The UK’s internal war over defense spending is heating up:
Proposed cuts include:
While I find the idea of slashing your defense budget while your military is engaged in two theaters of war ridiculous, I will concede that the Eurofighter is a logical cut. It’s a Cold War legacy system, and while Russian strategic bomber flights are stepping up, that threat doesn’t match up with the planned procurement figures. The RAF can afford to wait for the Joint Strike Fighter. Cutting the armored vehicles, however, is madness. Britain’s current workhorse, the Land Rover, doesn’t even offer the same basic level of protection as our unarmored Humvees. With Her Majesty’s soldiers dying from IEDs and RPG fire, looking upon upgraded armor as “expendable” defies belief. Axing two of the planned Type 45 Frigates is also questionable. The planned frigate fleet is already half that of the original number of Type 42s, lending a certain credibility to the argument that the mighty Royal Navy is now nothing more than a coastal defense force. Labour’s grasp of the UK’s strategic commitments is dubious, at best. Most of their canned statements on the sad state of the Royal Army and Navy have more to do with the preservation of manufacturing jobs in their districts than with the national defense. They believe that the end of minor policing actions in Northern Ireland and Bosnia can somehow alleviate the stress placed on the military by their obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as absolve them of their responsibility to modernize the force. The strength of Tony Blair’s leadership aside, in the decade that Labour has dominated British politics, Her Majesty’s Armed Forces have become a sad, hollow shell of their former selves, creating a crisis dire enough for the MoD to admit that the British Navy would struggle simply to “fight a war.” That’s a mighty fall for what was once a proud seafaring empire.
