Fitaloon at MicroShaft

The Defence Secretary said that as well as conducting the review, his priority was to ensure troops in Afghanistan were well equipped.

“We’re all concerned about the political excitement here but we have to remember that in Afghanistan our armed forces are involved in a very brutal and bloody war and we have to ensure that they have everything they need to do the job that we have asked them to do in our name,” he said. “So the number one priority has to be to look after our armed forces,” he said.

“There will be a number of challenges because the time I spent working as a doctor with the armed forces taught me that it’s not just about our frontline forces themselves, it’s also about the families. And we have to pay more attention to service families and their needs as we also have to do with service veterans. I think that in this country we need to treat our veterans in the way that the best of other countries treat their veterans.”

Fox also added that the coalition government arrangement with the Liberal Democrats would allow the Trident replacement programme go ahead.

“We’ve got a very clear agreement that we will continue with the nuclear deterrent. The Liberals have said that they would like to look at what other alternatives in terms of costs of the nuclear deterrent will be. I will certainly want to scrutinise the cost of the Trident replacement programme but the ultimate responsibility is to keep Britain safe and protect the generations of the future from whatever threats may emerge in a dangerous world.

“We cannot play fast and loose with the country’s security and we will not.”

Fox: defence review is under way – Defence Management.

It’s available here.

The Green Paper, titled Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review, analyses the complex and uncertain future for which the Government must plan, sets out some essential principles for defence going forward, and identifies key questions that the SDR must address, including:

• What contribution should the Armed Forces make in ensuring security within the UK?
• How could we more effectively employ the Armed Forces in support of wider efforts to prevent conflict and strengthen international stability?
• Do our current international defence and security relationships require rebalancing in the longer term?
• Should we integrate our forces with those of key allies and partners?

Since the last full SDR in 1998, the threats to our national security have changed dramatically. While we know that our defence priority today is Afghanistan, we must also prepare for the threats of the future.

Ministry of Defence | Defence News | Defence Policy and Business | MOD sets the big questions for Strategic Defence Review.

Delusional

Brown is totally and utterly deluded. He is trying to bribe the British Public to somehow believe that in the middle of the deepest recession (we aren’t really out of it yet) the UK has seen in modern times he can spend billions on Defence and that he KNOWS what the best thing is to spend it upon even before any Strategic Defence Review takes place.

He is utterly unbelievable and has lead this country into an abyss that we are going to pay for,  for years to come.

This is nothing less than a blatant attempt to bribe the public for the General Election,

The Times has this:

Gordon Brown will use the launch of a Green Paper on the future of the Armed Forces to promise a new generation of warships and fast jets over the coming decade. He will also guarantee an extra £1.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan, and promise to safeguard defence spending from any cuts next year.

Mr Brown aims to display Labour commitment (joke>) to the military while also forcing the Conservatives to say whether they would match such spending.

The list, according to the Times, is a s follows:

• going ahead with two 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers at a cost of £5 billion;
• maintaining troop numbers in the Army at more than 100,000; and
• committing a future government to the Joint Strike Fighter, costing £10 billion, and completing the £20 billion Typhoon programme.

The list will prompt questions about how an incoming government could afford such sums at a time of deep spending cuts across Whitehall. A government source said there would have to be

“tough decisions elsewhere”.

Tough Decisions? It will need to be a wholesale  slaughter on a scale not seen since WW1.

We need to get rid of this deluded and dangerous man as soon as possible. He is in La-La land again dreaming of how he “saved the world”.

Time for Change.

Brown goes into battle with billions for defence – Times Online.

This is the foreword by Lord Guthrie for the Centre for  Policy Studies report on Defence spending.  It will make hard reading for Bob Ainsworth and his lackeys.

This paper is an alarm call.

It should make everyone in the Ministry of Defence realise that they cannot go on as they are. The shameful waste and delay which characterise the sorry history of equipment procurement should never have been tolerated. In the past, such indulgence was wrong. Now it is both wrong and unaffordable.

The huge government budget deficit is going to require great sacrifice on the part of the taxpayer. Defence spending, already too low for the commitments being asked of our Armed Forces, is going to come under even greater pressure. It is crucial therefore that we squeeze as much value as possible from every pound we spend on kit.

23,000 people are employed in Defence Equipment and Support. Yet all too often our Armed Forces have to put up with substandard equipment. Yes, the Government may have finally released the funds to pay for helicopters and equipment so urgently needed in Afghanistan. Yes, the Urgent Operational Requirement scheme is at last getting the right equipment to the front line. But it has taken seven years to do so. World War II was over in less time than that.

It may be right, as the Government has just announced, to pay for the equipment that is needed by raiding military budgets elsewhere. But that can only be a short-term measure. No. The time for a hard-nosed attitude to defence procurement has come. The cosy arrangements with the big contractors must cease.
And the detailed recommendations put forward both here and in the Gray Review must be implemented.

The Ministry of Defence claims that it recognises that the world has changed and that a new approach is required to Defence Equipment, Procurement and Support. Any number of studies have reported and made recommendations. But too often they have met with resistance from vested interests from both the MoD and the defence industry, and excuses found which lead to the shelving of new ideas which would be appropriate to our new circumstances. That is no longer acceptable.

To quote Churchill:

“Action this day. Not “keep buggering on”.

Lord Guthrie
December 2009

PDF article is here.

Press Release is here, it has a bad link to the PDF.

More bang for the buck.

Tucano's

With our forces struggling to cope with the current situation in Afghanistan and stretched to the limit it is becoming obvious that the lack of a Strategic Defence Review in the past 10 years is causing huge problems to the Armed Forces in knowing how they should be equipped and setup. With the focus now on Afghanistan and imminent cuts in all budgets we need to know how money is going to be spent to support our future strategies.  As Sir David Richards reminds us there are options

General Richards, Chief of the General Staff, believes that the Super Tucano offers a cost-effective alternative to fast jets such as the Cold War-era Eurofighter Typhoon in counter-insurgency operations such as those in Afghanistan. Resembling something from the Second World War, a Super Tucano costs about £5 million, a fraction of the £60 million estimated cost of the F35 Joint Strike Fighter ordered for the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carriers or the £67 million of a Typhoon.

This is not a new suggestion as a few people have been arguing this for some time but until recently, with little traction.

We need to look at how and what type of conflicts we are going to be involved in and decide if we need much of the super hi-tech and costly weapons or we should look at lower tech and cheaper solutions or is a mix of these the way forward. This review needs to be of the highest priority once the Cameron Government comes to power on the 7th May (Thanks Bob). Richards sounds like someone they should take note of for some help, Dannatt not having been one of the Tories better ideas.

In the meantime the conflict in Afghanistan continues and we need to look at innovative solutions to the present problems whilst we wait for this dysfunctional, inept and dying Labour government to be defeated.  Not just this sort of military solution but also the civil and governmental issues that might lead to some sort of peace being established, that means that we can withdraw to leave it up to the Afghans to get on with their own lives. Some of these options such as “buying off” the Taliban may be explored at the downgraded Afghanistan Conference in London this week.

RAF urged to cut ‘Cold War’ new jets for cheap propeller aircraft – Times Online.