I couldn’t agree with you more, Phil.
It’s not long to wait until the White Paper gets published, and the details for Tranche 2 of Eurofighter should also see the light of day in the next month or so.
Anyway, to emphasise the point about misinformation…this relates to the Sunday Telgraph piece posted here not so long ago:
Scottish regiments will live to fight another day
A RIPPLE of anger ran across Scotland on 23 November following an article in the Sunday Telegraph warning of dramatic cuts in the army – cuts that would include the disbandment of some of Scotland’s most famous regiments, such as the Royal Scots and the Black Watch. However, the message being passed around the Palace of Westminster to some very angry Scottish MPs was: “Calm down … it’s not going to happen.”
The Sunday Telegraph has got it wrong, and in the Defence White Paper that will be published in the middle of this month there will be big changes, but the Scottish regiments will survive. All three services will be affected as the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, charts the way ahead for the armed forces during the next five years. As ever, the problem for the Ministry of Defence is money, and all of the government departments are under pressure from the Chancellor to trim their budgets.
The three armed services are almost certainly going to see major changes as the UK goes through the final stages of a decade long change in emphasis, from conventional military operations on what used to be described as the “European Central Front” to a more balanced, “ready for anything” posture, designed to deal with a variety of tasks from peace support missions to limited conventional operations.
The Royal Air Force is the service that is likely to be the most affected. The RAF is due to receive 232 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft over the next ten years. The total cost of the programme has been budgeted at £19.7 billion, and on a very rough calculation each aircraft is likely to cost around £70 million. It is likely that the third tranche of 88 aircraft, due to be delivered between 2010 and 2014, will be cancelled.
There are longer-term plans for the Royal Navy that include the procurement of two new 60,000-ton aircraft-carriers – large vessels almost 300 metres in length and capable of carrying over 40 aircraft. The costings for this project are unclear, but it is likely that when all of the bills for the vessels, aircraft and crew are in, each carrier is going to cost between £3 billion to £4 billion. Most analysts believe that the current carrier project is going to be difficult to fit into the MoD’s long-term costing and that something is going to give. Recent defence market gossip suggests some sort of deal with the French is being considered.
There are almost certainly going to be some pretty drastic changes in the way the army is organised, especially the infantry, but it is likely that all of the current regimental titles will survive. In the past an infantry battalion of some 600-700 men was the deployment option of choice. Each infantry battalion was made up of five companies: a headquarters company, three rifle companies and a manoeuvre support company (equipped with support weapons such as mortars and anti-tank systems). There are 40 infantry battalions with a total of 200 companies.
Today’s infantry deployment option is the company group or combat team, based on a rifle company, and we believe that the new plan is to reduce the number of headquarters and manoeuvre support companies but to retain something near to a 200-company structure with more but slightly smaller rifle companies. This would mean doing away with possibly ten headquarters and manoeuvre support companies. Individual companies would retain their old regimental affiliation. The regiments most likely to lose a headquarters company and a manoeuvre support company are the so-called “large regiments” with two battalions, such as the Royal Anglians and The Light Infantry.
Contrary to perceived opinion, the MoD is not doing too badly on the recruiting front, especially in a time of low unemployment. As of October this year, both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were just over 1,000 personnel away from their trained strength requirement. However, there are real problems in the army – especially in the infantry, where the largest percentage of the army’s 3,900 trained strength deficit is to be found. Expect to see the forthcoming Defence White Paper recognising the difficulty of “squaring” the personnel problem inside the current arrangements and adopting solutions that could be described as enhancing power projection capabilities.
Above all, this White Paper will be about reducing longer-term costs and co-operating with allies, especially European allies. It is no longer possible for a “small country situated off the coast of Western Europe” to continue to try to do it all alone.
Charles Heyman
• Charles Heyman is the senior defence analyst for Jane’s Consultancy Group.
Cheers!
Steve Rush ~ Touchdown-News
Sign In
