In today’s Times (£) Paddy Ashdown argues that the Ministry of Defence is “no longer fit for purpose.”
Ashdown says that the current government are not making enough progress with addressing the Ministry’s problems: the large annual deficit, bureaucratic blunders and project overruns and puts them down to a lack of political direction.
Here’s an excerpt:
The dust is now settling on the Strategic Defence and Security Review, published last October. And what it reveals is that the deeply painful cuts already announced are not going to be enough to balance the books. There will have to be more — there may even have to be what is, in effect, a second review.
Of the £36 billion of cuts the MoD agreed to make over the next four years, it seems to have found less than half. If this is true, then the scale of the black hole that remains means that even if the MoD cuts everything except what is needed to fight the war in Afghanistan (which the Prime Minster has ringfenced as forbidden territory for cuts), it would still not be enough to bring the department back within budget. Watch this space: we are about to see either a Treasury bailout or more defence cuts down to a level that could even include our precious amphibious capability.
Today’s PAC [Public Accounts Committee] report cites delays and alterations to project specifications as the key cause of previous cost overruns. That is bad enough, but worse still, we are still making the same mistakes. The decison to fit “cats and traps” to the new aircraft carriers in order to take cheaper planes has, the PAC reports, been made on the basis of an “inadequate understanding of costs”.
Ashdown concludes that, with the MoD “still haemorrhaging money at a colossal rate,” our inadequacies may be exposed by the next unexpected security challenge, which “could prove disastrous for a Conservative-led government.”
You can read the full piece in today’s Times (subscription required).
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6 Comments
I really wish we had a government that had the courage to scrap our useless Nuclear deterrent. I would feel more comfortable if we had kept the Harrier force and perhaps purchased some Long Range Maritime search and patrol aircraft. The current Minister of Defence still imagines Britain as a Great Power. Frankly I don’t see how a Nuclear deterrent address the current threats.
“Watch this space: we are about to see either a Treasury bailout or more defence cuts down to a level that could even include our precious amphibious capability.”
That would be a tragedy.
What must be remembered here is that the Defence settlement was reduced by only 7.5% against a department average of 19%, and yet this apparently minor cut led to the loss of all of the above!
There are only two possible conclusions:
Either Fox went hatchet crazy with the result that Defence will soon be sitting on a massive and growing budget surplus as a result of unallocated budget, or;
Defence planning was utterly wrecked by ten years of budget priority free-fall whilst being embroiled in two wars whose endurance and intensity exceeded the planned operational tempo, and which the government paid for by hacking out chunks of the core Defence budget for operational costs, and accepting procurement programs which were completely unfunded.
That said:
I can accept that the MRA4 platform was a disaster, but I will be watching VERY carefully to see whether it becomes tempting to use the same excuse for the two new aircraft carriers……………..
They, alongside the amphibious fleet and SSN’s, are the centrpiece of British strategic power-projection, and it will only remain strategic if all three are preserved in sufficient quantity.
There must be a large enough submarine fleet to sustain the industry, which on the 22 month drum-beat demands a minimum of 11 hulls.
There must be the ability to deploy, insert, and sustain a full brigade via amphibious means.
There must be a permanent ability to carrier task-group which requires that both QE class be brought into service.
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/the-sdsr-2010-%E2%80%93-what-dare-we-hope-for-2015
“The current Minister of Defence still imagines Britain as a Great Power.”
In what way are we not?
We can choose not to be, but that remains a matter of choice, i would draw your attention to the following:
http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/FDR2.pdf
I thought cats and traps were to ensure interoperability with other Navies / Air Forces who won’t have the STOVL capability of the F35 variant B?
“could prove disastrous for a Conservative-led government.”
Interesting that he uses that line, considering that it’s a Labour policy to use that phrase instead of the word ‘coalition’.
It’s true that there are severe problems at the MoD. It’s partly the previous Labour government and partly the Trident programme.
“It’s true that there are severe problems at the MoD. It’s partly the previous Labour government and partly the Trident programme.”
Really, it has virtually nothing to do with Trident!
It has a lot to do with trying to reckon with the ten year defence procurement train-crash, including ten years of non-stop war on a peace-time budget.
Additionally there will be costs from propping up the Afghan mission at a time when Fox is trying to transform the forces away from the COIN shaped box they have been hammered into by Labour.
RUSI have been saying that further reform is needed since the SDSR was published in October:
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/sdsr-part-deux-%E2%80%93-further-reductions-to-come/