Amid the drumbeat of calls for greater defence spending, no one is asking whether we should be spending smarter, rather than more (Opinion, February 22). Britain has form on going over-budget on the wrong programmes, which are delivered late.
We have two aircraft carriers that came in at 50 per cent over budget, but that only hold half the number of planes as a US carrier because they are not equipped with launch catapults — and even then they rarely sail with a full complement of jets.
Then there is the much-celebrated joint Aukus nuclear hunter killer submarine (SSN) programme with Australia. The government has no idea of the cost — not even an estimate — or how many the UK or the Australians will order. Meanwhile Britain’s “independent” nuclear deterrent is in reality totally dependent on the US as Philip Stephens’ column argued. The last two test Trident missile fires veered off course and failed. Still, it accounts for a fifth of total defence spending, ringfenced.
You can’t help thinking that the carriers, all the brave talk of a “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific and sending subs to help defend Australia (which is richer than Britain, spends proportionately less on defence and cheerily poaches our doctors and nurses) have something to do with a yearning still to be taken seriously and for a “seat at the top table”.
That’s left us with nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, but we cannot even raise one properly supported army division or defend our skies against a concerted missile and drone attack.
So rather than cranking up often incompetent and ineffective defence spending, even to 2.5 per cent — way above what is planned in most comparable countries — Britain needs to reset the whole way it thinks about its place in the world and its defence to more agile systems from drones and swarm attacks to robot weapons, AI, cyber warfare and logistics.
Britain has overstretched herself for well over a century and especially since the second world war when she was no longer a world power.
Yes we need a strong military, but does anyone really think the current defence establishment is capable of delivering it?
Phillip Oppenheim
Former Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Todenham, Gloucestershire, UK
