http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11424061

I had an idea earlier. See what you think.

We need to trim the size of the defence budget. It's going to hit all three services, but none of them want to be the ones to lose out on their new toys.

So, how about just losing the Army and Air Force altogether. The best elements could be merged into the Navy, which already has air and land components. Let the Navy evolve into the UK Defence Force.

Stupid idea? Let the discussions begin.

It's an interesting one. The British Army is roughly the same size as the US Marine corps as it stands, so it's not as if it would be unusual. The USMC also run lots of armour and aircraft, although they don't run anything as heavy as the Challenger 2 or as specialised as the Typhoon. However there are some jobs it would be conceptually odd for 'Navy' personnel to be seen to be doing, like flying long-haul cargo planes and manning artillery and the like.

I see no reason at all, however, why we have three different armed services and therefore largely three sets of 'management' of each. You could certainly amalgamate all three together into one organisation, chuck out a big lump of the generals/admirals/wing commanders who frankly do sod all other than push paper and host dinner parties out and let the rest get on with it. For fairness sake you probably couldn't call it the same name as any of the old services, so you'd have to come up with a new name - the Royal British Combined Forces maybe?

You'd also end up getting rid of quite a lot of kit we don't actually use much and are there simply to give high up officers something to be in charge of.

Jon

Well the forces are very top heavy. Lots of top brass still employed. Far more than the equivalent size forces internationally. Get rid of the bulk and only keep the very best. Trident is an easy way to save £100 billion over the years and they could offer it up to the Americans for nuclear disarmament treaties. We could still keep a tactical threat with the RAF, and Navy with cruise missiles.

There's been talk before of abolishing the individual services and just have one "UK defence force". The supposed benefits of that being that it would stop inter-service squabbling and stop the services exaggerating threats to secure their own portions of the defence budget.

If they cant agree then merge all the services including Fleet Air Arm. Then seriously cut back the top brass.

Um. Pretty much anyone with a decent air defense system can stop tomahawks. The only reason they worked so well in Kuwait/Iraq was the yanks used stealth bombers to knock out the enemy air defense before the cruise missiles were launched. we haven't got any stealth bombers and the yanks won't sell us any. The one thing about an ICBM is that once it's past the rocket stage there's pretty much nothing on earth that can stop it getting to it's target. Moscow technically has an ICBM defense system but it's never actually been tested. We don't need Trident because the world is not the way it was, not because the alternatives are as good. They aren't. It just doesn't matter any more.

So, chuck Trident, it's a tool we simply don't need any more. M.A.D. doesn't work against a suicide bomber or rogue state anyway. Save a chunk of the cash, use some to build the carriers properly (which we will need) and get some decent planes to put on them, then use the rest to turn the British army into a high tech, high speed mobile infantry/cavalry force that does more damage per man than the other guy and can do it at short notice.

Jon

I agree. Also shrink the procurement section dramatically and allow units to buy kit off the shelf.

Less handouts and free housing for people who come here to scrounge off the state. The saving pay for the MOD.

Yes but that is not part of the defence review.

............and then back to reality.

They're unlikely to ever scrap Trident, so it's pointless proposing it. It's one of the things that destroyed Clegg at the debates and very easily too. There are too many people invested in the idea of security, rather than freedom. This country has a "proud" military tradition and for that reason, I can't see anything significant happening. A Costa Rica style situation would be fantastic IMO, but far too controversial. And ultimately, wherever you make cuts, what do you do with the out of work people. There's always somebody who's gonna moan.

To my mind, the most obvious and effective way to slim the military, would be a freeze (or at drastic reduction) on recruitment. It would allow natural wastage to take care of the numbers of a longer period of time, but without the fuss of actually cutting people.

Quite a lot of them have been stealing a living for far too long anyway. They even have a phrase for them - "PONTI', meaning 'Person of No Tactical Importance'.


That won't help that much, at least not in a short enough time period. The ones you want to leave aren't the squaddies who do four years or whatever then quit - and who you want to replace ASAP - because frankly we pay them next to sod all anyway. That's why they leave. The ones you want to leave are the commissioned officers who earn massively more money, get very nice subsidised housing and many other perks that all come out of the MOD budget. They're career military, on a very good deal and simply have no incentive to leave voluntarily and go out into a world that would actually expect them to do something useful to earn a commensurate salary. One of the problems is the services are top heavy anyway, freezing recruitment isn't going to do anything about that.

The only way you're going to cut the armed forces wage bill in any significant way is to flatten the pyramid and the only way you're going to do that is by sacking people. Sad, but true. Even that isn't in fact going to make all that much of a dent in defence spending because the amount we spend on people is minuscule compared to the amount we spend on tech. Without a realisation of what we need the Army/Navy/RAF to actually do (and, amazingly, that no longer includes the ability to turn large parts of Europe into radioactive glass at a moment's notice) and some notion that we only buy the kit that's appropriate for that job the idea that the defence review is going to do more than spit in the bucket is simply make believe.

You have to ask how a standing army, ships and ICBMs can defend us from the new kind of warfare we are going to be subjected to.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11432849

The era of two heavily beweaponed forces facing each other down in a field is fast disappearing; certainly the idea of two super powers has gone. We are facing a new kind of warfare - one of infiltration by small units, possibly even home grown.

That last one will never work. Because they need fresh troops and they are not replacing them fast enough as it is. If they do that then they have to pull out of Afghanistan immediately.

Trident has not deterred Al-Quada, so it is a waste of money. If the navy really want it then they have to scrap a large proportion of their surface fleet. During the cold war there was the real prospect of having to use it, not any longer. It is now a white elephant.

One point about the cuts, If they are made at the most inefficient part of the defence industry then the impact will be minimised. The income multiplier from defence spending is very low. They could actually scrap many purchases of equipment, buy what they need off the shelf and still save enough money to recruit more personnel. The £100 billion that will be spent on Trident will create very few jobs, better to get those same shipyards building the carriers and manning them, which will create a lot more jobs.

Why waste money designing a new trident sub? The Americans are due to have a new class in service by 2029. Just buy a couple of them.

For the same reasons we don't buy a lot of "off the shelf" stuff.

A) Off the shelf equipment might not meed our needs
B) By buying foreign equipment the British economy doesn't see the benefit of British defence spending (both the initial purchase and subsequent maintenance costs).