Commenting on the forthcoming defence review, Liam Fox said yesterday
This is not just a spending review, this is a full-scale strategic review with the absolute mother of horrors of a spending review on its back.
Which just about sums it up.
“Therefore this will be more difficult than some of our previous reviews, but it does offer an opportunity for us to reshape and to realign our security policy with our foreign policy and I think that is very long overdue.”
Yes, agreed
The British military needs to maintain its “war-fighting edge” with “robust and well-equipped armed forces, capable of intervening abroad whenever necessary”
Ah, how is that going to happen then, given the ‘absolute mother of all horrors’
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13 Comments
Liam Fox’s Chatham House speech in full, for those interested
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU-_s4BxIVw
‘Ah, how is that going to happen then, given the ‘absolute mother of all horrors?’
Strategic Raiding!
Or Global Guardian, those are the only two choices that leave Britain capable of sovereign and strategic power projection.
It is very possible with a budget cut, we just have to have a very specific idea and pursue it relentlessly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_Royal_Navy_deployments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army#Current_deployments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF#Overseas_deployments
We’re going to have to make a chocie, Should the Royal Navy be poviding minesweeping around Greece and Saudi Arabia, or should the british army be mentoring soldiers in Siera Leon?
Soaring costs
Nick Harvey The Minister for the Armed Forces seems to be exludeing the massive privatisation PFI at St Athan as he said on the 6th July that to change course now would undo a great deal of investment that has already been made and add considerably to the final cost! however
Why is that? When first announced, the full Metrix training package was to cost £14 billion. Then Package 2 was cut out and it shrunk to £11 billion.
In 2008, the MOD agreed to shrink the trainee contact hours by 25%, but still the cost crept up to £12 billion! Late in 2009, the sum of £13 billion was mentioned and used at the January 2010 Public Inquiry. Now on their website (www.metrix.uk.com), we see £13.5 billion over 30 years!!
In 2008, there was only a few £100 million between the Metrix deal and the public sector comparator. £2.5 billion later, what is now the difference?
No surprise that the MOD officials are telling the Minister not to bother with a proper review of alternatives!
Anne Greagsby
Anti metrix campaign
8 Lake Road East
Cardiff
CF23 5NN
02920 756961
http://www.antimetrix.org/
If your going to spadvertise your blog, please make sure at least your headline makes some sense.
“Training Killers of the American Empire” might make fellow guardianistas jump for joy, but it doesnt make those of us who dont agree that “uncle Joes” genocide in Ukraine was propaganda from the brotherhood of the city fathers of zion want to read on.
Just a thought.
I have extended an invitation to Anne to write a balanced post for Think Defence on the financial aspects of the issue, without the baby killer stuff!
Is it all starting then? I have just come across an article on the Janes website. It describes how RAF chiefs have have offered to cancel the BAE Systems Nimrod MRA.4 programme just weeks before the first production aircraft are due to be delivered to the service. The programme is described as costing GPB3.65 billion (US.5.57 billion).
The offer was apparently made in the RAF submission to Phase 2 of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) earlier this month. It also includes the early retirement within five years of all of the service’s Panavia Tornado GR.4 strike aircraft and the closure of three main operating air bases.
What do you think of that then? Are they determined to keep their share of the JSF order? The loss of both the Nimrod and the Tornado would seem to me to be serious losses to our capability.
Just read that jane’s article too, the RAF have always been planning to drop down to 2 manned jet types once JSF comes in and it looks like they might be getting the ball rolling sooner rather than later. Always thought tornado numbers might be vulnerable as their expensive, more typhoons are arriving all the time and the harriers need to be kept around to maintain skills until the JSF arrives.
However no idea what their thinking about with Nimrod, all the costs have already been spent and its not like anything else can do the job it does. I suspect they’ve studied how they are managing since the early retirement of the MR2′s and figure they can get by on whatever contingency measures they are using
however way you sugar coat it, its lost capability and gives you an idea of the way the RAF is prioritising its capabilities
Mike W, C,
Its just plain sad, and shows that the SDR is not a strategic review in any sense of the word, it is a Treasury led budget cutting exercise and capabilities be damned :-(
By the way JSF versus Nimrod ?
F35 is a highly compromised design that has produced an aircraft “frontal stealth” based on USN requirement for a “first day of the war” stealthy strike platform. Its useful load of weapons and fuel is constrained, and its range is apparently not great, so its not going to hit any where useful from UK bases. Bin, spend some money on Typhoon Tranche 3, conformal tanks, thrust vectoring, AESA radar and an anti-radiation / defence suppression version of Meteor ! Guess what, we could even own all the intellectual property for the software WE develop for these projects…..
Retire Tornado, but build up to the full 235 Typhoons, even rebuild Tranche 1 aircraft as Tranche 3C – replace those sold to Saudi.
There you go, a single type fast jet fleet, not really stealthy, but way more flexible.
Nimrod – if you ditch F35 do we get enough money to upgrade 14 or 21 of them ? The most versatile aircraft in the RAF !!! ASW, ASuW, maritime surveillance, overland NT-ISR, strike if you want (Tomahawks in that massive bomb bay), comms relay and even airborne command post. If the upgrade is really that expensive / complex then BAe should just come out and admit it. Fit the systems to another airframe, loose some capabilities for sure, (that big bomb bay) but keep many of the others – C130J with Nimrod systems anybody ??
Jed, you have hit the nail right on the head. It is a Treasury led exercise and to hell with capabilities. Strategic review doesn’t seem to come into it.
c, As you say, nearly all the costs of procuring Nimrod have already been met. As the article states, cutting the Nimrod would not save significant amounts of money from the procurement costs of the aircraft (3.65 billion)because almost all of this amount has been spent (except for around GBP200 million to cover the final delivery of the nine aircraft during the next two years). It’s madness to swill taxpayers’ money down the drain like that!
Jed, you have captured the versatility of the Nimrod so very well in your list of its capabilities. I had thought for years that the RAF had it in mind as their future long-range bomber, equipped with stand-off missiles.
MikeW is right on the money.
The Nimrod weapons system is delivered through three contracts: D+D, Production and Support (ILS).
The spend has already been achieved for D+D and Production, thus the GBP3.65bn has already been spent bar the GPB200m relating to the delivery of remaining production platforms. This, as Mike correctly identifies, has been comitted.
The only outstanding comittment not yet made is for the Day1 support contract which, if ditched through the SDSR will save circa £40m. Again, Mike W is on the money because why would the taxpayer accept savings of GPB40m when ‘he’ has already invested GPB3.65bn. The investment loss would be circa GPB3.25bn. Hardly attractive.
NIMROD is here to stay.
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