General UK Defence Discussion

[Lord Jim]

Well the Government has fired a shot across the bows of the MoD already regarding future funding. Ben Wallace has told the BBC that he accepts the MoD's equipment plan is not fully funded, but that the Ministry must cut its cloth to fit its funding as a result. In other words no money will be forth coming to fill the gap between what the Equipment Plan will cost as planned, and the funding the MoD will receive over the same period, including the cash injection agreed earlier this year. The hole is said to be anything from £7Bn up to £20Bn over the duration of the current Equipment programme and this could increase or decrease as a result of currency fluctuations. Remember the MoD pegged is costings to an exchange rate with the US Dollar of $1.50 to the pound and this has been proven to be way out and bay a significant margin, and has been a sponge for any additional funding the MoD has managed to obtain over the past five years. With Brexit, we could also see a similar issue with equipment being purchased From Europe if the pounds value against the Euro deteriorated. The usual solution of pushing programmes to the right will not work today as that actions in this vein have created the large bow wave of procurement programmes that is causing many of the problems we have now.

So where does the MoD go from hear. Well to start with, the Ministry has been put on notice that any "Leaks" will the dealt with very severely, with dire consequences for anyone responsible. All three services are going to have to have a close look at their procurement plans, and expect major scrutiny by the Government let by the man behind the throne Dominic Cummings. This does bot bode well for the Army as both the Royal Navy and RAF are locked into number of major procurement contracts that will be hard to amend, though the RAF;s plan to replace the E-3Ds with the smaller E-7 may be vulnerable, and the Navy might be forced to retire a number of escorts early, though this is not actually a bad thing, especially as Chile is waiting in the wing with its cheque book to snap them up at the right price. The Carriers are most likely safe due to their immense public profile, as should the T-31 Frigate for a similar reason. The orders for the remaining five T-26 I would like to think are safe, but an argument may be made that these ships are too expensive and there may be the possibility of the class being cut to six in my opinion. As for the reboot of the SSS, this may be limited to only two ships now instead of three and now the Tides are entering service the Waves could be sold or scrapped sooner rather then later. The Royal Marines and the remaining amphibious platforms should be save as these are key to the "Global Presence", aspiration of the Government, though the scope of the FLSS programme could be reduced or the programme canned all together.

It is the Army I am most worried for. All of the Army's planned procurement programmes are vulnerable, mainly due to their ridiculously slow pace meaning that few have actually had full production contracts put in place. OF these programmes, possibly Ajax and Boxer are probably the most likely to survive more or less intact, but Warrior CIP, MRV(P), Precision Fires and especially the Challenger CEP are all exceedingly vulnerable. The problem is that all of these programmes are non existent on the Public's radar and so are all soft targets. The only way I can see the Army protecting these vital programmes is for the service to find additional funding by making serious cuts elsewhere, with manpower and infrastructure being the possible areas. The AAC's Wildcat could be vulnerable and be sacrificed to help protect the AH-64E programme, but the latter is also part of the "Global Presence", so could be safe.

One option /choice the Army may have to make is to double down on either its existing Armoured Infantry formations or its planned Medium "Strike" formations, as doing both may now be unaffordable. The latter could be the choice as both Ajax is now contracted for and the Boxer is the highest profile programme after Ajax, not forgetting the "Strike" doctrine is also linked to the "Global Presence" ideal, where as despite the worries about Russia, many still see the former are a Cold War era dinosaur.

All of the above is my personnel opinion based on the information that there will be no new money to close the hole in the procurement plan or cover the announced increases in the wage bill of all three services. Mr Wallace's statement will also have a major impact on any SDSR that takes place in 2020 as the stated increase of 0.5% above inflation the MoD will get will have little impact on these two major issues, and fall far short of the calls to increase the percentage of GDP many Experts believe is needed to reverse the decline of the services over the last decade or so.

It is so disheartening when one considers the amount of additional funding the MoD would need over the timeframe of the current Equipment Programme is almost insignificant compared to the annual increase the NHS is to get, now to be locked in to law, but unless either the UK or one of our overseas territories in actually invaded, their will be nothing to make our new Government changes the way it sees our Armed forces beyond being a PR tool for the Global Britain brand.

By the way can anyone calculate what the Overseas Aid Budget will be by 2025 with it remaining 0.7% of GDP, and the current growth projections that have been made for the UK even with Brexit.

[SW1]

Sdsr2010 is what 2% buys you roughly. Should investment in more”revolutionary” tech be mandated then further reductions in force structure will be required. The one hope would be that while sdsr2010 was a scatter gun approach there will be a more structured and clear direction of focus that does less with less and everyone needs to be very clear on that. This must be carried out without relying on fantasy efficiency savings. I suspect the fantasy scale and ambition is about to come into contact with cold hard fiscal reality.

[topman]

No doubt everything not in the public eye will cut further to pay for the fantasy fleets. More buildings left to fall apart, every type of training reduced etc.

I wonder what impact Cummings will have on the sdsr process?

[downsizer]

I wonder if the heating in my building, which hasn't worked for 22 months, will be fixed?

[Lord Jim]

There must be some 1980s DP Parkas kicking around at the back of the barrack stores somewhere.

[~UNiOnJaCk~]

The Telegraph's coverage of this story paints a different picture to the one set out by Lord Jim I feel: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/1 ... ask-money/

[Lord Jim]

I am not to sure about that. Yes the MoD is well known for not being up to efficiency levels of the car industry when it comes to procurement, but you cannot put all the blame for procurement problems at the MoD's door. You therefore cannot expect the MoD to solve all the problems before there is a chance of extra money.

In the mean time they are being asked to balance the books based on the existing funding situation against the current Equipment Plan and here there is a funding gap, and the MoD also has to meet the increased wage and other social costs that have been committed to, against from existing funding. The only way this can be dealt with on this given timeframe is to make savings to free up funding or reduce expenditure.

To publicly state that the MoD must get its books balanced, before any new money is a well worn policy to avoid actually giving the department the money needed as if criticised the Government can simply say the MoD has only itself to blame. How many mistakes has the NHS made over the last decade or more and how much have costs exceeded the budget, yet money is usually found to fill the holes and now a massive £30Bn/year increase will be enshrined in law. Obviously different rules apply based on the political sensitivity of each respective department, even though both can result in the loss of life if not properly funded and resources.

[topman]

I wonder if the heating in my building, which hasn't worked for 22 months, will be fixed?

Typical of a lot of units isn't it? I remember last i was out in Cyprus, aki looked like it was in a 50s time warp. Half the place looked ramshackle and falling apart.

[zanahoria]

Is this something we should be concerned about? From the BBC:

Cobham takeover: Boris Johnson defends £4bn sale to US equity firm
21 December 2019

Boris Johnson has defended the controversial £4bn takeover of UK defence and aerospace company Cobham by a US private equity firm.

The government approved the sale of Cobham to Advent International on Friday, after the deal was delayed because of national security concerns.
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West said Cobham holds defence technologies which are "critically important".

But the PM said "a lot of checks" had been gone through to satisfy concerns.

Link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50879809? ... ting-story

[Lord Jim]

The issue is Cobham either had to be sold or bailed out by the Government as it has been in serious trouble for a while due to poor management decision, mainly in the acquisition of other companies. There was no way the government would bail out the company so it had to be bought by another. Ideally a company in the defence Industry should have taken it over but none were forthcoming with w big enough offer. If anyone should be blamed for who has been allowed to buy Cobham and the risked that may result it is the shareholders who accepted the offer from Advent with little regard to anything other than their wallets.

[Lord Jim]

A good video of a recent NATO fire power demo in the Baltics.

[ArmChairCivvy]

btw, the 200 ordered GTP 4x4 Sisus are for the Latvian bde, mentioned in the above vid

[dmereifield]

Army recruitment on target!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/0 ... six-years/

[ArmChairCivvy]

Great!
... and the Reserves (TA)?

[Lord Jim]

Maybe an incentive for the Reserves could be to get actually paid as if their reserve status was akin to a second job, say the equivalent of 20 hrs per week or £200 equating to £800 per month. For that the level of training would go up slightly, but could something like this increase the manning levels?

[SW1]

Depends very much on what you want the reserves to do. Are they remodelled to provide unique specialist skills, should they take over ceremonial and home service tasks (MACA, operation temperer). As such how you pay them could range from equivalent to a retained firefighter at one end to someone in the RNLI. May also be route to allow people in the regulars who may need to be at home for a period who may otherwise leave the service to swap for a while.

[Timmymagic]

Coming to every Airsofter soon...

Actually like all G-Shock it will be decent but £450...

https://g-shock.co.uk/mod

Edit: Put the G-Shock site up rather than a 'review' site.

[Lord Jim]

It is one thing to put a review of a piece of kit on here but to put the actual site trying to sell you one is a bit out of order. Next we will have sales adverts for flashlights, goggles, cars, ships, planes and so on. Where will it end?

[RetroSicotte]

Eh, I think it was more of a gag regarding the ridiculous price and the "geartard" tendencies of airsofters (much as I like the hobby) to go grabbing for that "milspec".

[clivestonehouse1]

That watch is designed for Walts only.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[RetroSicotte]

Who says they have to be raised back to pre 2010 levels? As armed forces around the world become more professional, introduce more specialist and technology advanced equipment as they have have the world over tended to become smaller. With employment in the uk being very high there is not a large pool of people to recruit and as such will constraint ultimate the size the armed forces can become, unless you plan for reinstating conscription or national service.

Views on a specific piece of equipment are purely subjective to what someone champions as the best, it has little to do with being disgusting to defence. As such I would suggest that if you had the ability to start with a clean sheet the shape and configuration of the armed forces would not likely look like what it does today. Things change and definitions such a being agile or flexible or more or less capable is like everything a play on words. Ultimately the end result is what is the likely opposition and what we are employing to counter it. That may or may not look like what it did 50, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. The constant is people and need for them trained and ready.


As for the rest a lot of it subjective and extremely complicated and I don’t think more emotive language is helpful, I don’t believe your view to be correct but your entitled to it. There are decisions taken over many years that have resulted in where we are. Ultimately recruitment and retention will be the barometer of individuals deciding if the offer is worth it or not.

So you're quite happy for the forces to lack several essential capabilities, and for its servicemen and women to have inadequate kit that relies no begging allies for help in a world when there are more capabilities you need to cover than ever before?

Saying "our stuff is better thus we can cut cut cut money" only works as an argument if A) Stuff doesn't get more expensive in general (it does) and B) If no-one else in the world is advancing at all (which is patently not the case.)

[SW1]

Who says they have to be raised back to pre 2010 levels? As armed forces around the world become more professional, introduce more specialist and technology advanced equipment as they have have the world over tended to become smaller. With employment in the uk being very high there is not a large pool of people to recruit and as such will constraint ultimate the size the armed forces can become, unless you plan for reinstating conscription or national service.

Views on a specific piece of equipment are purely subjective to what someone champions as the best, it has little to do with being disgusting to defence. As such I would suggest that if you had the ability to start with a clean sheet the shape and configuration of the armed forces would not likely look like what it does today. Things change and definitions such a being agile or flexible or more or less capable is like everything a play on words. Ultimately the end result is what is the likely opposition and what we are employing to counter it. That may or may not look like what it did 50, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. The constant is people and need for them trained and ready.


As for the rest a lot of it subjective and extremely complicated and I don’t think more emotive language is helpful, I don’t believe your view to be correct but your entitled to it. There are decisions taken over many years that have resulted in where we are. Ultimately recruitment and retention will be the barometer of individuals deciding if the offer is worth it or not.

So you're quite happy for the forces to lack several essential capabilities, and for its servicemen and women to have inadequate kit that relies no begging allies for help in a world when there are more capabilities you need to cover than ever before?

Saying "our stuff is better thus we can cut cut cut money" only works as an argument if A) Stuff doesn't get more expensive in general (it does) and B) If no-one else in the world is advancing at all (which is patently not the case.)

Id be quite happy if we acknowledged what the budget is, what that buys us and scale are involvement accordingly. Doing less with the same would be the best option.

[ArmChairCivvy]

Ah-hahh, found the right thread:

who openly stated they wanted to cancel the carriers entirely, who needed mass public action to get Gurkhas equal pay, and to take any action against lawyers chasing serving members, the "we have to innovate more flexible agile forces" crowd in governance who are just trying to find ways to say "less capable" that sounds like a position, the horrific accommodation, the horrific pay (neither of which see any sign of chance while the Tories bump their MPs pay higher and higher...) and so on and so on. The moment they even got one Minister who called them on their BS, they trumped up accusations to get him fired to instate someone who would toe the line and argue for cuts instead.

quite persuasive... add how long they had Rory as the Defence Committee chair, before being moved to be a minister -too many of those - we are voting for MPs, not ministers. One that would have held many feet close to the fire got "a promotion" plenty quick

While this is true:

Ultimately the end result is what is the likely opposition and what we are employing to counter it.

[Lord Jim]

Referring back to that damning NAO report, it mentioned that no funding has been allocated for the replacement of Harpoon., does that also mean that there is currently no funding for the interim purchase of five sets of new Missiles to equip the five ASW T-26?

On a different subject, would it be worth looking at establishing and independent body to review defence procurement programmes in a similar way to how NICE reviews the purchase of new drugs and medical practices for the NHS. For example, such a body would look at what the MoD has decided it wants to meet a capability requirement, and look at this decision and what alternatives are out their that may meet 80% to 90% of the capability but be substantially cheaper. The decision on how to proceed would still be up to the Minister, but he or she would have a second opinion on the MoD's choice and make the MoD put forward far more comprehensive evidence as to why they need the choice they have made as against the one(s) suggested by the independent body.

[SW1]

Referring back to that damning NAO report, it mentioned that no funding has been allocated for the replacement of Harpoon., does that also mean that there is currently no funding for the interim purchase of five sets of new Missiles to equip the five ASW T-26?

On a different subject, would it be worth looking at establishing and independent body to review defence procurement programmes in a similar way to how NICE reviews the purchase of new drugs and medical practices for the NHS. For example, such a body would look at what the MoD has decided it wants to meet a capability requirement, and look at this decision and what alternatives are out their that may meet 80% to 90% of the capability but be substantially cheaper. The decision on how to proceed would still be up to the Minister, but he or she would have a second opinion on the MoD's choice and make the MoD put forward far more comprehensive evidence as to why they need the choice they have made as against the one(s) suggested by the independent body.

I think South Korea operates such a system, I can see the headlines in the letters section from the retired officers now as xyz just isn’t cricket ect ect.