Break up the RAF and stop buying British

The Telegraph ^ | 01 Jun 2015 | Lewis Page

[sukhoi-30mki]

It’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) time again, in which we follow the new custom of making all defence policy shortly after an election without debate – thereby humanely relieving ministers of any need to justify their actions.

Things are dire in the Armed Forces. The RAF is down to embarrassingly few operational bombers and has no submarine-hunting planes at all. The Army is yet again stripping itself of soldiers. The Navy is shortly to receive aircraft carriers, but they can carry only vertical-lift jets. We used to have some of those, but we got rid of them in the last SDSR. We will have to buy the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter instead, which is new, complicated and cripplingly expensive.

So our defences are rickety: yet there’s no prospect of any big spending increases. Indeed, George Osborne has asked for further cuts to be made. Nor is there any prospect now of the MoD managing to avoid replacing Trident – much as it would corporately like to.

So that’s it then: Britain’s just a third-class power. And yet our defence budget is the fifth biggest in the world. It’s around the same as that of France, and France has a proper aircraft carrier – complete with planes. France also has hundreds of operational strike jets, not scores; it has maritime-patrol planes; its army may soon have twice as many soldiers as ours. Why don’t we have all that?

The answer is, mostly, the British defence industry.

Dominated by BAE Systems, our arms industry is lamentably inefficient. Its products are often horrifyingly expensive. They require parts and technical support not only from the US but other nations too – we gain no independence by purchasing “British-made” kit like the Eurofighter.

[sukhoi-30mki]

The Eurofighter Typhoon (Photo: EPA)

[sukhoi-30mki]

Lewis Page is a former Royal Navy officer and author of ‘Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military’

[armydawg505]

Is there any better explanation why Adolf Putin ignores the west in his schemes and plans?

[tcrlaf]

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party and the left is demanding even bigger defense cuts, to pay for more Welfare.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“Is there any better explanation why Adolf Putin ignores the west in his schemes and plans?”

Socialists is all Western governments are doing the work to destroy their own countries. Putin and his buds are just kicking back and enjoying the show.

He’s not ignoring the West. They are willing enough partners.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

For over a thousand years, European nations relied on mercenaries for defense and aggression, for the single reason that they were a lot cheaper than standing armies.

And while today it seems that mercenary armies wouldn’t work, that is only because the concept needs to be modernized. No longer knights on horseback, a modern mercenary army would be one or more corporations.

Importantly, most armed conflicts are fairly small and low tech, and involvement by modern armies is prohibitively expensive, and not done as conquest but as peacekeeping and conflict limitation, to prevent a local fight from expanding. It is like using an extremely expensive sports car to drive to a convenience store less than a block away for a half pint of milk every morning, instead of just walking.

A mercenary corporation would most of the time just train a bit, keeping its equipment in mothballs, to keep down expenses. Then when it was needed, it would be paid premium prices *for the duration of the conflict*.

Importantly, this severely inhibits national rulers from hiring a mercenary army frivolously, conducting extended wars, or otherwise involving themselves in situations that are not their business.

[buckalfa]

"A mercenary corporation would most of the time just train a bit, keeping its equipment in mothballs, to keep down expenses. Then when it was needed, it would be paid premium prices *for the duration of the conflict*."

Except for the keeping down expenses part, the mercenary corporation vaguely resembles the US military - industrial complex of the last 75 years.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sukhoi-30mki.

Things are dire in the Armed Forces. The RAF is down to embarrassingly few operational bombers and has no submarine-hunting planes at all. The Army is yet again stripping itself of soldiers. The Navy is shortly to receive aircraft carriers, but they can carry only vertical-lift jets. We used to have some of those, but we got rid of them in the last SDSR. We will have to buy the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter instead, which is new, complicated and cripplingly expensive.

And not only that, the Tories made it *rain*.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Yeah, I’d rather we were defended by people whose ultimate loyalty was to the nation and its people, not Blackwater, CACI, McDonald’s or some other corporation. The military is the one thing that should never be privatized, it should always be directly accountable to a democratically elected civilian government.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It’s more than that. The US government finds it very hard to “bring home the troops” after a conflict. But mercenaries don’t act that way. They are paid up front for a limited duration contract. Once the contract is met, they are done. And there are no contract renewals. For anything more than that, they want a new contract to negotiate.

And if the contractor welches on them, or plays games, they can just cancel the contract and leave. And no social engineering nonsense, either, like the government loves to inflict on the military.