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Old January 9th, 2012 #1
Bev
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: England
Posts: 38,898
Default More defence cuts for Britain?

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The defence secretary Philip Hammond popped his head above the water in his first visit to meet his US counterpart, Leon Panetta, and dropped some very important hints about the future shape of Britain's armed forces and what operations they could be engaged in.

His remarks caused few ripples because they were largely ignored. That may well suit some in the Ministry of Defence struggling to fill a multi-billion gap that still exists between its allocated budget and commitments, thanks largely to the Labour government's spending spree.

The defence budget is still facing a crisis. The MoD simply cannot afford the weapons and the numbers of soldiers, sailors, and airforce personnel, and civil servants, it has on its books. The £5bn cuts shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy suggested in an interview in the Guardian last week is a drop in the ocean. Cuts of more like £35bn are needed.

Hammond is sometimes described rather dismissively as an accountant - there are plenty of people in Whitehall who say that is precisely what the MoD needs now, and indeed has done for a very long time. His message, in Washington to the Atlantic Council thinktank on 5 January, was pretty clear: for the forseeable future there won't be any more money to spend on weapons, and more effective collaboration with other countries, some outside Nato, is vital.

He had a go at some Nato countries (principally Germany, though Hammond named no names) for not pulling their weight. "Too many countries are failing to meet their financial responsibilities to Nato, and so failing to maintain appropriate and proportionate capabilities. Too many are opting out of operations or contributing but a fraction of what they should be capable of", said Hammond.

"Across the [Nato] alliance defence expenditure is certain to fall in the short term and, at best, recover slowly in the medium term. More money is not going to be the answer", he emphasised. "Prioritising ruthlessly; specialising aggressively and collaborating unsentimentally", was the answer.

While the government seizes every opportunity to blame its Labour predecessor for the defence budget shambles, it is fighting shy of a debate that might encourage more and more people to question the purpose of the two biggest and most expensive military projects - a new Trident nuclear ballistic missile system and two new aircraft carriers.

Both Trident and the carrier project are scarcely relevant to the kind of operations British forces are going to concentrate on in future. The future of the carriers looks even more uncertain as the US Pentagon, also faced with heavy budgets cuts, threatens to delay production of the ever more expensive F35 Joint Strike Fighter designed to fly from them.

Future operations likely to preoccupy after UK troops pull out of a combat role in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, judging from recent speeches by senior military figures on both sides of the Atlantic, are counter insurgency, counter terrorist, and stabilisation operations in Africa and elsewhere.

The operations would be carried out by pilotless drones, small teams of special forces, cyber warriors, and aircraft equipped with "smart" bombs or missiles of the kind used in Libya.

These kinds of missions were reflected by General Sir Peter Wall, head of the British army, in an interview in this month's issue of Soldier magazine. Asked about what the army might look like in 2002 he replied: "It will make more systematic and strategic use of the military's skills and credibility to grow the capacity and capability of other nations in order to develop both the ability of fragile states to manage threats within their borders and the potential...to conduct wider peace peacekeeping missions".

In other words, helping "fragile states" - in Africa, the Middle East, for example - cope with insurgents or militant groups, and then helping to keep the peace.

Documents recently released at the National Archives show how little has changed. Thirty years ago, the defence secretary Sir John Nott warned his cabinet colleagues of the dangers of Britain "trying to do too much, with the certainty of not doing it well enough". He added: "Now is the time to face radical adjustment, and to settle a stable and realistic long-run course". The chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, commented: "It is unquestionably right to tackle the present massive over-commitment on the defence programme".

It is time to stop re-inventing the wheel.
h t t p://www.guardian.co.uk/global/defence-and-security-blog/2012/jan/09/army-military-defence?newsfeed=true
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