UK Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

lucretius said:

The UK is not strapped for cash, however it is overspending on welfare and the NHS at the expense of the millitary.

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Oh and Labour just raised taxes. I mean... this is a country where people are paying 40% on incomes after 50,000 pounds. No offense to any British people, but you're pretty broke.

A few days ago the UK government announced the latest round of defence cuts, retiring five ships: both of the RN's LPDs HMS Albion and Bulwark, the frigate HMS Northumberland, and the tankers HMS Wave Ruler and Wave Knight.

The retirement of HMS Northumberland will bring the Royal Navy down to a total of fourteen missile-armed surface combatants in service, of which five are currently undergoing refits.

Navy Lookout offers a measured but nonetheless sombre assessment of the situation:

Getting rid of ships that are too old to repair or require crews that don’t exist is logical, especially seen from Whitehall or even NCHQ where funding is tight and there is a chronic shortage of people. These can be seen as pragmatic choices that avoid wasting money on old platforms and allow ‘headroom’ to invest in newer technology. While “capabilities are more important than platforms” is true to an extent, the hard fact is that a navy that wants to have an effect in the vast and hostile maritime domain will always need large ships and submarines.

Unfortunately, politicians, Civil Servants and the Navy itself have become so accustomed to the reduction mindset that it has become engrained as normal practice. Inevitably, repeatedly accepting this logic, often in return for promises of new ships to be delivered at a leisurely pace sometime in the future, has had the accumulated effect of drastically reducing the strength of the Navy. Major reform and restructuring of any organisation is needed from time to time but the continuing removal of capabilities long before replacements are in place has put the UK at considerable risk.

This state of affairs is not inevitable and is a choice made by a relatively wealthy nation. Senior officers do not threaten to resign, MPs and Ministers who clearly understand the danger have failed to rebel against the Government and Treasury. £Billions of pounds can be found for the NHS (hallowed be thy name), while the MoD has received only modest funding increases. The government line is that we are in a dangerous “pre-war period” and “defence of the nation is our first duty” but neither Tory or Labour actions reflect this.

The dire legacy of the 2010 SDSR still lingers, but the pattern of explainable reductions has accelerated again. In the last three years the Naval Service has lost no less than 15 ships or submarines while gaining just 3 vessels of significance. In every case, apparently good reasons could be given but just one of the vessels removed has been directly replaced. (Autonomous systems have also partially replaced aspects of the survey and MCM capability).

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It strikes me that this at least superficially similar to what is going on in Australia at the moment. On the one hand, the mainstream parties are hyperventilating about unprecedented threats to national security and announcing ever more grandiose plans for future capabilities, while on the other hand existing assets are being retired left and right for efficiency gains owing to shortages of personnel and the economics of maintenance and repair against return on investment, etc. Within a certain narrow framework, this makes sense. Yet, if the threat is so dire, a naive observer might enquire just how the RN or RAN can justify drawing down on present capabilities irrespective of the short-medium-term efficiencies derived from doing so? After all, those capabilities may be needed at any time. The obvious answer to this question is that, despite all their bluster, the UK and Australian governments do not actually believe their own propaganda about the threat environment and as such are unwilling to increase military funding to levels sufficient to both maintain capabilities in the present whilst also funding development programs for the future.

Yet there is a deeper issue here: current cuts are justified in order to advance future grandiose plans, to be fueled by increased spending. Yet if the money can't be found now, why should one assume, as it is assumed, that the money will be found later? Indeed, the progressive ageing of the population base over the next generation, with corresponding implications for both healthcare costs and the relative size of the taxation base, suggests that budgets are likely to be squeezed ever more tightly between competing priorities going forward. In all likelihood, the increased funding that is envisioned to bring these future plans to fruition will not eventuate, or will do so only partially. In all likelihood, envisioned production orders will ultimately be cut back, and per-unit costs will therefore increase beyond those originally budgeted for. Perhaps ships will be completed, only to be sold off to nations that can afford to crew them. When the demands of the Treasury require the axe to be swung on future grandiose plans, the resulting cuts are likely to be considerably uglier and more compromising than if more modest plans had been pursued in the first place.