Repulse wrote: ↑08 Mar 2024, 07:56
That would be true if cuts weren’t needed to live within current budgets - it is not. I’m all for prioritisation and making the most of the money being spent, but the chancellor is playing a dangerous game of misdirection.
The RDEL budget was always due to contract in 2024/2025. It’s nothing new.
The Defence Select Committee raised it after the last spending review.
The issue is the lack of a cash boost to offset inflation and not enough resource to replenish stockpiles and replace military aid faster.
Should have said the UK should have the ability to deploy multiple reinforced battlegroups simultaneously globally, but yes I think a statement of intent as clear as this is required.
IMO the Integrated Review is now obsolete and the review refresh was a bad joke. All of the assumptions need to be revisited and HMT needs to stop insisting that the SDSRs are written within a budget envelope. The security landscape is too dangerous and volatile now.
The reason so much more needs to be spent now is simply due to the realistic plausibility of a peer on peer clash. That requires mass that has been incrementally removed over the last 20 years. It will be expensive to reinstate but it’s inevitable that the process will begin.
A few battlegroups simply won’t cut it. That is a peacetime luxury that isn’t impressing anyone anymore.
3 deployable Divisions should be ambition by 2030 with 2 truly deployable Divisions ready within 2 years. There is no time for a 10 year plan any longer.
3rd Division is a mess. It can and should be fixed hopefully within 2 to 3 years but it will take the Boxer, AJAX, Archer, increased MLRS and CH3 to start arriving in numbers to truly make it fit for purpose against a peer. It’s an absolute priority that this happens asap.
The money is irrelevant - it’s about prioritisation, there are plenty of other things that are needed, or if they aren’t we do not need to spend the money on defence at all.
Agreed up to a point but increasing usable mass and increasingly deployability from the current headcount must be one of those priority areas.
With a strategy to train and equip others to fight and no appetite for nation building, then I see absolutely no need to do more. The UK needs to be able to defend itself, but by having a clear scope for expeditionary land warfare it has a clarifying effect across a number of areas.
Nation building has nothing to do with it.
The British Army has taken the global training provision to the extreme. It’s very commendable but other areas need the investment now. It may be unfashionable but it’s the traditional areas of mass, deployability and sustainability that need the funding prioritisation now.
What I would spend the money on instead? I’ve already given my view - increased stocks, better conditions, plus top end capabilities (A2AD, BMD, long ranged missiles and bombers/UAVs, SSNs, ISR/MPAs, more T26s).
That’s great but commentators are screaming for a massive funding increase now.
How much of your list can be achieved within 3 years or 5 years or even 10 years?
That is reason why HMT is holding out.
Credible, costed and coherent plan first, funding second.