Had an interesting Twitter chat last night with Dr Phil Weir in reaction the UK National Defence Associations’ open letter to the Prime Minister highlighted in the Telegraph (click here)
The point they raise, and this is a commonly made point, is that the MoD has too small a budget and the continual decline, especially in comparison with other departments, risks our credibility as a great nation with a special relationship with the USA, a relationship that has kept us secure for decades.
I do wonder though, if the problem with the MoD is that it actually has too much money.
Too much money encourages waste and actively discourages efficiency.
The scale of waste in the MoD over the last few decades is truly staggering.
Maybe if the Army had a smaller budget it would not have spent a billion quid on FRES without putting a single vehicle into service, or the RAF spending several billion on Nimrod and of course, the recent F35 switcheroo that has wasted the equivalent of 10 years running costs for RFA Largs Bay.
But can an organisation like the MoD, an organisation that is saddled with so many heavy weights, do everything consistently right.
Maybe we just have to accept some level of waste and incompetence.
Just a thought.
Potentially the problem is just inherent to the nature of the business.
We’re talking about a company so to speak, that constantly has to replace old equipment with new. And we’re not talking about replacing a T-joint to the boiler or buying new air con units. We’re talking fighter jets, nuclear submarines, and tanks.
And just to add to the fun, the long term budgetary plan is essentially only guaranteed for the next five years and subject to political whims and string pulling.
What was the good doctors view?
@ Chris B
Its hard to argue with the dramatic reduction in the MOD budget relative to other department’s. Interesting fact from the Scottish auditor general today. In 1949 there were 6900 police officers in Scotland. Today there is 17,000 despite a drop in non property related crimes.
How many soldiers in the British Army in 1949 vs Today. I am guessing its something like 250,000 vs 96,000. In my opinion there was room for cut’s post 1991. However by 1998 we had achieved the sensible level of those cuts with a core budget of around 2.5%. Going below that is not a sensible idea. There are efficiency that can be made at the MOD. However most of them involve buying off the shelf foreign kit. The resulting loss of taxes, technology capability and jobs makes this a false economy. We need a broader defence industrial strategy that encourages the MOD to buy British.
interesting telegraph article. I seems strange that the writers say the UK should not compare its spending with other’s but instead look at the threat environment it faces. Surely the real threat environment is based on what potential adversaries spend. Our major falling in the 1930′s was not to match German military expenditure. While countries like Iran and events like the Arab spring are alarming they are not solely UK issue’s. Nor do they pose a direct threat to the nation’s security in the way that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union did.
Even with cuts NATO and Allied nations still account for more than 75% of world military expenditure. While Russia and China may continue to increase military funds they also may not. Both nation’s have massive internal problems and can ill afford an arm’s race with their biggest customers.
I don’t think its fair to say that defence should not share at least some of the burden of austerity along with other government departments either. How many British citizens will die as a result of a 20% cut in NHS spending? How many would die ass a result of a 20% cut in defence?
That being said I broadly agree that defence having been cut in half over two decades has already suffered enough. With only 4% of government spending defence cuts make very little difference to the government budget deficit. The cuts of 8% from SDSR seemed relativley fair until it was also announced that the MOD budget would have to swallow the successor program.
I don’t see the USA suddenly dumping the UK. If the USA is to have allies then in order for us to be replaced someone else would have to come along and replace us and I don’t see anyone else credible on the horizon. Nor do I feel that being dumped by the USA would be such a big issue anyway.
@martin
It is very hard to persuade the MoD or anyone else to buy domestic equipment at significantly higher prices with a fixed budget. Even the service is not necessarily better if the local firm is limited in capabilities and the foreign (probably American) firm mass produces so it can send parts whenever it wants.
If you want them to take into account the benefits to the local economy, you should estimate the size of the benefit and pass it on to them.
For example, maybe they can have 10 billion for fighters if they buy foreign, 12.5 billion if they co-produce and 15 billion if they buy domestic. Then let them choose.
To answer your question, some people will almost certainly die with a 20% NHS cut but the threat to the state does not change. With the 20% Defence cut, it is quite possible no one will die but the UK might be unable to handle a mission which will cost the UK as a whole horribly.
This certainty vs probability is why Defence tends to lose out, but ultimately Defence is the first social security with all citizens at stake.
@ Martin,
“However most of them involve buying off the shelf foreign kit. The resulting loss of taxes, technology capability and jobs makes this a false economy. We need a broader defence industrial strategy that encourages the MOD to buy British”
– The only thing I would say to keep in mind with that is that the MoD doesn’t reap that dividend. It may be good for the UK, but the MoD gets short changed as a result.
@ Chris B and arkhangelsk
I totally agree with you. The should be an automatic mechanism where buy the MOD receives a part rebate on additional tax revenue generated by defence expenditure.
If you look at most major UK industries particularly aerospace we only have the lead we have due to previous defence expenditure. With out such a mechanism we risk slipping further behind economically. One only has to look at countries like Turkey, Brazil and India to realise just how important politically and economically sovereign military capability is. It’s silly that we are doing everything we can to piss ours away..
80% of the nhs budget is spent on people who die within two years.
So you could trim 90bn from its budget, and not notice a drastic change.
Cutting any government budget doesn’t force efficiency.
There is no feedback mechanism to make it so.
Fundamental, the nhs cares not how many patients live or die, nor does the army have much interest in winning wars or protecting its soldiers
It’s a shame it takes a complete meltdown before anyone even tries to introduce reasonable departmental reforms.
If buying British defence products and services is of such great benefit to the country, the MoD should be able to ask the DWP and BIS to make up the cost difference between a preferred foreign product and a more costly, but otherwise acceptable, British product. That way, the departments actually responsible for economic development, maintaining skills, and for supporting the unemployed would be responsible for valueing the benefits of keeping any particular procurement on-shore. It shouldn’t be the MoD’s responsibility to make that value judgement.
TD,
In answer to your question…
Yes and No.
They need to split “defence” from “offense”. Offensive action should be supplemental either from cuts to other departments or by higher taxation as, and when, it is needed – it is much more transparent to the public.
This will the clearly identify and isolate asset and running costs for each requirement.
…and yes, I know there are some areas of overlap
It makes sense to accept some ‘waste’ in any large enterprise as it can cost more to fix it than to let it be ( after hearing people speak about getting rid of all waste at the RUSI ‘information superiority’ conference I wrote this about integration: http://gruntledengineer.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/just-integrated-enough-coherence-vs-agility/ )
Also people’s definitions of waste are different. If you have a buy-now-and-adjust approach, where you buy kit for immediate use that you know is not quite right but you can get into use *now*, and use lessons from it to inform the next purchase in a few months, and so on, some people will class that as waste compared to ‘getting it right first’ (and, of course, after some delay).
Similarly some enterprises (eg amazon) quite happily experiment with a range of equipment and methods that they expect to mostly throw away, keeping just a few to use. The ones that get thrown away might be called ‘waste’ in some quarters.
That’s still no excuse for large, failed projects like FRES.
We could possibly learn from other big enterprises – I don’t think the military is as different as it likes to think it is, not any more. How do oil companies procure equipment for remote, dangerous work? How was airbus procured? MS “Allure of the seas”? There will be some differences but I think now mostly similarities.
I’m not sure how useful this is, but according to BP’s page here http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=3&contentId=2006926 they employ around 80,000 people with an annual budget (well, sales) of around £300bn.
“– The only thing I would say to keep in mind with that is that the MoD doesn’t reap that dividend. It may be good for the UK, but the MoD gets short changed as a result.”
He has a point there.
MH’s point on what some would call waste, others would call practical is also an interesting point.
One question I do wonder about is if this “waste” of money is simply a perception problem due to increased public scrutiny. After all, we’ve heard a lot about Cold War era experimental systems that used a few million quid and went absolutely nowhere with nary a complaint, but push back a project now and watch the internet catch fire faster than a papermill in an oil refinery.
No just poorly spent and mismanaged.
Well, the Israeli procurement function is supposedly 400 strong, and this for a country with it’s own tank and ballistic missile programs. Even off the shelf aircraft are heavily modified with local equipment like radars and ECM.
More practically, we could impose a ceiling on MOD manpower. Being a great fan of Pareto, lets say the proportion of uniformed to MOD staff (including contractors!) should never be lower than 80/20.
@ wf
Perhaps those 400 have slightly more focus than our procurement bods because of their security situation?
It’s in my view its not is there’s to much money or to little in the defence budget alone. There threat to the uk at present lends it self more to the intelligence services than the purely miltary response so it’s wider than just the mod budget. Second is the force structure funded to allow the forces to complete the military tasks asked of it by the government probably yes. And finally is there sufficient equipment and resources in the right fields as the indemand capabilities are very different to what they were even 10 years ago probably not.
How about a bit of lateral thinking?
Some of the problem obvious to the interested observer is inter service rivalry.
(This is a slight exaggeration, but there have been many statements made by the various service bosses)…. If all three services did not seemingly insist as seeing the entire MOD budget as theirs to grab hold of and stop the others getting it.
So for example the RN goes of elephant hunting, the RAF get on the short strokes over the F35, and the army join in with FRES. All asa tactic to grab as much of the combined budget as possible.
How about if we went back to and Air ministry, Admiralty and Army separate and no joint budget- same amount of money overall-
Tell (say) the RN it’s getting X billion for kit and manpower, not a penny more over the next 10 years now go spend it. The RN can decide if it wants to be mahouts or T45 drivers, or astute drivers and whether they really NEED SSBN or whether they can fit it to astutes etc etc.
Likewise the RAF and Army get told that’s your cash now spend it how you like, there will be NO inter service transfers of funds…
Just an idea
@ IXION
To answer that it might be best to look why we moved away from that, if just from a procurment perspective. Neither way is perfect.
I think the politicians have a lot to answer for. Why FSTA PFI, Comet airframe for Nimrod AEW/R1/MPA, Why try and cancel CVF, and reduce nearly all initial orders for just about every item I can think of…… why?
Well Op3, the most obvious answer is that the Cold War ended. And most governments would rather not follow the USSR into bankruptcy.
“More practically, we could impose a ceiling on MOD manpower. Being a great fan of Pareto, lets say the proportion of uniformed to MOD staff (including contractors!) should never be lower than 80/20.”
I suppose you misread the Pareto principle.
A disciple of the principle would call for a cut of the staff by 80% instead.
I can’t say this for certain IXION but I think your idea has an inherent flaw. What happens in certain years if there is no major equipment purchase planned or budget has already been allocated in previous years ie a bulk of the money has already been paid in milestone payments. Its not like the cash is spent all up front it gets spent in fits and starts.
The service will find a way to spend that unallocated budget to stop the treasury reclaiming it, thus leading to waste in a different form. If the money is cycled back to the treasury then what stops them next year saying well you didn’t need this amount last year, or more accurately our estimates are based on your spend last year so last year minus amount x this year is all your getting ‘there’s a recession on don’t you know’.
Topman
As I say I am sure there is not perfect way…
But it does gall that service bosses who supposedly have our countries interests at heart are clearly and in some cases avowedly, pushing certain projects to try and get the lions share of the available budget…..
If it was divided 3 waya and fixed, and they had to live with the consequences, then we might see more realistic acquisition.
Is it Italy or Spain that has a separate government department responsible for investments? Sort of like a business, inovation and skills department, but on a much grander scale that sees domestic military projects as an investment in jobs and technology as much as an expense for military purposes?
@ Mmoomin,
“The service will find a way to spend that unallocated budget to stop the treasury reclaiming it, thus leading to waste in a different form”
– There is a way around that, although I’m not sure the treasury would agree with me; trust funds.
So essentially the MoD is allocated a fixed budget and anything they don’t spend in one year they simply retain and it rolls into the next fiscal year. That wont necessarily stop the treasury from cutting budgets, but it does make it a little harder because now the trust fund holder has a stick to defend themselves with e.g. “we tried very hard and saved x billion pounds last year and now we’re being punished for being efficient and using best practice”.
@mmoomin
I think this attitude, common to Treasuries the world over, leads to waste. How about changing the rules so that everyone gets fixed budgets or fixed percentages of the governmental income based on a legislative decision on what the appropriate balance in the budget is?
If any Ministry manages to have money left over after spending all the authorized items, why not let them keep it for next year?
One problem I can see with 3 separate “ministries” is that they will actually push their own agenda more than they do now. it would affect Joint ops and overall effectiveness.
The RAF could simply decide that they were not going to buy more support helos as they were used to ferry the army around, buy it from your own budget pongo. We will upgrade our Typhoons with the cash instead.
The RN would not take the hit for an SSBN replacement from it own budget. Screw that we are going to use the money for an MPA and FAA F35 for our Carriers they might say.
The Army would buy toys connected to whichever branch the head honcho used to serve in.
Some of those decisions do not seem too terrible, others more so but it would also have an adverse affect on kit purchases that are used across services, Wildcat and Merlin, Bowman etc.
TrT
Your NHS reference is kinda two faced, I understand the ‘not feeling change if it was cut’ remark…but the other side suggests you’d advocate such an idea.
Isn’t there a difference between managing a budget within an overall strategy and every service just doing as they want?
X, There is but if you go to 3 separate “minstries” the joined up advice on how best to support Govt Policy would become a lot less “joint”.
That assumes jointery is and of itself a valid concept and not something adopted to cover budget cuts and a shrinking defence establishment.
Makes you wonder how our forebears ran the Empire.
Whether the budget is too big depends on what global position you wish to see and therefore what strategic abilities you want.
Any large organisation is going to have waste, that’s an inevitable.
While you could say reducing a budget means savings have to be made and therein a reduction in waste as ways are found of saving money. But its not that clear cut with the MOD. Look at the type 45 for example, if another £1.2 bn was made available then we could afford to buy another 2 type 45s and although this would increase the overall budget, the cost per ship would have been less and we could argue we have reduced waste as now we have a much more effective force for only a modest increasing in funding, increase of ships by 33% compared to costs of only 20%.
@ APATS
very true but no system is going to be perfect and the current one is far from perfect.
This is two issues.
To have a balanced capable force means spending 2.7% GDP to achieve 1998 SDR levels.
Procurement is another issue that needs reform.
Stop civil servants moving on every 2 years. If they are with a project at least 5 years, then it is in their interest that it succeeds.
When a project is first mooted, get a parliamentary committee to examine if we need it, what numbers,spec, then the most cost effective way of buying it. Do this at the start, not wait for it to get into trouble. Then stiff penalties if industry delivers a duff product or the Treasury tries to cut or cancel.
@ IXION
‘If it was divided 3 waya and fixed, and they had to live with the consequences, then we might see more realistic acquisition.’
APATS touched on it and to a certain extent that’s what happening soon. Service chiefs will be responsible for the money they spend and they will have alot more to look after. The only problem working on their own is that a lot of projects will overlap there would be no mechanism to look at joint purchases. Even something like a diesel generators would we want each service buying their own if we could do with one type? I agree no system is perfect all systems have their ups and downs.
@Observer
Well yes, it would be madness not to reduce the defence budget with the thawing of the Cold War, that would be like building an army against shadows. My comment was aimed more at the failure of the MOD or rather politicians to take decisions and stick to the plan and/or their ability to make the right decisions.
I like the idea of keeping Tranche 1 Typhoons for QRA which seems sensible, likewise binning sentinel is madness.
Good job the MOD isn’t running to a traditional funding plan now then, eh?
Out and about for the next few days, but will check back periodically. You can reference the overheated debate on the Trident thread if you have the stomach for it.
In the meantime, have a think how overlapping programmes of up to ten years in length interact. Especially those program’s that don’t need equal funds paying in each year.
Compare that to the annual budget we’re traditionally used to.
Oh, and focus on the positives
I was not proposing total ‘sepperate but equal’.
Consider this….
We are talking about the budget for manpower and equipment, only.
If a war forces deployment, UOR, extra wear and tear that should come from a MOD central/emergancy budget.
The budget should be fixed for fixed cycle, say 10 years for the sake of arguement but if those in the know think it should be 7 or 5 or 12 I’m cool with that.
There would still be a big incentive for ‘jointness’. After all the no way the navy can affford to develop its own chopper, so it will have to talk to the army about airframes. Likewise generators etc, bulk buys would save everybodies budgets..
Remember this does not necessarily mean they all get the same ammount of money each. After all if the RAF says ‘we want to be fast and pointy and poo to the army with thier transport planes… The threat of when the next cycle comes round and the army says ‘ok the rlc would like to have transport planes so can we have that chunk of the raf budget? Them the RAF would soon rediscover its enthusiasm for transport….
Remember the Roles will be set by the political masters; the how and with what will be left to the proffessionals.
Its just an idea i am playing arround with but it does have attractions.
“Stop civil servants moving on every 2 years. If they are with a project at least 5 years, then it is in their interest that it succeeds.”
Actually you’ll find its mainly military staff that do this – often the CS are the bulwark of institutional knowledge on projects. Challenges comes when newly appointed military staff seeking to make a name try to reinvent the wheel…
If Levene is properly implemented, then this practise will cease and 4-5 year postings will become the norm.
A couple of threads come through here.
1. ‘Defence spending should be based on the threat environment’. Unfortunately in a democracy, in anything short of war, this isn’t true. You basically get the Defence force you economy can support. There are simply too many competing demands on politicians for money, as even the US is finding out.
2. ‘Defence does highly difficult and tricky stuff and they should be given leeway’.
Again tosh, Defence forces and the politicans attached to them constantly understate project risk and when entirely predictable risk hits they manage it badly. Usually by steaming on and throwing money at it. At the moment Boeing is compensating airlines (in money or kind) for delivery delays in the 787 program. When was the last time a major defence contractor really suffered for its failures or compensated anybody.
Maybe a starting point would be to make both the Defence administration and the contractors more responsible for cost overruns and failure so that they start taking project risk more seriously. Any organisation that can pass the cost of its mistakes on to the taxpayer will do so!
‘Defence does highly difficult and tricky stuff and they should be given leeway’.
Again tosh, Defence forces and the politicans attached to them constantly understate project risk and when entirely predictable risk hits they manage it badly. Usually by steaming on and throwing money at it. At the moment Boeing is compensating airlines (in money or kind) for delivery delays in the 787 program. When was the last time a major defence contractor really suffered for its failures or compensated anybody.
The Difference between the MOD/HMG and Boeing is that Boeing being wasteful results in compensation, not body bags!
Anyone who cannot see that we cannot look at Defence as a pure business has obviously has nver got their boots dirty!
@Aussie Johnno
I’ll disagree that Western economies really get the “Defence force their economy can support” – that is a much higher percentage of GNP than what Defence actually gets. Defence in many Western countries these days gets only the crumbs from their economy as government tries to spend yet more money on welfare to earn votes.
One of the weaknesses of democracy is that long term planning takes second place to winning votes.
Given that our defence assumption’s always seem to be wrong and any threat we have faced post 1939 almost always seems to come out of no where I think a peace time defence budget should be based on a roughly even share of the MOD budget.
Bringing back the old style of separate ministries would be wrong and probably very wasteful. However robbing Peter to pay Paul makes little sense. We have no idea if our next conflict will require aircraft carriers, boots on the ground or strategic bomber’s so I don’t think its correct to priorities one over the other. We should really look to retain as many capabilities as possible while ensuring sufficient strategic effect’s. We should never ever accept capability holiday’s. What is the point of having a military that has capability gap’s?
The last time we actually did a strategic defence review in 1998 I think we came up with the appropriate level of defence for peace time, 2.5% of GDP is reasonable and easily affordable and it gives us the number 2/3 defence budget in the world ensuring our place at the top table. While some of the assumption’s in that review i.e. FRES and light rapid deployment forces were wrong much of it was right. A Navy with 36 escorts and 12 SSN’s, an RAF with 300 planes or so and a British Army around the 100,000 mark.
The only way we can really fund this is to slash the DFID budget. I am sure there would be wide support from the public for this. Cutting £ 5 billion per year from DFID and giving it to the forces would get us back up to SDR 1998 levels. We would also still have the second highest per capita aid budget in the World at around 0.4% of GDP. If France cuts it’s budget which seems likely then it would still be the biggest. You will never get public support for cutting Schools and Hospitals to pay for defence but it amazes me that the British public accepts pissing so much money up the wall every year of foreign aid. If we add in the money we send to the EU ever year as well as the spending from the contigency budget for op’s in the Stan and else where this is a vast sum of money.
Difference between Boeing and the mod is the airlines didn’t go to Boeing half way thru the program and ask for a double decker plane instead of a single deck one or Japanese airlines didn’t say you need to build the wings in Japan or were not buying it unless you do or sorry you would mind stopping work for 6 months were dont have the budget this year. Boeing sold a fixed spec and a deliver date and couldnt meet it big difference.
@Martin – “The only way we can really fund this is to slash the DFID budget. I am sure there would be wide support from the public for this” – speak for yourself. I lose sleep at night worrying about the starving masses in India. Perhaps we could have food parcels pushed out of the hatch of the next Indian rocket as it heads off into orbit. It’s the least we can do for inflicting parliamentary government and cricket on them.
@Wise
“It’s the least we can do for inflicting parliamentary government and cricket on them.”
Serious crimes those are. Serious crimes. You should be ashamed of yourself. I blame the Americans for introducing them to TV though. The pain of watching Bollywood movies is indescribable. The only bigger disaster I can think of is Japan’s release of their WMD as revenge for losing WWII. Karaoke, and all the singing wannabe spinoffs that it generated.
On a more “back to topic” note, think the MoD needs to wargame a new gameplan that gets all 3 services to work as an intergrated whole and from this template work out their equipment requirements. Just out of curiosity, what does the Navy think of handing off long distance targets to the Air Force? Or Air Force handing off targets to Army Combat Teams? If there is a reluctance to cross-allocate, might need an overarching authority to cut across the tri-service rivalry.
Martin
‘We should really look to retain as many capabilities as possible while ensuring sufficient strategic effect’s. We should never ever accept capability holiday’s’
Sorry martin,but that’s a bit ‘mum and apple pie’ what we are discussing is how, or if, we can do that…
As I said the seperate budget idea is just an idea… to deal with the problem.
The problem (as I see it) is: -
There is clear unequivocal evidence of total chaos in large program procurement accross all services. It’s not good enough to say that we end up with good kit at the end- T45, astute, Typhoon, etc and then say ‘well it’s not that bad so we must be roughly ok and every organisation makes mistakes..’. The critics (me included) are not looking for perfection, as the saying goes, ‘To err is human but to really f*ck things up you need a politician’ (be he or she in or out of uniform).
What the critics want is some degree of competence. I simply do not accept many of the ‘MOD knows best’ defenders of the status quo’s, constant assertions that ‘it’s different for the millitary because’…
If the Elephant project for example had been run anything like competently, we could have had 3 of them for the same money!
That would be ships in the sea planes in the air and armour on the ground ‘for our boys’. Not cash in the bank for BAE and Boeing etc.. Not seriosu big private sector jobs lunches and expence accoutns for the suits.
One of the problems at the heart of it is not just the usual mix of political interference, Civil Service incompetence, corruption, and over promoted thicko’s making decisions they do not understand influenced by private sector snake oil salesman. One big problem is that these big ticket items are seen by their respective forces as political gambits to grab control of big chunks of the MOD Budget.
Admirals have been reported of boasting that Nellie and Dumbo will force the MOD into a navy centric direction for the next 10 years.
The senior RAF officers have said in terms in parlaimentary committee that the f35 has to be the centre of Uk procurement.
Frankly the obscene cock up FRES, is IMHO simply the armies attempt to have a dog in the fight. After all it will almost certainly never produce a single opperational vehicle….. (It and it’s precursor programes haven’t for the last 20 years, so why should the next 20 be any different)? But whats a biliion quid nothing is too good for our boy.
We are blowing money we do not have, on programs that if they were run properly would still produce the odd f*ck up and scandal, but not on scale we face at the moment.
Strong statement warning…
There are people in the defence industry- some of which wear uniforms who are loyal servents of their service, but bordering on traitors to their country.
If the MoD budget is too big, what gets cast aside?
There is much more dialogue between the Treasury and MoD now when it comes to setting the budget. The money doled out is much more tailored to the department’s needs than it has been in the past; they’re no longer handing out a wodge of notes and letting the MoD run loose in the sweet shop.
Mark
One thing my idea would stop is that sort of messing about. after all if you have x squillion quid to spend and you say to your supplier, we want X as well the suppliers ays ok but it wil cost £y. You still only have x budget. So you will get lest of the amazing choclate fireguard, mark 1 your force wanted. might make a few people think before ordering equipement in the first place, or changes mid stream.
@ Brian Black
“There is much more dialogue between the Treasury and MoD now when it comes to setting the budget. The money doled out is much more tailored to the department’s needs than it has been in the past; they’re no longer handing out a wedge of notes and letting the MoD run loose in the sweet shop”.
I would agree, I think an increase in the budget back up to 2.5% of GDP could actually produce a much better force than we previously had now the defence chief’s and MOD have sobered up a bit. Many sacred cows have been slaughtered, there are still too many left. However with the completion or cancellation of almost all cold war legacy programs and the new idea’s of going simpler and off the shelf an extra £ 5 billion a year could really give us a revolutionary leap forward in many area’s
Martin
I am an outsider to such things but I see no sign at all of: -
‘Many sacred cows have been slaughtered, there are still too many left. However with the completion or cancellation of almost all cold war legacy programs and the new idea’s of going simpler’.
We are still building elephants, we are still F**king arround with Fres.
The RAF are still pulling strings arround F35. We built Foxhound rather than buy an off the shelf south african style design. Which would have been bigger and heavier, but cheaper more flexible and better protected..
‘
One other point..
Lots of people on this site are of the lets cut the wealfare budget persuasion.
If you do that in a way that pruduces widespread poverty you will have rebellion and social unrest on a scale we have not seen for a century. THAT would be real ‘ national security problem’.
But we can still use the army. After all Peterloo is as much a part of it’s history as Waterloo.