are fighting it on our own, I dont see what advantage 36 F-35′s bring to justify the cost.
Most middle powers have or would have the capability to render them impotent, if not outright annihilate them.
Had the Argentinians spent the 28 days, between their invasion and our fleets arrival, building a fast jet capable airstrip on the Falklands we wouldn’t have stood a chance, that still applies with 36 F35′s, hell they don’t have to build it, we did….
And if we are fighting against a bottom tier power, then an airforce is nice, but hardly an absolute requirement.
For any war we are liable to fight, I think we need a deep strike capability that can best met by a long range submarine launched missile, Tomahawk for example, and flat deck launched helicopters.
My suggestion would be to turn the carriers into large helicopter carriers, with the possibility of buying some cheaper aircraft to operate off them, like some new sea harriers.
If we are forced into war, destroy key enemy infrastructure with a submarine launched missile barrage then use our fleet of helicopter carriers and ampibious assault ships to land our forces with a view to creating an air defence bubble as quickly as possible.
Why maintain an expensive Fleet Air Arm when you can simply launch dozens of missiles at every airfield the enemy has.
For the cost of the two carrier airwings we could have another 6 Astutes.
The only capability I can really see we lose is the ability to fight a sustained fleet on fleet action in the high seas, but if we ever need to fight that war again, we’re back at a war economy situation.
Dominic
I agree with much of what you say in your comment, but not all of it. I wonder, have you served in the RN ?
As I said, flat-tops bring flexibility, they can be helo carriers for ASW / ASuW in the littorals, “commando carriers” or “strike carriers” …etc…..
My main thought though, is that without carriers you have no defence in depth against the air threat, be that subsonic, supersonic ASM’s or enemy aircraft. And although as US SecDef Gates keeps stating, we must not be stuck in “next war-itis” we must also not forget that we can not forecast the next conflict, and there are many nations that we could butt up against that have a far more credible air threat than the Argies did in 82. So I would rather see a sub-sonic Harrier with its very capable “look down-shoot down” radar, especially if carrying the new long range ramjet powered AAM, and Helo based AEW than nothing at all. And don’t forget in the Falklands we would not attack the Argentine mainland, so who is to say that in the next unforseen conflict we can not ‘saturate’ the enemies homeland with Tomahawk attacks ?
If we need to fight a major war again (what constitutes major? Whats the definition of Afghanistan ?) we will fight it with what we have, by the time the economy is on a ‘war footing’ it will all be over !
“I agree with much of what you say in your comment, but not all of it. I wonder, have you served in the RN ?”
No, I did look at joining the RAF Regiment as an officer when I was in my early 20′s, but could never build up the required fitness levels, mostly because of a few minorish cross country youth injuries, but, what ya gonna do.
Me being under the age for signing up, and, well, an idiot, still try, which I why I spent most of last night trying not to scream in pain as my calf spasmed wildly waking me up at 3am.
“there are many nations that we could butt up against that have a far more credible air threat than the Argies did in 82.”
Thats my point as well.
The americans can saturate almost any enemy airforce simply by bringing more and more carriers.
We cant, we can deploy 36 aircraft and thats it. We couldnt use them within range of the airforce of any middle power, they’d be overran by numbers alone.
Our harriers were useful because the Argies couldnt bring their forces to bear, if the Falklands had been a bit closer to the mainland, or the Argentinians had longer ranged aircraft, or more air to air fuelers, we wouldnt have stood a chance, even if we had built the 1960′s CVA.
The key issue was we could stay out of their range, not that we could beat them with our aircraft.
The new carriers wont change that dynamic, if we move within the range of a home airforce, it will overwhelm us.
We’d need multiple supercarriers to change that.
I was probably hasty calling for the FAA to be cut, but it should be reduced to a force protection role, long range radar to dectect incoming aircraft, and some harrieresque aircraft to operate of the decks of the flat tops, working with the type 45′s to destroy any incoming airthreat.
Thats a role I think we can do, and that does have the advantage of having something for a fleet on fleet battle.
“And don’t forget in the Falklands we would not attack the Argentine mainland, so who is to say that in the next unforseen conflict we can not ’saturate’ the enemies homeland with Tomahawk attacks ?”
Wouldnt or couldnt?
We can speculate that at some point the Soviets would have stepped in if we’d been altering the regional situation in any serious way.
But what we’re we going to attack the Argentine Mainland with? The Fleet wouldnt have stood a chance if it moved to attack, because we wouldnt have been fighting six aircraft with 90 seconds till home, we’d have been fighting over a hundred with many minutes to line up targets and destroy them.
Apart from that, we could have torpedoed ships in harbour?
Thats kind of my point, even now, with a bit of spending on the Argentine Airforce, it could be expected to engage one of our future carrier battle groups and its airgroup close to the coast, and win.
“If we need to fight a major war again (what constitutes major? Whats the definition of Afghanistan ?) we will fight it with what we have, by the time the economy is on a ‘war footing’ it will all be over !”
I was thinking like the world wars, or the Korean and Vietnam Wars, or Aghanistan, rather than Suez or the Falklands, a long war in which we might be required to replenish losses
Anyway, back to your original question.
We probably cant cancel the CVA’s now, Labour will have made sure of that to further naff up the Tories, so no, we shouldnt buy the Cavour Class, but we should do what we can to make the carriers troop transports with force protection airwings.
Which after a quick wiki, seems to be what the Cavour is, sort of.
I thought i would throw my opinion into the Mix on this issue, The lesson was well learned when fighting a war at sea carrier air power is essential and so is AEW. If we had the Ark things would have been very ugly for the Argentine’s, we could have conducted strikes on their home air-fields and done quite a bit of damage to the infrastructure. Furthermore with gannets we could have had a more effective AEW capability versus none so we could have had a radar screen and intercepted any bogies hundreds of miles from the task force. I would also argue the point that the war never would have happened if we had kept the Ark in service. Carriers are powerfull assets that also act to deter aggression, just look what happens when a USN carrier appears in a region people tend to appear at the table to talk.
It’s all well and good saying the mighty USN will be there to help but who knows in 10-15-50 years time what our relationship would be like. All it takes is the CIC to say no we will not provide a carrier to help as it’s not our problem or we have no intrest.
The point you are making about 36 F-35B’s not being very many aircraft. That is being blind to the fact that those aircraft are concentrated in one place, there are only a few airforces out there that have and will have 36 fighters of a similar standard. Furthermore they cannot concentrate them in the same manner and have to have them spread out to defend the rest of the nation.
In the case of Argentina they would need to gather an airforce of around 70 odd to equal a single CVF. Why you may think the answer is simple they have a vast border with Chile and let’s face it they are hardly bed buddies. Another point is that they would need to defend more coast as our carrier can move faster than they can relocate fighter squadrons. Furthermore with some form of AEW they would also need to escort their own attack aircraft to avoid heavy losses.
If we then factor in things like TLAM and the fleet air defense umbrella things start to look very good for us. For instance SSN’s could approach and launch TLAM’s taking out major installations denying the enemy essential assets such as ports, airports and other infrastructure. Without facilities to effectively operate fighter aircraft the enemy nation would be open to continued attack from carrier air power which is more effective than missiles.
Basically what i’m getting at is you don’t seem to notice the much wider picture that would be happening. A single carrier can take on an airforce larger than it’s airgroup and cause major problems. A single CVF would be capable of taking on the majority of nations that we would have problems with. Furthermore we also have SSN’s that combined with a CVF could wreak havoc. ( A wee point is that with 36 aircraft 12 could be operating at any one time so for example 2 CAP’s of 2 and a group of 4 attacking targets with a fighter escort )
Hi Euan, the more friends the better.
Agree for a fleet on fleet action, on the high seas, a carrier is the right tool and has been since the US Carrier groups in WW2 sank the Japanese Battleship groups.
I’m not sure how long they will be able to retain the crown against submarines capable of luanchine over a hundred cruise missiles in minutes, but for now, fleets need carriers to fight other fleets.
However, I cant think of any examples of carriers fighting and overcoming ground based aircraft without their own ground based support.
Both Iraq wars were fought with large ground based airforces, and afghanistan didnt have an airforce to fight back with.
The same goes for Korea and Afghanistan, had a carrier been atacked, it would have been a huge escalation that could only lead to a direct war between the US and China/USSR.
The only time I’m aware of, in which unsupported carriers fought against unsupported ground based aircraft, is The Falklands, and its my understanding that all that kept our ships afloat was that they were able to operate at he extreme range of the Argentinian airforce, Had we atempted to move against the mainland, we would have lost, or so I’m led to believe.
The fact that a carrier is a tacticaly mobile airfild is something I hadnt actualy considered, they arent fast, but in a day, they can cover quite a distance.
The Two Carriers and their groups are liable to cost at least £9 billion
HMS Ocean cost only £150 million, the two Albions cost about £400 million each, Sea Harriers should be buyable for about £20million each.
If you want to fight a fleet action in the pacific, you want the carrier, if you want to land an above brigade strength force to drive an enemy off an Island, then, in my humble opinion, you want a fleet of assault ships, capable of launching and retrieving V/Stol aircraft for fleet protection and heavy helicopters for landing troops
And of course, a few submarines capable of launching large numbers of long range missiles