UK Defense Budget Battles Rage On

From The Economist, a revealing look at the budget follies.

On January 19th Sir Mark Stanhope, Britain’s top admiral, defended long-standing plans to build two expensive new aircraft carriers. The country is bogged down now in an Afghan ground war, he said, but future conflicts may require projecting power by sea. Britain has flirted with phasing out its carriers before, only for the Falklands war to prove their indispensability.

The day before, Sir Mark’s opposite number in the army, Sir David Richards, said that Britain’s agonies in Afghanistan showed the need for more helicopters and unmanned drones, and for better-equipped troops. An “impressive” amount of this gear could be bought if money were redirected from expensive equipment intended for big state-on-state wars; the risk of such conflicts was small enough to be dealt with through NATO (ie, America). Though Sir Richard did not say carriers should be cut (he offered to get rid of some army tanks), they are an obvious target.

No less costly than the carriers themselves are the jets that will fly off them, and here is where the Royal Air Force enters the intra-service squabble. The RAF, echoed by the army, believes it can provide air cover from land bases when needed. (In Afghanistan, air power is provided mostly by the Americans.) The admirals are wary of the air-force chiefs, ever-suspicious that they want to kill off naval aviation.

By: Brant