Serious questions lie behind huge UK weapons programme

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/feb/05/defence-budget-weapons

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In a display of apparently supreme confidence, the Ministry of Defence last week published a list of major weapons projects which, it says, will cost £160 bn over the next decade.

The list, it might be better described as a wishlist, includes £35.8bn to be spent on submarines, including a new fleet of Trident nuclear ballistic missile boats — though a decision to go ahead will depend on how MPs vote in the next parliament — and billions spent on two large carriers for the navy and and an unknown quantity of US Joint Strike Fighters to fly from them.

The MoD tried to bounce the National Audit Office, parliament's independent watchdog, into signing off the list just as the Treasury seems to have done, unlikely though that may seem.

But the audit office would have none of it.

It warned that the MoD's plan would "inevitably change over time as economic and operational priorities evolve and as short-term affordability or urgent requirements cause the department to flex its plans".

It added: "For this reason, this report does not, and future reports will not, offer a definitive view on the affordability of the equipment plan."

John Louth, a director and senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank said the MoD's plan lacked detail and was vulnerable to shocks.

"Whilst they should be applauded for publishing a 10-year plan, the information we have is very thin. It doesn't really talk about any accounting assumptions or anything that gives an understanding of how the numbers were generated," he said.

Louth added: "If you have a 10-year forecast, you're making an awful lot of assumptions over how the world will be over that 10-year period..."

A couple of days after the MoD released its shopping list, David Cameron told the BBC: "What matters most of all is that we make sure the budget is being spent on the things that our military need. Intelligence assets, transport assets, making sure we have special forces that are the best-equipped in the world."

The trouble is that under the MoD's plan, significantly more will be spent on projects which an increasing number of military chiefs say are irrelevant to modern conflicts (Trident) or unnecessary, expensive, and vulnerable (carriers and jump jets based on them) than on kit the armed forces really do need (armoured fighting vehicles, helicopters, unmanned drones, intelligence-gathering systems — and special forces).

The gap between money, time, and effort, spent on big and expensive projects and that devoted to more relevant and usable kit is if anything, getting wider.

One reason is that there are too many vested interests wedded to traditional weapons systems, the other is that the Whitehall machine is embedded in stovepipe thinking.

Tunnel vision is another word for it.

"Military" is still treated as something completely separate from "security" or "intelligence" despite the recognition that spookery and soldiery are getting closer and closer. Cameron (see above) recognises it, as does the head of the army, General Sir Peter Wall, and the chief of the defence staff, General Sir David Richards.

The kind of conflict the army — and the navy, and the RAF — are going to get involved in for the forseeable future will demand much closer cooperation between intelligence-gathering (including surveillance drones), on the one hand and armed manned, or unmanned, aircraft, anti-piracy ship patrols, and small groups of soldiers on the ground, on the other.

This kind of conflict, essentially counter terrorist operations, are also an opportunity for Europeans to get their act together — the international military teams that will now train west African troops is sponsored and put together not by Nato, but by the EU.