To think that we should spend less on defence

The fact that you feel the need to put scare quotes around the word pandemic tells me that you're probably not a huge fan of well-researched and well-evidenced science and research. Luckily, people who's opinions actually count disagree with you.

If you haven't read it, I do recommend Rick Jolly's book The Red and Green Life Machine, about being a medical officer during the Falklands campaign.

It's possible I may have mentioned it before. If so I apologise for repeating myself.

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April, 1982. Two Royal Navy aircraft carriers and two troopships set sail from Portsmouth three days later, and were reinforced en route. That showed a high level of readiness as well.

I think the Argentinians expected the U.S. to stay neutral, which was a bizarre assumption to make.

It's a sad reflection on the difference between now and 2004. When the Royal Navy decided to send HMS Chatham to assist in Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami wiped out a 200-yard-wide swathe of the coast there, she had sailed before the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had time to come back from his holidays and announce to the nation that he would be sending a Royal Naval vessel to render assistance.

Yes, it was a bit lucky that Chatham had just arrived for a New Year's run ashore in Dubai, and the crew could be turned round off leave in half a day and prepared to depart (and the BBC crew that were filming the documentary about that ship, "Shipmates", got all their gear back off the dock in under an hour and went too), but they were ready, and they went. And yes, all right, she was already sea-worthy; she'd been at sea for I think it was four weeks at that point. Even so, it's a bit of a contrast.

(I know about this because I got a signal from my son, serving on Chatham, to tell me what was happening and why he wouldn't be in contact on New Year's day as planned; it reached me the day before Blair's announcement was broadcast.)

It's a long story but airfield defence has been a lowish to almost zero priority for HM Forces for many years.

There might have been some Typhoons at Akrotiri at the time, I can't remember, but it seems there were no air defence systems there on any state of readiness that could engage the uncrewed systems (drones) that were fired from Lebanon.

As I recall it the immediate fix was to fly in some Royal Navy's Wildcat helicopters armed with Martlet missiles to do point defence of the base areas, and then eventually send HMS Dragon which is better equipped for wider area and longer range defence.

We live in a world where it is impossible to work out which country or international actor is the one who will be the biggest threat to us in five years time and we need capabilities to fight a number of different theoretical types of war. You can’t just create defensive capability overnight - it takes a long time to build it up. If you don’t build it up enough that you have sufficient capability to defend yourself whilst you expand capacity - when you are attacked you won’t have time to fix the problem. Our protection in a very big world is also dependent on alliances globally that mean we need to be prepared to fight with our allies as well. Overall - you’re a fool if (a) you think we are in a good place with our defensive capabilities or (b) we aren’t but it doesn’t matter because other countries will protect us even if we don’t help them.

It took so long because of low levels of readiness and too few warships.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/hms-dragon-cyprus-uk-royal-navy-b2935750.html

For whatever reason, the RAF base wasn’t able to adequately defend against drone attacks.

That’s a story I never understood. What took too long to get to Cyprus ?

We have an RAF base there at Akrotiri, and our military aircraft were there, able to act in defence of the facility. What actually needed to be brought in additionally and to fulfil what capacity ?

One danger of switching to spending "smartly" is firstly nobody really has any idea what smartly really is (not everything we're seeing in Ukraine is inevitably going to be relevant to a future conflict) and there's a danger that spending smartly with a view to the future means current capabilities get neglected.

A lot of people fairly clued up on this are worried some politicians have drunk far too much Drone branded coolaid....

Spending has to be balanced....

I think we should definitely recognise the change of modern warfare and not waste money on big white elephants. We should spend smartly. The USA won’t be there for us. We need to have enough to defend ourselves. Look at the embarrassment of taking too long to get to Cyprus.

FWIW I wore light blue when I served, often worked with the RN, and I can testify that for them carriers has always been a sensitive issue, and loaded politically....even so I think there are still some valid arguments for retaining them.

The general public often make the mistake of thinking any Russian threat to European/Scandavian NATO must come from the east, they completely fail to look north....the worry for years has been if Russia decided to have a pop at western europe or the UK a lot of the surface threat, some of the sub threat and air threat would come from around the North Cape.

if a Navy's NATO role is to help counter this it will have them operating well offshore, say in the Iceland/UK gap or further north quite probably several hundreds of miles offshore...that comes with advantages and disadvantages...

Big advantage is you're not going to have to worry about drones,

Big disadvantage is if you need fixed wing air assets for whatever reason unless you have a carrier or carriers you are reliant on shore based aircraft, which would take time to get to the fleet and would be a long way from home if they expend ordnance and a reload is needed.

ETA that if the political decision is the RN needs carriers,.plural, then the politicians need to fund enough aircraft....but that's probably another argument.
..

I literally remember being told that people against the war in Iraq "just didn't understand the situation". Well... It turns out the people going to war didn't either.
I am not a "the British public is tired of experts type" we need experts. But said experts need to convey why they want stuff clearly, not just rely on "I know more about this on you. Give me a billion pounds for an aircraft carrier with no aircraft".

I said before I don't have first hand experience and I am not an expert.

However IF we need to spend vastly more on defence and especially if things like welfare need to be cut, the people WITH said experience (like the minister for the Armed Forces) should be able to communicate clearly why we need to spend those vast sums of money. Of course, there are somethings that need to be kept secret for operational reasons etc. But at the moment the messaging is just "aaargh Russia scary, China scary give money... Give more money" which isn't enough. Neither is "UK has been freeloading and wasting it's money on welfare" which feels more like an ideological argument than one based on defensive needs. And the majority of UK tax payers are not Admirals. Neither are most people signing up to the armed forces. However, the actual Admirals shouldnt be above deigning to explain why we need things to the non-Admirals without sneering. The last time we were at war, the UK public was assured that WMDs existed and that it was essential we followed America into war. Not only did many British soldiers die, the war turn into a shit show and WMD turn out not to exist after all... We have now had several years of Americans (not just Trump, it's much wider than that) grousing about how their allies are sponging of them and always stayed away from the front line. The trust isn't there anymore for any government Minister to just insist they need to spend vast sums on big projects without communicating why.

The point about the role of aircraft carriers in the Arctic is an interesting one and not one that I had thought about. But why does it take someone on Mumsnet to do that? Why can't the Minister in charge do that more, instead of either giving vague interviews to the Telegraph about how the UK is DOOMED without going into detail, or talking about spending as a percentage of GDP without saying what that money needs to be spent on and why and then resigning.

Oh, I do so agree! But in this country it doesn't happen, and starting now would make the government that did it have trouble getting re-elected, I fear.

(And of course we no longer have the EU to fall back on.)

In Finland there are restriction on foreigners buying property, non-EU residents have to apply for permission from the ministry of defence to buy property (in reality the vast majority will get permission granted), and there's even further restrictions on Russians and Belarusians. This is a completely reasonable position for a government to have, for national defence reasons, to make sure they know who owns property near strategically vital areas and suchlike.

So sorry Admiral. Where did you gain your first hand experience?

They are also very expensive targets in a world where drones are a thing. They need a huge amount of support from other boats etc to keep them safe. There is no reason spy planes etc need an aircraft carrier to refuel on**. In fact I think only fighter planes can launch from ours anyway. The other technology can presumably be carried on boats that are cheaper due to not needing to launch fighter planes into the air.

I could be wrong, there could be a need for these very expensive vessels. But I don't think it's enough for the MOD to just say " trust us bro". And if the answer is it's needed to support America so they deign to support us, then there does come a point you are throwing good money after bad. If we need to spend more so we stand on our flown two feet and aren't "relying on America" then that also means spending on what we need.

**Unless we are operating somewhere very hostile. In which case we aren't really defending allies are we...

@Persephonia1966

Defending Eastern Europe isn't the only potential problem.

I think one of the main reason for the carrier(s) is to help NATO cover the northern approaches to UK/Scandinavia, the Arctic, and also access to the Atlantic via the Iceland UK gap...not just against submarines and surface vessels but also against Russian long range aircraft.

It was certainly a major part of the Navy's (and for that matter the RAF's) role during the Cold War and sadly it looks like we are heading back that way.

Aircraft carriers carry aircraft, but those aircraft do do much more than the odd practice bombing run - surveillance particularly. The equipment onboard is watching and monitoring. There’s so much more that goes on - the matelot bit just keeps the thing sailing.

Playing devil's advocate here... We spent a lot of money on ensuring we could (and did) support other countries in the expectation we would be helped in return if needed. The overriding message from some countries (coughAmericacough) is that we are still freeloaders and shouldn't expect reciprocal help. So you could argue that moving forward we should be more focused on what we need for our own defence not how we can beat facilitate other countries adventures in the ME or central Asia.
I don't actually think we should pursue a completely isolationist policy at all. But the people arguing that Europe/the UK have been freeloading and deserve to be cut loose can't have it both ways.
But even if thinking of how we can best help our allies/pursue reciprocal defense I'm not sure what the point of massive aircraft carriers are. If defending an ally from attack then their airbases are likely to be easier to defend and fly planes from than a boat. If defending ourselves then the same. The only point of aircraft carriers is for launching planes from when there are no airbases close by. And thats only likely in an offensive war I would have thought. Rather than one where we are defending ourselves or allies. Destroyers, Frigates, ships equipped with saw and air drones, or anti drone technology sure.

Particularly if the threat is Russia, I don't think we need an aircraft carrier to defend Eastern Europe.

Most NATO members do not have aircraft carriers or strategic or even tactical nuclear weapons.

Yep. Fingers crossed he doesn't get made chancellor or we're screwed!

Then we won't be able to rely on reciprocal help from other countries if we need their military help. It's because we help out other countries, via NATO etc., that they, in turn, help us. If we go all defensive as you suggest, who will help us when we are attacked and why would they?

What I feel we don’t need is aircraft carriers, or Trident missiles.

We should transform our military into solely a defensive posture, covering the UK only and doing that to the highest possible standard.

There is no need for us to have any power projection capability these days.

Industries that are essential to our security or life (eg water companies) should be nationalised anyway. The argument would be that if an industry is so important it can't be allowed to fall into Chinese or Russian hands, it is important enough for the government to own a controlling stake.