Closer to home I'm shocked by the recent economies in defence spending given the war raging in Europe , this Times article sets out the issues:
A landing platform dock (LPD), as it is known in naval terminology, is like a dinner jacket: you don't need one very often but when the occasion demands, nothing else will do. Britain has two of these big amphibious assault ships, which allow the Royal Marines to deploy on a beach in strength anywhere from the tropics to the Arctic. Maintaining this capability has been a hallmark of British defence policy since the Second World War, and the wisdom of doing so was displayed in the Falklands conflict of 1982. Now, these precious assets, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, are to be sold or scrapped, victims of a yes-man chief of the defence staff (an admiral of all people), a yes-man defence secretary, and a prime minister and chancellor united in their strategic illiteracy.
This was the most eye-catching of the cuts announced by John Healey, the defence secretary, in the Commons on Wednesday. To save a mere £9 million a year to keep the LPDs, a rounding error of a rounding error in Ministry of Defence terms, Mr Healey decided to strike them from the fleet. The marine commando brigade trained to defend Nato's exposed Arctic flank must in future rely on only three civilian-manned amphibious ships (the crews are striking over pay) incapable of matching the assault ships' landing craft capacity.
There was more bad newss_. The navy is to lose HMS Northumberland, one of only nine frigates left, because she is too worn out to repair. Her sisters in the Type 23 class are similarly decrepit but replacements are years away due to the failure of Labour and Tory governments to invest in the surface fleet. By the time the first of a new generation of frigates touches the water the Senior Service could be reduced to six Type 45 destroyers and five Type 23s. This situation is a national disgrace. In addition the RAF helicopter fleet tasked with delivering the army to the battlefield is to be culled, losing 14 older Chinook heavy lifters and all of its equally antique medium-lift Pumas. Citing the forthcoming defence review, the government's ruse for delaying a rise in defence spending, Mr Healey said a decision on the Pumas' replacement must await its publication. Does he seriously expect anyone to believe that it takes a full-blown defence review to decide on a few dozen helicopters?
The Tories' response to Mr Healey's cuts announcement was muted. Hardly surprising since the parlous state of the armed forces is largely their fault. It was they who mothballed Albion and Bulwark and they who, like the Blair and Brown administrations, neglected the surface fleet. The entire political class shares the responsibility for allowing the nation's defences to rot. Gaps in capability are everywhere. As Britain joins the United States in allowing its missiles to be used against Russian territory, the country lacks a ground-based missile shield to fend off possible retaliation. The cutting of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic, almost certainly a Russian operationn_, possibly involving a Chinese merchant ship, shows how pressing is the threat to western interests. Yet yesterday, Mr Healey again refused to say when Labour will raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, let alone the 3 per cent needed (the current 2.3 per cent will flatline in 2025-26).
Money, however, is not the only problem. The MoD excels at extracting minimum bang for buck from its £54 billion budget. The only items not in short supply are MoD civilian staff (64,000) and bloated numbers of admirals, generals and air marshals with increasingly little to command.
Admiral Sir Keith Blount, Nato's deputy commander in Europe, laments that Britons no longer understand the need for more defence spending. Politicians, more like. And the senior officers who stood by meekly as their services were eviscerated. Promising more cuts, Mr Healey said the service chiefs were on board. What would it take for one, only one, to summon the courage to resign?