So, the Labour shadow secretary of state for defence Mr. John Healey will, later today, deliver a speech at the London Defence Conference highlighting the deterioration of Britain’s “moral contract” with its Armed Forces under 13 years of Conservative government. He claims that poor accommodation, low morale, and increasing departures from the Armed Forces are the result. Given the current state of the Royal Air Force, shortages of pilots, poor retention as far too many highly qualified officers leave in part because rules that guide promotion boards no longer appear to place merit as a top priority mean that I for one am not going to argue with the points Mr. Healey will or has by now made.
Mr. Healey will also be critical of UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace’s remarks about the armed forces being “hollowed out and underfunded.” He will, according to press comments, call for the Government to halt planned cuts to full-time soldiers due to heightened security threats and ensure the armed forces have the necessary equipment to fulfil NATO commitments.
He will no doubt be applauded for his words but let us not kid ourselves that by the time his party comes into government that defence will be provided with any favors. History reminds us that each and every shadow defence minister has challenged the government of the day and made promises to better prepare us for what we need but sadly, when and if they finally achieve office, spending on defence is suddenly no longer a priority and finds itself pushed to the back of the queue. To be fair, having been in the job as shadow secretary of state for some considerable time now Mr. Healey has earned his stripes. He gets defence but I wonder, if defence is not to be a priority why would the next Labour Party PM want someone at the top of the MOD who actually understands defence?
There was much to be found on Twitter yesterday in regard of what the upcoming Defence Command Paper Refresh will ultimately decide in respect of cuts in Army personnel numbers with some suggesting reductions closer to 20,000 personnel rather than the more widely suggested 10,000. Much of this may well have been nonsense or an attempt to stir trouble but beware, when it comes to defence strategy and policy, we are now in the period of leaks. I am not about speculate on the matter but that said, I do sense that we should in the Defence Command Paper brace ourselves for a more serious dose of overall negativity than we have perhaps up to now been talking about.
As ever, I am grateful to CMS Strategic for ensuring that I don’t miss any of the live or written questions and answers made in relation to defence in the House of Commons. Yesterday was no exception:
Defence – UK relations with EU: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether it is his policy to increase defence cooperation with the EU outside of the UK’s cooperation obligations to EU countries under NATO.
Answer from Ben Wallace, The Secretary of State for Defence (Ministry of Defence):
“As we committed in the Integrated Review Refresh, the Ministry of Defence will develop new forms of cooperation with the EU, including on defence.
We have enjoyed steadily increased defence engagement with the EU over the past year, including through coordinating our respective provision of training and military equipment to Ukraine, our efforts to maintain stability in the Western Balkans and work to strengthen NATO-EU cooperation. We will continue to look for areas of cooperation, where it is in our shared interests.
NATO remains the bedrock of our security, but we recognise that the EU can reinforce NATO activity and make an important contribution to European security, particularly when it comes to sanctions, energy security, countering disinformation and civilian-military crisis management.”
AWACS – Procurement: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 4 May 2023 to Question 182507 on AWACS: Procurement, what plans he has for use of the two MESA radars originally planned for aircraft four and five. Answer from James Cartlidge, Minister for Defence Procurement (Ministry of Defence):
“The cost of procurement for the Multi-Role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar was around £60 million each; parts from the radars originally planned for aircraft four and five will be retained for spares allowing a saving/offset of initial procurement and future sustainment requirements from the overall programme cost. They will also add resilience to the spares supply chain to benefit aircraft availability.”
The latter is a perfect example of how in Defence the UK has this amazing ability to spend more on defence in order to cut actual capability. I am sure that there are perfectly legitimate reasons to have five sets of MESA radar for just three aircraft and that other countries might well have done the same. But if we were to be honest with ourselves the reality is that when they made the stupid decision to cut the number of actual aircraft from five to, they didn’t make sufficient consideration for what others in the department had already done and for which there was no turning back.
As I have said many times before, the most important element of defence in the eyes of the public are honesty and integrity. It is an area that sad to say we have consistently failed and that is, in part, why the public have rarely over the past three decades been onside in defence.
An instance of this occurred fairly recently at the Coronation whereby it was only the Red Arrow Aerobatic team that flew over Buckingham Palace. That everything else had been eliminated on the supposed grounds of poor visibility and rain caused not surprisingly led some of the great British public to conclude that the RAF is now seriously limited in what it can do when it rains. Yes, there may well have been a public safety element but if there was, it turned out to be a gross overreaction.
Another area that concerns me is that the Defence Command Paper will no doubt be full of expressions in respect of so-called ground breaking technology or that we are, a world leader in this or that. We have got to stop kidding ourselves and start to tell it how it is. We are a nation burdened with massive amounts of debt, that has for years mainly because of an over generous welfare state been living beyond its means. We have paid ourselves too much and, in the process, made ourselves uncompetitive. We have forgotten the importance of virtues of manufacturing as much as we can of what we consumer and of how vulnerable we have made ourselves because we import so much.
And in defence, we have too easily forgotten the importance of sovereign capability, the value this has in respect of jobs, the economy and indeed, if we get it right, potential exportability. We have forgotten the value of common sense but worse, we have forgotten the values of honesty and integrity.
CHW (London – 23rd May 2023)
Howard Wheeldon FRAeS
Wheeldon Strategic Advisory Ltd,
M: +44 7710 779785
Skype: chwheeldon
@AirSeaRescue