Spending on defence within the MOD (not about benefits)

[Halfbeaklily]

Instead of endless discussions on cutting Welfare benefits to increase defence spending, resulting in endless pages of discussion about who should and shouldn't get benefits....
Why isn't there more discussion on waste of money within the MOD and military, excessive use of expensive consultants which may not always be necessary or beneficial e.g. apparently 1.5b to Serco for recruitment (year old Reddit post).
And also on how the military should look. Why do we need a worldwide responsive navy for example. Looking at other EU countries e.g. Poland, Croatia etc they have smaller and/or more locally focused navies, not building aircraft carriers and huge ships to police the world. Shoupd we still be seeing ourselves as one of the major powers when we don't have that level of ability/resource anymore?
Why make individual welfare recipients suffer to pay for small amounts of expensive consultancy, expensive unnecessary fittings, ships and tanks that are not fit for modern warfare etc?
I'm finding it hard to find proper information on these topics, these are genuine questions, I have no political agenda.

I'm finding it hard to find proper information on these topics, these are genuine questions, I have no political agenda.

You know full well this will take about a page to turn into benefit-bashing. The lady doth protest too much.

I’d assume we need a worldwide responsive navy because we have overseas territories that we protect?

No one is seemingly in charge of budgets and things like submarines and aircraft are long term projects that only a few (1?) companies can do. If costs rise nonody is going to pull the plug and an extra billion isn't going to be missed. HS2 is similar. Costs rise and nobody seems to say why? or stop.
Armed Forces are expensive and really we are t a global player now.

I have some thoughts on this. Whilst yes, there is a lot of inefficiency in how the MOD is run, I've done a lot of thought around what our military should be doing. Firstly, you are wrong - the technology we have is ready for modern warfare. Whilst there are jokes based on challenges, on the whole, we continue to have an advanced military capability.

If you compare our circumstances to the countries you've listed, we are an island nation that sits between Russia, Europe and the US. This makes us vulnerable, but also strategic. Without a reasonable military, we would struggle to be allied meaningfully with a friendly force that together operates to deter global super powers. At the moment we are in NATO, which means we are part of an organisation that can represent the interests and operates a deterrent against less-friendly super powers, like China or Russia. We need to be an appealing ally.

With the Navy primarily operate our capability based on deterrent, policing shipping lanes/protecting our interests at sea (oil, fishing), and as a strategic asset that we can operate significant military capability in places where we have no physical land bases. As an island nation reliant on imports, closing of shipping lanes (as we've seen just with oil and the Strait or Hormuz) would be catastrophic to our economy and survival. The Navy support the interests of the UK in global shipping, they also support less military programmes, lots of humanitarian aid, anti-narcotics work and our fisheries protection (and that's protecting us from our allies!).

The nuclear deterrent is something that, if we give up, we can never get back - as that would be a huge escalation on the international stage. At the moment it is part of the baseline threat status as it is out there 24x7 365. Do we need a nuclear deterrent? Arguable, but we have just seen our main ally show a completely different set of colours that may mean at some point Europe needs to rally together to protect itself.

My knowledge is mostly naval, so I'll avoid commenting on our Army and RAF at this point.

Now is not the time to shrink our military further, with unreliable allies and active conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, US and Iran, instability across the middle east. No, we are not a self sufficient nation.

Do we need to review all our government spending? Absolutely, we are inefficient to the nines, we spend far too much on external consultants, contractors etc. We need to do more with our money and get more value out.

This isn't really about finding the funds to carry on being an independent global player, despite what may like to think or even claim HM Force's ability to do that has long gone..

What's twitching many people right now is the question of whether UK defence is currently funded well enough to play a part if needed in the defence of Europe (as part of NATO) or even realistically defend the UK...

In many peoples opinion the answer to that is no.

I would't deny reform of parts of the MoD, especially with regard to procurement, has long been needed but IMO the UK has reached the point where even such reform won't stop the decay....

The choice is pretty stark, either increase funding, reform procurement and bolster HM Forces, or accept that the UK can't afford to really "do" defence anymore.

Well, as ex MoD Civil Service, subsequently privatised I can tell you you're spot on. I saw endless multi-year multi million pound research programmes grind on when it was blindingly obvious they wouldn't deliver anything. The MoD would generate work in house, that would then go to a defence contractor, that would then be passed to a couple of subcontractors, each adding overheads and taking their cut in profits. Usually the end result was a report that the MoD didn't even know why they'd asked for it! Shameful. I'd like to think things are different now but of course they're not.

I hope not, and the OP has a bit of a point.

Just about every time one a thread on this topic is attempted it very very quickly gets derailed by a handful posters who want to discuss at length very specific and sometimes quite personal benefits issues.

I don't know whether it's done deliberately or not...

I had an interesting conversation with an ex-soldier (non-commissioned) at the weekend. He made the point that the right people are rarely asked for their views on where investments need making. In his view, the better people to ask would be the senior experienced forward operators -- drone pilots for example, who know where the technology is heading and what new capabilities should be/will be possible in the next five or ten years. At it stands, decisions are made by admirals, generals and politicians and they are not necessarily at the cutting edge of technology and tactics.

Drones and remote-controlled interventions are a key technology, as the Ukraine conflict is proving. What the services don't need is costly targets, like aircraft carriers even if they are desirable pork barrel job creation schemes for senior politicians' constituencies.

Problem is whilst the experienced forward operators (been there, done that) usually do have a very good idea on what they'd like to have to do the job today in the real world it may be completely unachievable (due costs, politics etc) .

They may also not be as clued up on where the tech or tactics are going as the SMEs at HQ level, ot in the ministry/industry..

That's where the Senior/Very Senior Officers (VSOs, some of whom aren't that long out of the front line) have a role to play.

Where that can go wrong is when those SOs/VSOs run headlong into a Treasury that says no, and that's gone on for decades.

They then have a choice.... say "well no money, we can't do the job" - that's end of career....or do they go with the flow?

Agree entirely with your pork barrel comment...I can think of two examples in particular.......

Our military looks feeble because a HUGE portion of the defence budget goes on ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers. Without those, we could have a vastly more capable army, air force, territorial navy, and be able to quickly pivot as the nature of war evolves - look how fast Ukraine has established itself as a world leader in drone warfare for example. Unfortunately, Trident and the QE class carriers are just a huge drain on the rest of the armed forces.

If we want to maintain a European nuclear defence we should chip in with the French who have a much cheaper home grown one rather than paying billions to the US for nukes that we don't even own.

I think changing the nuclear posture.migjt be worth looking at, but the problem is HM Forces need the money promptly.

Scrapping Continuous At Sea Deterrence ( CASD) isn't going to do that, especially as the replacements for the Trident boats, the Dreadnought class, is already underway.....and probably the bigger problem is that some UK politicians quite like having a big stick, even if they think they wouldn't use it they think it guarantees continued clout at the UN.

I've always been sceptical about the carriers but good luck prising them of the RNs hands, especially as they are another asset that some politicians seem to think they make the UK look like a global power....

Thank you for all of your really interesting responses.
Apart from the first one claiming I want to discuss benefits which I clearly do not, and which has been done to death!
I was interested in if we can stop waste of money and save a lot that way, and if the money is being spent on the right things anyway. Some of the question relates to me having seen large sums wasted when I worked in IT, on external contractors who had no knowledge of the subject matter in question, or where most of the money was going to the profits of companies like the big 5 consultancies/auditors.

There's waste in everything. NHS, schools, and yes, benefit systems. And sometimes the systems set up to combat waste tend to end up costing more.

@notimagain a dear friend of ours, while he was at Camberley, wrote a very well researched paper proposing as a thought experiment that the 3 arms should be merged into a single force along the lines of the US Marine Corps (which is about the same size). This would provide a far more effective and cohesive fighting force, and much better value for money.

it did not go down well. At all.

I think it will come @SadiraOfTyr, but resistance will be ferocious. It makes sense.

I can imagine.

That's an idea that has been run up the flagpole a few times and the standard response has always been "look at Canada"....doing that there wasn't a happy experience and didn't turn out to be a magic bullet that fixed their problems.

In any case I'd caution thinking this can all be fixed by altering the military, command structures or reducing VSOs...

I'm knocking on a bit but I saw HM Forces, MoD itself and industry "pivot" impressively quickly and introduce new tech, etc, during and for a while after the Falklands campaign. Things that hadn't been possible or available for years suddenly arrived, sometimes almost literally overnight...

Now the story has it that was mainly possible back then because a certain very senior minister directed that the Treasury must not be involved in much if any of the decision making processes related to the conflict.

Was that John Nott @notimagain ?

No, as I recall the story it was the PM, but need to check the source, think it may be from the bio of one of the VVSO's at the time.